China DOS Union

1. I heard that the DM universal version can switch between Chinese and English, but the default startup is in Chinese. I want to know how to make it start in English by default.
2. For Seagate's DM9.56a, is it just that adding the /x parameter when running can be used on other hard drives?
3. What is the relationship between IBM's DM and Seagate's DM?

Repost author's instructions for you:

"DM Universal Edition V9.56 User Instructions"

DM Universal Edition - The Best Hard Drive Initialization Tool

Table of Contents
I. System Overview
II. Installation and Use
III. Easter Eggs
IV. User Rights and Obligations

I. System Overview
If someone tells you that he can repartition and format a large hard drive within a minute, you must not believe it.
With DM, you can easily do this.
However, the popular version of DM is very picky about the brand of the hard drive. If it finds that the manufacturer of the hard drive running is incorrect, it will stop running. The hard drive market is quite competitive. Even the most powerful hard drive manufacturers can only occupy a small part of the market. So any ordinary popular version of DM can only be used in a very small range.
This may be the main reason why DM has not been included in your computer toolbox for a long time.
DM partner program DM Partner has completely improved this. It enables DM to run on hard drives of various manufacturers. DM&P (Disk Manager & Partner) is DM with the partner program, which is the "DM Universal Edition" you are seeing now.
In terms of all the functions of the DM Universal Edition, the unparalleled speed is just the tip of the iceberg. It supports almost all current new hard drive technologies and has extremely powerful functions:
★ Fast simple and advanced options. Its hard drive installation function is easy for novice users to master and can fully meet the special needs of advanced users.
★ Completely supports the FAT32 file system supported by your operating system, and formats a drive larger than 2GB in one partition. When you use the advanced installation mode or menu mode, you can choose the size of the disk cluster you need.
★ Break through the capacity limits of 528M/2.1G/8.4GB/32G. When installing an IDE/ATA drive larger than 8.4GB, you can use multiple FAT12/16 partitions or a single bootable FAT32 file system partition.
★ Use the hard drive diagnostic function to find interrelated problems in your hard drive subsystem.
★ Compatible with multiple operating systems, including DOS, OS/2, Windows, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT.
★ Supports IDE power management.
★ Contains multi-sector read/write support for IDE/ATA drives, accelerating data transfer.
★ Quickly format IDE/ATA/SCSI drives. In most cases, completely installing the drive takes no more than one minute.
★ Supports high-speed data transfer of enhanced IDE/FAST ATA.
★ The low-level formatting program included is much more advanced than many BIOS-attached Low Level Format programs.

The DM Universal Edition - with its amazing partition speed, powerful support for large-capacity hard drives, good hard drive adaptability, and other advanced comprehensive capabilities, makes it the most powerful and versatile hard drive initialization tool.

II. System Installation and Use
1. System Installation
The DM Universal Edition is composed of two parts: DM and DM Partner.
As a system tool software, the design of the partner program DM Partner strives to be concise. After repeated consideration, it is found that the only necessary main file of this part is DM.COM, and the bilingual module file DM1.OVL is optional. DM.COM contains the core code of DM Partner V3.2 and this colorful Chinese brief description, and the DM1.OVL file provides simplified Chinese support. If you only use the English interface, you can remove the DM1.OVL file.
When installing the DM Universal Edition, first format a bootable system floppy disk, and then use software such as WinZIP/WinRAR to install the DM Universal Edition software package onto the floppy disk.
There are no special requirements for the storage and working path of the DM Universal Edition, but it is a good habit to put DM-related files in a certain subdirectory (such as \DM). Note that when installing, make sure that the DM Partner program DM.COM and the bilingual version program module DM1.OVL are stored in the same subdirectory as the DM1.EXE and other files in DM.
If you want to use the Chinese interface for operation, please load the Chinese character system when running the DM Universal Edition. This Chinese character system should be a Chinese character system that supports direct screen writing, such as UCDOS, China Dragon, or Tianhui Chinese character system, etc. The selected Chinese character system only needs to load the Chinese character display part, and other things such as input methods do not need to be added. The bilingual DM Universal Edition will perform system recognition and automatically work in English or Chinese interface according to whether you are in the Chinese system.
To facilitate beginners, I provide the UCDOS98 pure display package for everyone to choose from at http://z80.yeah.net.
2. Usage Method
(1). Method to start the DM Universal Edition:
If you want to use the DM Universal Edition in simple mode, enter the command
DM←┘
If you want to start the DM Universal Edition in advanced mode, enter
DM /M←┘
In addition, you can enter
DM /?←┘
or DM /??←┘
to get the usage of other command line switches of the DM Universal Edition and this colorful Chinese description.
When performing advanced formatting (Format) on a new hard drive, it is recommended to use the fast (Fast) method, which will allow you to complete the advanced formatting of the hard drive in less than one minute, and you will fully experience the amazing speed of the DM Universal Edition. The DM Universal Edition also provides the advanced formatting method with verification as a backup. As for low-level formatting (Low level format), it is not necessary to use it on a new hard drive.
When the DM Universal Edition starts, it can use command line switch parameters. The brief descriptions of these switches are as follows:
　　/C Force monochrome display for color monitors.
　　/D=X Drive search limit (X=1-16).
　　/F Forbid fast formatting.
　　/G Forbid opening the graphic display mode.
　　/H Call online help.
　　/L=X　 Load dynamic drive override options (X=0-2).
　　/M Manual operation mode (advanced users).
　　/N Use BIOS standard format (non-DOS compatible format).
　　/O Ignore all extended INT13H hard drive BIOS calls.
　　/P- Forbid Fast ATA hardware detection.
　　/S Forbid second controller support.
　　/T,/T- INT 13H extended support.
　　/V=X Dynamic drive override flag options (X=0-2).
　　/U Force use of ATA/IDE universal transmission mode.
　　/X Do not load XBIOS.
　　/Y,/Y- Force request/forbid dynamic drive override.
　　
The simple (automatic) mode provides automated hard drive installation, and the advanced (manual) mode, while maintaining fast and convenient, provides maximum flexibility for your hard drive partitioning work.

(2). About breaking through the large hard drive capacity limit:
If you see the blue boot interface when booting from the hard drive after partitioning, it means that the capacity of the hard drive in your system exceeds the capacity supported by the motherboard's BIOS. The DM Universal Edition has automatically installed "Dynamic Drive Override" - DDO for your hard drive to solve the BIOS capacity limit problem.
In the case that DDO is installed on the hard drive, at any time - including when running an antivirus program, an operating system installation program, etc. - you must first boot from the hard drive, so that DDO can start working, so that you can access each partition established on the hard drive by the DM Universal Edition. The dynamic drive program DDO provides you with quite flexible boot options. After seeing the blue DDO, you can choose to continue booting from the hard drive (default) or boot from the floppy disk by pressing the space bar.
There is a special option in the DM Universal Edition that can make your system floppy disk such as the WIN98 emergency boot floppy disk a bootable floppy disk containing DDO. Booting from this floppy disk can also ensure that you can access all partitions of the hard drive.
With the DDO being preferentially booted, the DDO module installed on the hard drive by the DM Universal Edition is very robust. The formatting commands such as "format c:" have no impact on it.
In order to ensure the priority boot right of DDO and to prevent the destruction of the hard drive by system-class computer viruses, please immediately change the system boot sequence in CMOS to set the hard drive C as the first boot preference after the hard drive partitioning is completed. Even if you do not use the DM Universal Edition but use other tools to install the hard drive, you should do this after the partitioning is completed.

(3). If the large hard drive causes a system crash when installed on the system:
The BIOS of some motherboards will crash during the system power-on self-test process after encountering that the hard drive capacity exceeds its own maximum capacity support limit. In this way, you will not be able to start the system to run the DM Universal Edition to install DDO that can originally support large hard drives for your hard drive. At this time, you can use the "hard drive capacity jumper method" or "Set Drive Size (set drive capacity)" method to solve the problem.
The "hard drive capacity jumper method" is to use capacity jumpers on the hard drive to limit the capacity, so that the system will not crash during startup. The specific method of jumpers can be found in the manual of your new hard drive. You can also press F1 to consult the online manual, which contains quite complete jumper information for many brands of hard drives.
When using the "Set drive size (set drive capacity method)" to solve the startup crash problem, you need to first set the hard drive type to "NONE" in the CMOS settings, and then run the DM Universal Edition to perform "Set drive size (set drive capacity method)" setting on the new hard drive. Then set the type of the hard drive in CMOS to "AUTO" or type 1, save the CMOS settings, then power off and then power on. When you need to enter the total number of hard drive sectors and other capacity values, you should enter a value much smaller than the actual capacity of the hard drive. Generally, you can directly use the default value given by the DM Universal Edition.
After processing the new hard drive with the "hard drive capacity jumper method" or "Set Drive Size (set drive capacity)" method, the system will no longer crash during startup, and you can use the DM Universal Edition to partition and format the hard drive. With these two methods, generally one will allow you to use the entire capacity of the large hard drive and avoid the crash problem.
Some brands of hard drives will bring new problems after using the "hard drive capacity jumper method" to solve the crash problem: after the DM Universal Edition partitions the hard drive, although the entire capacity of the hard drive seems visible, actually the latter part of the hard drive partitioned space cannot be used. This problem will be exposed when the hard drive is almost full in the future.
In order to immediately verify whether all the space of the hard drive is available after using the "hard drive capacity jumper method", a simple detection method is proposed, and there are only 3 steps in total:
a. Start in advanced mode "DM /M", temporarily put aside your formal partitioning plan, use the "(E)dit edit/display partition" function of the DM Universal Edition to arbitrarily divide the entire hard drive into a few large partitions until the entire space of the hard drive is divided. But note that try to make the capacity of the last partition at the back of the hard drive as small as possible, such as only tens of megabytes.
b. Use "(F)ormat format/check partition -> (F)ormat format a single partition" to perform a quick format on the last small partition.
c. Use "(F)ormat format/check partition -> (C)heck check a single partition" to check the last small partition. If this check can pass successfully, it means that your hard drive is fully supported and all space is confirmed. Then you can partition and format the new hard drive according to your formal partitioning plan.
The above steps can accurately and quickly verify whether all the space of the hard drive is available.
If you think this description is not clear enough, please press F1 for help when running the DM Universal Edition, or go to http://z80.yeah.net. The Chinese user manual of the DM Universal Edition provided on the website has more detailed usage methods of the DM Universal Edition.

(4). About low-level formatting and other utility options:
Start DM in DM/M advanced mode (or press Alt-M in simple mode), select the third item (M)aintenance options in the main menu, then select (U)tilitys in it. The first item is Zero fill (fill with zeros), the second item is low level format (low-level format), and the third item is Set drive size (set drive capacity).
Low-level formatting is especially suitable for handling soft faults in the tracks of the hard drive. For old hard drives that have been used for a long time and have inaccurate track positioning of the magnetic head, low-level formatting can also be tried to correct. However, due to the diversity of current hard drive brands, the low-level formatting function may be invalid on very few hard drives. At this time, please use other low-level formatting tools.
In addition, the Zero fill (fill with zeros) function is particularly worth mentioning. Because this function fills the hard drive sectors with zeros, the sectors of the hard drive are "cleaned". Therefore, for cases where there are viruses in the hard drive partition table or other reasons that require completely redoing the system, running this function (without completely finishing it, it is enough to clear the first track) can achieve the purpose.

3. Warnings
The repartitioning and formatting functions in the DM Universal Edition will erase all data on the hard drive! Do not test the repartitioning and formatting functions in the DM Universal Edition on a hard drive with files, unless you are completely sure that you want to reinitialize the hard drive.
For novice users, I strongly suggest that you back up your personal data files before trying the DM Universal Edition to avoid losses.
Sometimes, your experience cannot make you absolutely safe. Because the DM in the DM Universal Edition may use some special methods when writing to the disk, common hard drive write protection measures (such as CMOS setting method) may not prevent some writing actions of DM. Therefore, even if you are a user with profound computer knowledge, I still suggest that you back up your personal important data on the hard drive before using the DM Universal Edition.

III. Easter Eggs Buried in the System
The "Easter eggs" hidden in WINDOWS by Microsoft are already well-known secrets.
While writing DM Partner, I also discovered several "Easter eggs" hidden in DM. I think two of them are particularly useful:
1. Hotkey Alt-M for switching advanced management mode:
The DM Universal Edition has two working modes. One is the simple (Easy disk installation) mode prepared for novice users, started by the command line "DM←┘" method. The other is the advanced (Advanced disk installation) mode, started by "DM /M←┘". The two working modes are specified on the command line during startup.
For advanced users, they may hope to switch between simple mode and advanced mode at any time. However, it is very inconvenient to repeatedly run the DM Universal Edition using the command line method each time.
The hotkey Alt-M allows you to enter the advanced mode at any time under the main menu, and Alt-A allows you to return to the simple mode. It is really very convenient.
2. Hotkey Alt-T for advanced system options:
There is a system options menu in the DM Universal Edition. The menu items are as follows:
Disk Overview - can give the drive model, the maximum number of sectors that can be read and written per interrupt, the internal buffer size of the hard drive, the cylinder number, head number, sector number of the start and end addresses of each partition, the controller type, and the transmission mode.
System Setup Menu - has the following three sub-menus
CMOS setup and configration - CMOS hard drive parameter configuration
Replace BIOS Parameters - replace the hard drive parameters in BIOS
Use BIOS Parameters - use the hard drive parameters in BIOS
Machine Information - machine information
XBIOS Information - XBIOS information
Chipset information - disk controller chipset information
Image System Area to File - back up the hard drive system image (main partition table, partition boot record, FAT table, directory, etc.).
It is not difficult to see that the above are all things extremely useful for advanced users. But it does not appear on the main menu and cannot be called up on the command line.
Under the main menu, the hotkey Alt-T can call up the above advanced system options. Alt-T can also call up other useful advanced functions.
Of course, the fact that DM can run normally without being restricted by the original specific hard drive with the help of Partner may be the biggest Easter egg in the DM Universal Edition itself.

IV. User Rights and Obligations
User rights and obligations of the DM Universal Edition:
1. Without the author's authorization, please do not use this software for commercial purposes.
2. When you make backups of this software and carry out non-commercial dissemination, please keep the integrity of this software package.
3. If you have any insights in the process of using the DM Universal Edition, or Chinese excerpts or translations of the help document, please send it to me. I will add it to the version update to make it more convenient for everyone to use.

To obtain the detailed user manual, latest version, or other relevant information of this software, please visit:
Homepage: http://z80.yeah.net
You can also write to the following address:
Email: cycyc@126.com

This software needs your care and support. A short thank-you letter is the best encouragement for me. If you think the DM Universal Edition is easy to use, please write to me, so that while encouraging me, you can share your happiness with me.

May my efforts be beneficial to you.

Thank you for using the DM Universal Edition!



Cheng Yi, March 2002
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KO's words:
1. After reading the above instruction manual, you should know that when there is no support for Chinese systems such as CCDOS, the default is English.
2. Do not.
3. Do not know.
4. If you do not know (are not clear) about the usage of a certain DOS software, you can use commands like "software name /?" to get help.
5. Since I know the basic usage of DM myself, I did not use "DM /??" to view its detailed help. After reading it, I found that there are still many things I do not know. I have learned some knowledge again. Hehe...

Thanks