Crazy question (for this board)

[RWIndiana]

I know this isn't an antique drives board, but I'm hoping someone has had some experience with hard drives back in the "old days" of computing. I have a 40mb RLL drive that will not format (low level), it just gives me an error code 20. I tried everything I know how to. Is there any way to force a format and ignore whatever fault it has? Or any other suggestions?


Thanks to any retro-techies who might not be too rusty. lol



Rod

 

[P5-133XL]

With an old RLL drive you needed to have the correct CHS BIOS setting or it would not format correctly. Next, you needed to know the controller bios address: typically assigned by jumpers or fixed. Then you would enter Debug at a DOS prompt and type the command -g=cc00 :5 where cc00 is the controllers bios address. That would execute the controllers built-in LLF capability. P.S. Sometimes is was :5 and sometimes :3 depending upon the controller.