No, actually they're not. They're a hybrid device. Their BIOS emulation is flawed, as you have seen. So I guess you can stick with, they attempt to be a "real PC" and succeed fairly well for specific use cases, but they're not actually a real PC for *ALL* use cases, one of which is SpinRite. For UEFI support, which is what Windows will use if available, I suspect they are much more compatible, as you noted.
SpinRite 6.1 alpha 4 corrupted screen on intel macbook.
- Thread starter coffeeprogrammer
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BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.
You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.
(You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)
However, note that there are many supposedly 'compatible' PCs that
have BIOS quirks that interfere with predictable FreeDOS and SpinRite
access to drives to be tested - it's an ad hoc universe out there.
So just using a "PC" doesn't guarantee compatibility.
And compatibility with what? PC? XT? AT? How far back in 'pristine'
IBM-compatibility do we have to go, and then precede USB and SATA?
So the word 'compatible' is a hunt-and-find thingy that basically means
"it works" or not.
Some older motherboards have specific BIOS "defects", such as a bug
with USB access on older systems or issues with data transfer
initialization, that can cause data corruption or prevent SpinRite from
proceeding with a scan, forcing the user to use a different computer
or a virtual machine setup.
I've got one computer that considers all USB drives to be the same
size as the first-discovered USB drive - probably not what I want to
start re-writing on.
Then there's the Roger Anomaly "... that all data written during a
maximum size multi-sector transfer, which immediately follows a
maximum size multi-sector read, is "shifted down" or "skewed" by
exactly 32-bits, or four bytes. 32-bits of zeroes are written at the
beginning of the transfer and the last 32-bits of each sector are shifted
into the first 32-bits of the following sector. The final 32-bits of the last
sector fall off the end and are lost forever ..." see
https://www.grc.com/sr/kb/badbios.htm Supposedly, SpinRite 6.1 is
immune.
Regardless, all we can do is try everything, then move to another
computer and try everything again.
Luckily, old used BIOS PCs are cheap and even freely available, and
so long as it has USB2 and SATA2 or SATA3, it will probably be a
useful SpinRite testbed, a keeper.
I even get serviceability from diskette booting, USB1, PATA, and
adapters - whatever works, works.
We all probably ought to keep at least one old PC hanging around.
- - - - -
That said, there are a variety of ways to simplify SpinRite to maybe
avoid BIOS quirks:
Change
Load SpinRite 6.1.8961 R4 with the following command line:
Have I found everything?
SpinRite 6.1 command line options are nicely summarized here:
https://gitlab.com/GRC-Community/spinrite-6.1-wiki/-/wikis/Command-Line
- thanks to @ColbyBouma.
have BIOS quirks that interfere with predictable FreeDOS and SpinRite
access to drives to be tested - it's an ad hoc universe out there.
So just using a "PC" doesn't guarantee compatibility.
And compatibility with what? PC? XT? AT? How far back in 'pristine'
IBM-compatibility do we have to go, and then precede USB and SATA?
So the word 'compatible' is a hunt-and-find thingy that basically means
"it works" or not.
Some older motherboards have specific BIOS "defects", such as a bug
with USB access on older systems or issues with data transfer
initialization, that can cause data corruption or prevent SpinRite from
proceeding with a scan, forcing the user to use a different computer
or a virtual machine setup.
I've got one computer that considers all USB drives to be the same
size as the first-discovered USB drive - probably not what I want to
start re-writing on.
Then there's the Roger Anomaly "... that all data written during a
maximum size multi-sector transfer, which immediately follows a
maximum size multi-sector read, is "shifted down" or "skewed" by
exactly 32-bits, or four bytes. 32-bits of zeroes are written at the
beginning of the transfer and the last 32-bits of each sector are shifted
into the first 32-bits of the following sector. The final 32-bits of the last
sector fall off the end and are lost forever ..." see
https://www.grc.com/sr/kb/badbios.htm Supposedly, SpinRite 6.1 is
immune.
Regardless, all we can do is try everything, then move to another
computer and try everything again.
Luckily, old used BIOS PCs are cheap and even freely available, and
so long as it has USB2 and SATA2 or SATA3, it will probably be a
useful SpinRite testbed, a keeper.
I even get serviceability from diskette booting, USB1, PATA, and
adapters - whatever works, works.
We all probably ought to keep at least one old PC hanging around.
- - - - -
That said, there are a variety of ways to simplify SpinRite to maybe
avoid BIOS quirks:
Change
CONFIG.SYS to contain only:BUFFERS=98Load SpinRite 6.1.8961 R4 with the following command line:
SPINRITE.EXE NORAMTEST BLANKING 0 DYNASTAT 0 NOREWRITE SKIPVERIFY FORCEBIOS GRAPHIC NOBLANKING QUIET ROCFG VIDEOHave I found everything?
SpinRite 6.1 command line options are nicely summarized here:
https://gitlab.com/GRC-Community/spinrite-6.1-wiki/-/wikis/Command-Line
- thanks to @ColbyBouma.
Last edited:
Thank you- I was going to say something similar but I will follow your suggestions and get back to you. Also interesting that most non apple computers that are intel based have also switched to UEFI from bios.
Ironically I might add, I did try forcebios earlier and got a warning from spinrite that using the actual bios will reduce its capabilities. So the bios-love seems a bit unwarranted. Nonetheless thanks to everyone of any opinion for your help in this thread.
Ironically I might add, I did try forcebios earlier and got a warning from spinrite that using the actual bios will reduce its capabilities. So the bios-love seems a bit unwarranted. Nonetheless thanks to everyone of any opinion for your help in this thread.
Not really. It's an Intel initiative. Since 2020 or so they have declared EOL for the BIOS. I think there is info about that in other posts on the site. But this Reddit most may be the source of some of such info: intel_drops_legacy_bios_support_in_2020
The warning from SR 6.1 about BIOS is that using "forcebios" limits SR to reading/writing the drives via BIOS calls which are significantly slower than using the supplied PATA or SATA drivers.
For other devices, e.g. M.2 or USB drives, going via the BIOS is the only option, but for PATA or SATA drives, SR6.1 now contains native drivers which speed things up considerably.
"... I did try
using the actual bios will reduce its capabilities. So the bios-love seems
a bit unwarranted ..."
The 'warning' is not about danger, but about comparative speed.
@Steve Gibson is justifiably proud of the comparative speed of
SpinRite 6.1 IDE/ATA/AHCI drivers, an important upgrade
considering the growth in size of hard disk drives compared to 20
years ago - a mere 'fix' would not feel like much of an improvement
if speed did not also upgrade to match the larger drives.
However, if BIOS is the only way to get to a drive, then BIOS on.
It's not "BIOS love", per se, it BIOS DOS because that's what was
available from SpinRite v1 up to v6, which v6.1 is a 'fix' for.
Updating BIOS-DOS-based v6 to a non-BIOS non-DOS environment
would be a mismatch for SpinRite v6 users wanting to eliminate
known errors.
SpinRite 6.1 eliminates SpinRite 6 errors, and adds speed and other
savvy - a bonus.
SpinRite 7 will move to a different environment, and is not a 'patch'
for prior SpinRite misbehavior.
Does that help folks understand SpinRite 6.1?
forcebios earlier and got a warning from spinrite that using the actual bios will reduce its capabilities. So the bios-love seems
a bit unwarranted ..."
The 'warning' is not about danger, but about comparative speed.
@Steve Gibson is justifiably proud of the comparative speed of
SpinRite 6.1 IDE/ATA/AHCI drivers, an important upgrade
considering the growth in size of hard disk drives compared to 20
years ago - a mere 'fix' would not feel like much of an improvement
if speed did not also upgrade to match the larger drives.
However, if BIOS is the only way to get to a drive, then BIOS on.
It's not "BIOS love", per se, it BIOS DOS because that's what was
available from SpinRite v1 up to v6, which v6.1 is a 'fix' for.
Updating BIOS-DOS-based v6 to a non-BIOS non-DOS environment
would be a mismatch for SpinRite v6 users wanting to eliminate
known errors.
SpinRite 6.1 eliminates SpinRite 6 errors, and adds speed and other
savvy - a bonus.
SpinRite 7 will move to a different environment, and is not a 'patch'
for prior SpinRite misbehavior.
Does that help folks understand SpinRite 6.1?
Here's where I am and I think I have to give in at this point.
-All scenarios, I get the blank/corrupt screen even with all those options.
-In fact I can get that if I just leave the system at the free-dos prompt with no spin-rite. Leave it long enough and the screen gets corrupted.
-It could be working. I ensured logging is on with long sentences, tried viewing the spinrite log but it only logs if it sees a problem. I dont see a way to turn that up to a true activity log. And there are gigabytes of free space on the usb drive.
But it could be working. It could only be a screen issue.
-All scenarios, I get the blank/corrupt screen even with all those options.
-In fact I can get that if I just leave the system at the free-dos prompt with no spin-rite. Leave it long enough and the screen gets corrupted.
-It could be working. I ensured logging is on with long sentences, tried viewing the spinrite log but it only logs if it sees a problem. I dont see a way to turn that up to a true activity log. And there are gigabytes of free space on the usb drive.
But it could be working. It could only be a screen issue.
The BIOS is to SpinRite what Windows is to say MS Word. The BIOS is a part of the Operating System of [Free]DOS, and it supplies many capabilities, such as reading the disks (but SpinRite will use its own drivers if it has them), outputting to the screen, reading the keyboard, and generally providing the memory location of the devices installed in the system (such as video cards, disk controllers, etc.) For SpinRite 6.1 and earlier it CANNOT operate without a working, and generally 100% compatible with expectations, BIOS.
I agree that the BIOS is becoming legacy, yes, but I don't agree that that is notable in any particular way, which is what I said.
Again, I have had SR work against this MacBook Pro using both VirtualBox and QEMU when booting from an external drive running Linux or MacOS
Ultimately I was unable to get this working all the way through to my knowledge. Logging is too weak to suffice for understanding if it worked; maybe a good feature request.
FWIW I do have an old dell somewhere I kept exactly for this. It unfortunately is across an ocean but it is a great idea.
FWIW I do have an old dell somewhere I kept exactly for this. It unfortunately is across an ocean but it is a great idea.
