Can anyone tell me what this means? And how do I fix it? I can't get any boot disks to work. The Max installer only goes as far as this error message:"Int 13h error 2 drive 0 cyl 1 head 0 sect 2 count 1" NEC 9616 Ready (2/22/1996) 120MHz processor 16MB RAM 256KB Secondary Cache 1.6 Gigabyte Hard Drive (Maxtor) NEC Multispin 6X CD-ROM Built-In Infra-Red Data Transfer (??)

Interrupt 13h The next lower level of communications with drives, the ROM BIOS Int 13h routines, usually are found in ROM chips on the motherboard or on an adapter card in a slot. However, an Int 13h handler also can be implemented by using a device driver loaded at boot time. Because DOS requires Int 13h access to boot from a drive (and a device driver cannot be loaded until after boot-up), only drives with ROM BIOS-based Int 13h support can become bootable. Int 13h routines need to talk directly to the controller using the I/O ports on the controller. Therefore, the Int 13h code is very controller-specific. Table 22.2 lists the different functions available at the Interrupt 13h BIOS interface. Some functions are available to floppy drives or hard drives only, whereas others are available to both types of drives. Table 22.3 shows the error codes that may be returned by the BIOS INT 13h routines. In some cases, you may see these codes referred to when running a low-level format program, disk editor, or other program that can directly access a disk drive through the BIOS. Table 22.2  Int 13h BIOS Disk Functions Function Floppy Disk Hard Disk Description 00h X X Reset disk system 01h X X Get status of last operation 02h X X Read sectors 03h X X Write sectors 04h X X Verify sectors 05h X X Format track 06h X Format bad track 07h X Format drive 08h X X Read drive parameters 09h X Initialize drive characteristics 0Ah X Read long 0Bh X Write long 0Ch X Seek 0Dh X Alternate hard disk reset 0Eh X Read sector buffer 0Fh X Write sector buffer 10h X Test for drive ready 11h X Recalibrate drive 12h X Controller RAM diagnostic 13h X Controller drive diagnostic 14h X Controller internal diagnostic 15h X X Get disk type 16h X Get floppy disk change status 17h X Set floppy disk type for format 18h X Set media type for format 19h X Park hard disk heads 1Ah X ESDI--Low-level format 1Bh X ESDI--Get manufacturing header 1Ch X ESDI--Get configuration Table 22.3  BIOS INT 13h Error Codes Code Description Code Description 00h No error 06h Media change error 01h Bad command 07h Initialization failed 02h Address mark not found 09h Cross 64K DMA boundary 03h Write protect 0Ah Bad sector flag detected 04h Request sector not found 0Bh Bad track flag detected 05h Reset failed 10h Bad ECC on disk read 11h ECC corrected data error BBh Undefined error 20h Controller has failed CCh Write fault 40h Seek operation failed 0Eh Register error 80h Drive failed to respond FFh Sense operation failed AAh Drive not ready If you design your own custom disk controller device, you need to write an IBM- compatible Int 13h handler package and install it on the card using a ROM BIOS that will be linked into the system at boot time. To use Int 13h routines, a program must use exact cylinder, head, and sector coordinates to specify sectors to read and write. Accordingly, any program designed to work at this level must be intimately familiar with the parameters of the specific disk on the system on which it is designed to run. Int 13h functions exist to read the disk parameters, format tracks, read and write sectors, park heads, and reset the drive. A low-level format program for ST-506/412 drives needs to work with disks at the Int 13h level or lower. Most ST-506/412 controller format programs work with access at the Int 13h level because virtually any operation a format program needs is available through the Int 13h interface. This is not true, however, for other types of controllers (such as IDE, SCSI, or ESDI), for which defect mapping and other operations differ considerably from the ST-506/412 types. Controllers that must perform special operations during a low-level format, such as defining disk parameters to override the motherboard ROM BIOS drive tables, would not work with any formatter that used only the standard Int 13h interface. For these reasons, most controllers require a custom formatter designed to bypass the Int 13h interface. Most general-purpose, low-level reformat programs that perform a non-destructive format access the controller through the Int 13h interface (rather than going direct) and therefore cannot be used for an initial low-level format; the initial low-level format must be done by a controller-specific utility. Few high-powered disk utility programs, other than some basic formatting software, can talk to the disk at the Int 13h level. The DOS FDISK program communicates at the Int 13h level. The Norton DISKEDIT and older NU programs can communicate with a disk at the Int 13h level when these programs are in their absolute sector mode; they are some of the few disk-repair utilities that can do so. These programs are important because they can be used for the worst data recovery situations, in which the partition tables have been corrupted. Because the partition tables, as well as any non-DOS partitions, exist outside the area of a disk that is defined by DOS, only programs that work at the Int 13h level can access them. Most utility programs for data recovery work only at the DOS Int 25/26h level, which makes them useless for accessing areas of a disk outside of DOS' domain. ***As you can see from the above information, either the drive is damaged at that location or the drives "offset" is incorrect. Try using the IDE auto-detect freature of your CMOS, if available, or enter required information which is printed on the drives label into the appropriate line in Standard Setup. If neither of these suggestions work, the drive is damaged.

Holy smokes, this forum is not "tables friendly". Sorry about the big gaps.