I finall flashed my XTIDE rev 1, now what?

[Fred Cisin]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2017, Alexandre Souza wrote:
> Simple way I got several XT-IDE working:
> - Boot with freedos boot disk
> - FDISK /MBR
> - FDISK and create ONE 31MB partition (note it is 31MB and not 32MB)

It SHOULD be possible to create an almost 2GB partition with DOS 3.31 or 
above.  Has to be "almost 2GB", since size is -2147483649 to 2147483647, 
instead of 0 to 4294967295  ("almost 4GB")

31MB means that that partition is probably FAT12, usable even with DOS 
2.00 to 3.30.

Why the FDISK /MBR , particularly followed by FDISK ?   That rewrites the 
Master Boot Record, which includes the partition table, which is then 
also done by the FDISK.

FDISK /MBR  (formerly undocumented) was very handy by itself for removing 
boot sector virus, without altering anything else.

> - Reboot
not normally required in MS-DOS; a FREEDOS quirk?

> - Format C: /s /u (the /u is very important)
/u was added with 6.00?  prevents FORMAT from paying attention to previous 
content, and objecting if you format different parameters

> - REBOOT. There is a bug on freedos that a copy command gives a heap
> corruption after a format

That's too bad.  Not normally required with MS-DOS.

> - Do whatever you want, even creating a D: partition of 2GB

Prior to DOS 3.31, there were some third party DOS extenders for larger 
drives, even some kludges to use MSCDEX (network redirector in 3.10 and 
above) to make that computer see the drive as being on a network instead 
of local (the way MS-DOS could see a 2/3 GB CD-ROM)