kyodai
Experienced Member
OK, i thought long if i should post this in the portables section, but on the other hand it's an 80C88A with MS-DOS 3.3 and the problem is rather with the formatting of the disk - and I know loads of gurus browsing this section daily have loads of experience with HDDs, floppies and ancient formatting.
So - I have a Sharp PC-3000 which is an ancient handheld from 1991 running DOS 3.3. It has 2 PCMCIA slots where you can use SRAM cards basically like a floppy. I have loads of SRAM cards with storage sizes of 512KB, 1MB, 2MB.
So the PC-3000 handles them pretty much like a floppy - the BIOS binds the 2 slots to drive letters A: and B:. The MS-DOS format command has been replaced with a custom version that will format these cards.
That all works fine - i can format every card fine and use it like a floppy - saving spreadsheets, text files, folders and everything - look and feel of a floppy.
However - if i use that card in a different machine - like the HP 200LX - all files look (and are) garbage (random ascii characters, file content is usually just something like "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" or so)to the 200LX and even the volume label is gone. If i insert the card in a Windows 98 system it will just say like "The drive is not formatted, do you wanna format it?". If i format the card in Windows 98 or in the HP 200X (MS-DOS 5.0) they work fine in Windows or the HP 200LX - but all files and the volume label look like garbage in the Sharp. At some point i had a format on the card where all systems could write fine, but the files from the corresponding "other" system looked like garbage and the "own" files looked fine. Crazy, i know.
OK, so i thought maybe these systems use just a different FAT version (FAT12? FAT16? FAT32?) and the Sharp PC-3000 uses "magic FAT".
Buuuuuuut.... And here comes the real surprise - if i format the card in my old Poqet Prime (ALSO MS-DOS 3.3, other manufacturer and system software though) I end up with a perfect formatted card that can be read and written by ALL systems - Sharp PC-3000, HP 200LX, Windows 98 and the Poqet.
Soooo, the curiosity is killing me AND i wanna help a friend who also has a Sharp PC-3000 (But no poqet). So what is this magic format the Poqet does.
I was looking for MS-DOS (or Win 98) tools that give more detailed info about the formatting since i don't have a Linux laptop with PCMCIA. Or even better - a tool that does formatting just like the Poqet. And yes - i copied the Poqet format.com tool, but it just won't run without a poqet (I guess they didn't want it to be used anywhere else... sigh).
Any ideas?
So - I have a Sharp PC-3000 which is an ancient handheld from 1991 running DOS 3.3. It has 2 PCMCIA slots where you can use SRAM cards basically like a floppy. I have loads of SRAM cards with storage sizes of 512KB, 1MB, 2MB.
So the PC-3000 handles them pretty much like a floppy - the BIOS binds the 2 slots to drive letters A: and B:. The MS-DOS format command has been replaced with a custom version that will format these cards.
That all works fine - i can format every card fine and use it like a floppy - saving spreadsheets, text files, folders and everything - look and feel of a floppy.
However - if i use that card in a different machine - like the HP 200LX - all files look (and are) garbage (random ascii characters, file content is usually just something like "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUU" or so)to the 200LX and even the volume label is gone. If i insert the card in a Windows 98 system it will just say like "The drive is not formatted, do you wanna format it?". If i format the card in Windows 98 or in the HP 200X (MS-DOS 5.0) they work fine in Windows or the HP 200LX - but all files and the volume label look like garbage in the Sharp. At some point i had a format on the card where all systems could write fine, but the files from the corresponding "other" system looked like garbage and the "own" files looked fine. Crazy, i know.
OK, so i thought maybe these systems use just a different FAT version (FAT12? FAT16? FAT32?) and the Sharp PC-3000 uses "magic FAT".
Buuuuuuut.... And here comes the real surprise - if i format the card in my old Poqet Prime (ALSO MS-DOS 3.3, other manufacturer and system software though) I end up with a perfect formatted card that can be read and written by ALL systems - Sharp PC-3000, HP 200LX, Windows 98 and the Poqet.
Soooo, the curiosity is killing me AND i wanna help a friend who also has a Sharp PC-3000 (But no poqet). So what is this magic format the Poqet does.
I was looking for MS-DOS (or Win 98) tools that give more detailed info about the formatting since i don't have a Linux laptop with PCMCIA. Or even better - a tool that does formatting just like the Poqet. And yes - i copied the Poqet format.com tool, but it just won't run without a poqet (I guess they didn't want it to be used anywhere else... sigh).
Any ideas?