Half-Saint wrote on Today, 10:44:

The difference between type 17 and stason is just landing zone 977 vs. nothing. I switched to using type 17.

It doesn't matter - MR535 uses voice-coil = auto-park.

I did as you guys suggested and managed to boot from a floppy into DOS. Was surprised to see that I can access C: fine. I don't know why the system won't boot. I tried running sys a: c: and despite DOS saying "System transferred", it still says "Non-system disk or disk error replace and strike any key when ready" at boot.

"SYS A: C:" only affects the C: partition.
There may still be some garbage in the MBR - you can try "FDISK /MBR", and make sure the partition is set Active.

I tried "fdisk /mbr" but that didn't help so I tried to format the hard drive via "format c: /s" but got an error "Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable".

So something is obviously wrong with the hard drive. Hopefully LLF will help.

Success! I low-level formatted the drive, ran FDISK from a DOS floppy, created a FAT32 partition, formatted the drive with /s parameter and was able to boot into DOS successfully afterwards 😀

Thanks to everyone that helped!

Run a scan disk and see if there are any bad sectors. But awesome work getting the drive working again.

Half-Saint wrote on Today, 15:05:

created a FAT32 partition

I think it's FAT16.
Is it even possible to create FAT32 on such a small disk?

Anyway, now you can experiment a bit, and find the optimal interleave factor for that system...

chrismeyer6 wrote on Today, 16:57:

Run a scan disk and see if there are any bad sectors.

First and foremost, during LLF, it's a good idea to enter the bad sectors listed on the sticker.

Some sectors were weak already at the factory, and they will cause random errors - even if tools like SCANDISK may sometimes fail to detect them.