🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi, folks.  I have a problem that I'm hoping someone can help me
solve.  Basically, I've corrupted my boot record and put in a program that
I don't want there anymore.  (Specifically, I installed Linux's shoelace a
while back, which overwrote the record before I got around to saving it.)
I've tried copying one from other sources, like other people's hard drives,
but they don't seem to work on my system.
        I've tried running disk recovery programs on it, but they don't
detect that it's not a good boot record, so they don't bother fixing it.
I've even tried writing junk to the boot record, like a string of 0's, a
string of 255's, and a string of random numbers (like binary data files).
Each of these attempts is still considered valid boot records, so nothing
bothers to change it.  I've also tried re-fdisk'ing the drive, reformating,
re-sys'ing, etc. but nothing seems to help.
        I'd appreciate it if someone can tell me exactly what numbers go in
the first 446 bytes so I can put them there myself.  I'm not familiar with
the low-level contents of the record, but I can put values there.  I have a
200 meg Conner IDE drive running on a 33MHz 386 (AMI BIOS), if any of this
is important.
        I don't get to read Usenet very often, so I'd appreciate it if you
could e-mail me any advice, info, or questions about the problem, because I
probably won't be able to read posts here for a while.  My address is
chris@tc.cornell.edu.
        Thanks a bunch!

                Chris Allen
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Chris Allen