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Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!convex!convex!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!chnews!imutm1.de.intel.com!gold.sub.org!jonas.gold.sub.org!rommel From: rommel@jonas.gold.sub.org (Kai Uwe Rommel) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development Subject: Re: [REPOST] FDC DRIVER Distribution: world Message-ID: <731520543rommel.root@jonas.gold.sub.org> Sender: root@jonas.gold.sub.org Date: Sun, 07 Mar 93 17:09:03 MET References: <1993Mar4.103308.24945@marie.uucp> <C3E4nx.60o@sugar.neosoft.com> <1993Mar5.215340.21721@gandalf.ca> Organization: Private Keywords: FDC floppy device driver Lines: 36 In article <1993Mar5.215340.21721@gandalf.ca> dperks@gandalf.ca (Dave Perks) writes: >In <C3E4nx.60o@sugar.neosoft.com> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes: > >>In article <1993Mar4.103308.24945@marie.uucp> perryh@marie.uucp (Perry Hutchison) writes: >>> Not to my knowledge, one factor being that most machines' ROM BIOS will >>> only support two hard drives (that being the maximum number ever blessed >>> by Big Blue); and even if a particular BIOS would take more than two I >>> don't know that stock DOS would cooperate. > >>That wouldn't stop UNIX or PICK or Netware from taking advantage of them. > >OS/2 2.1 beta looks for two hard drive controllers, and reads the geometry >from the drives if they are IDEs. It might also get info from the partition >tables. I haven't verified this. > >I think it also notices two floppy controllers -- I plan to test this since >it would be nice using both floppy drives simultaneously. Regardless of how many disk/floppy controllers it notices, it can handle more by having more .ADD base device drivers installed. For example, the AHA154X and AHA174X as well as the IBM1FLPY and IBM1S506 base device drivers can be given parameters to select alternate ports, IRQ's and DMA's for additional controllers. The 174X BIOS, for example, can provide BIOS support for more than two disks, if I understood the docs correctly. Kai Uwe Rommel -- /* Kai Uwe Rommel Muenchen, Germany * * rommel@jonas.gold.sub.org Phone +49 89 723 4101 * * rommel@informatik.tu-muenchen.de Fax +49 89 324 4524 */ DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt handler, and always will be. -Russell Williams