    AST RESEARCH, INC.         TECHNICAL BULLETIN #0818                  02-23-93

                     POWER EXEC 386/486 NOT FORMATTING A FLOPPY

    PROBLEM:       When the unit is powered on via the AC adapter and booted to
                   DOS after the quick post, the system will not format a floppy
                   diskette that has not been previously unformatted.

                   The error " bad track 0 Disk unusable -format terminated "
                   will appear when the format command is the first command
                   entered after the boot process.  If any other command is used
                   or if another application is started the error does not
                   manifest itself.

    CAUSE:         When quick post bypasses some of the testing it bypasses some
                   of the initialization code as well.

    AFFECTED
    SYSTEMS:       Power Exec 386/486SL.

    SOLUTION:      Engineering has determined this to be a BIOS issue and has
                   been addressed in the BIOS release 2.01.  This version is on
                   the BBS under the file name PEBIOS4.ZIP in the systems area.