syzygy
Experienced Member
It can be very difficult to 'help' someone over delayed forum posts where the slightest misunderstanding takes a lot of effort to work out. I am regularly amazed when the endeavor is successful.I've identified the problem - no method for wiping CF card that works.
I've identified a path forward - return device, revisit at a future date, after having a process to build other DOS disks.
I've moved on to other projects and things, which includes getting back to the option of troubleshooing and fixing the blue lava card that has a working CF card that should still boot once it detects it.
I've identified ideal option to see if one is suggested - wiping method from USB device.
Many people on here want to help people solve problems and it becomes an investment of sorts. It is important for you, as the one asking for the help, to, at the least, acknowledge the efforts of others in a sincere manner. I think that you do appreciate the help that people are willing to provide, but it gets lost in all the whining; I am sorry of that is harsh but you have been do a lot a lot of whining.
Regarding your analysis of the problem (the 4 points of yours that I am quoting). You just can't make those statements and be confident that they are correct. This is so because you have not gone through the proper steps to make evidence-based decisions.
Start with the first one - when I asked if you looked to see what, if anything, 'wipedisk' had done in your case - you asked, "how" and I replied "sector editor" and you started whining - that was many, many posts ago. I figure, if I care more about solving the problem than you do, I should stop caring about the problem.
Here is what I did in about a minute....took a CF card that I had previously formatted and made bootable - ready to backup the one in my XT. Ran the HXD editor and looked at the first sector and a snapshot is below.
Notice that 55 AA at the end of the sector? Remember when that came up about a billion posts ago?
IF you had done this; for both the CF card in the Blue Lava board that had previously booted and worked AND for the new CF cards that you had just purchased and formatted with a version of DOS 3.2 (as far as I can tell), it would have given you and the folks trying to help you solve the problem, some evidence of what is going on. The old card that worked in the Blue Lava board could have been damaged when the card stopped working, your 'wipedisk' may not have been working, the new cards may have come with a funky MBR, and more.
That would have been a step in the right direction, but when I said 'sector editor' you whined that you did not want to do that. I told you, and will say it again; "That is a reasonable response - you don't have to do it". If you don't do the steps to get the evidence, however, you are deluding yourself into believing the conclusions that you have drawn without commensurate evidence.
How did I get that program that I am running on a Win 7 machine? Someone here told me about it - lots of people here use it - some like other programs - the linuxites will always weigh in with their favorites and so on. Heck, I used to use "diskprobe.exe" back in the XP days.
But see, we couldn't get that far because you did not want to get that far.....but please, acknowledge that many folks in this thread tried to help and it looks to me like you didn't want to do your part of helping yourself....and again, that's perfectly ok, but it would be nice to hear you simply say something like, "thanks for the help guys, but I don't want to go through all that"....and leave it at that.
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