mke2fs on an old machine...

[roibm]

Hello...

I have quite an old system... 486DX4 100 w 32MB RAM
and the HDD is an 815MB Seagate from '96 or '97, don't remember exactly.

My problem is that when I try mke2fs I wait several hours and nothing, I
think it hangs or something like this(once I left it over night, hoping maybe
maybe hehe, in vain)

I tried this with slackware 8 and redhat 6.2, both the very same thing.
I can format this hdd under DOS(boot disk only) and it's no problem.
Also, this HDD has some 40KB of bads and the BIOS doesn't know of low level format

Any idea how to make it happen(make mke2fs work)

PS: Linux found the hdd and I can partition it both with fdisk and disk druid.

 

[Nothinman]

Did you tell the install to check for badblocks?

 

[roibm]

I tried both ways: with and without checking for bad blocks.
The same result unfortunately

 

[Nothinman]

Did you check the other virtual consoles for error messages?

 

[roibm]

Nope.
But I think there are no other virtual consoles during the installation, or are there?

 

[Nothinman]

I havn't seen an installation that hasn't had any yet.

 

[roibm]

Then it's time to check. Thank you