I put together a 286/8 and played around with it.
Then I formatted a disk!
Sort of:
So GSETUP'd the BIOS and indicated that the b:\ floppy was 720k (it is), yet under DOS 3.3 and 4.01 it force formats them to 179k. It can read the directory listing of a 720k diskette, but it will throw a General Failure error when it tries to run anything. The same 179K format is readable in my 386.
Issuing these commands under 3.3 and 4.01 give me an "invalid parameter" - Format b: /f:720 or Format b: /n:9 /t:80 (or whatever the parameters are for a 720K diskette)
I tried changing the BIOS settings to 1.44 Mb, 360k, both still format 179k . Changing it to a 1.2Mb gives me a "track 0 disk unusable" error.
Can it be that this computer just doesn't support 3.5 inch floppies?
*Edit and this is a BIOS limitation, it looks like it won't support 3.5" drives at all. Oddly, if you put a 1.44 Mb and register it as a 1.2Mb, you can read (but not write or format) 720k diskettes.
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