Re: fresh install on crashed disk

["SN_Diamond" <Norman.Diamond@example.com>]

> I know for sure that the partition table on my hard disk
> is messed up pretty badly. But when booting up with
> floppy disk, the computer doesn't make use of hard
> disk, right?

Unfortunately, the BIOS inspects the first one or two hard disks and reads
parts of their partition tables (the MBRs) even if you boot a floppy.  You
might be able to avoid this by entering the BIOS setup screens during boot
and telling it that you don't have any hard disks.  Then the BIOS should be
willing to boot the floppy without inspecting the hard disks, but then you
have to hope that the booted system will know how to find your hard disk
without depending on the BIOS for it.  And finally, you have to hope that
the resulting system will have some way for you to tell it to ignore the
broken partition table, zero the MBR, and start over.

The old NEC PC98 architecture is worse.  The BIOS inspects the hard disk (I
don't know if there can be more than one at this stage), reads its partition
table, and hangs, even if you boot a floppy.  The only solution is to turn
off the power and remove the hard disk.  I spent 6 hours swapping a hard
disk between a friend's PC98 system and one of my DOS/V systems, running a
program on my DOS/V system to zero the MBR each time, before finding a way
that my friend could access almost a whole gigabyte and waste the rest of
the hard disk.  Nah wait a minute, I only spent about 3 hours on that, and 3
hours on other garbage.

-- Norman Diamond