That's an interesting story. When I want to clear away anything from an "Int 13" device, I use the following debug procedure:
This will wipe out stuff in a really dangerous kinda way but it's very effective. It works for the CF devices as well as actual hard drives. It works for all INT-13 devices you see. Other "removeable storage" devices it doesn't apply to, unfortunately.
On a side note, someone on another thread asked why dolly uses "hd128" and "hd129" and all that. Well, 128 converted to HEX is 80. 81 is 129. Clue enough?
---begin---
W R I T I N G Z E R O S T O H A R D D R I V E S
The following procedure is used writing zeros
to the first 63 sectors of a hard disk.
It requires the use of DEBUG which is typically
present on DOS, Win95 and Win98 startup disks.
This procedure works by invoking DEBUG and by issuing a
single instruction that calls a system function. In
preparing the execution of the instruction, registers
are loaded with the appropriate values for the system call.
The instructions "rax", "rbx", "rcx" and "rdx" are instructing
a load of the program registers with specific values. The "p"
command steps through the instructions and the result should
be a "dump" of various register values.
Drive Specification options:
----------------------------
0080 == primary master
0081 == primary slave
0082 == secondary master
0083 == secondary slave
> debug<enter> | run the DEBUG program
-a 100<enter> | point to address 0100
XXXX:0100 int 13<enter> | submit instruction call "int 13"
XXXX:0102 <enter> | exiting this mode of operation
-rax<enter> | load register "ax"
:0301 | 0301 is the value
-rbx | load register "bx"
:200 | 200 is the value
-f 200 L 200 0 | (I dunno what that does)
-rcx | load register "cx"
:0001 | 0001 is the value
-rdx | load register "dx"
:0080 | Drive specification (see table above)
-p | step through instruction
-q | quit debug
----end----
asking about dolly's disk numbering technique; thanks for educating me. haven't messed with DEBUG and hard drives since the days of the PC/XT and the MFM/RLL drives. that's definitely a sure-fire low-level method for clearing the disk using DOS. Thanks!