swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold) (05/26/88)
What are the differences between PC-DOS and MS-DOS? I always thought they were the same except for device drivers and other machine dependent considerations. Recently, there have been postings alluding to the fact that the diskette sector/track formats are different. What's the scoop? --------------------- Steve Harrold ...hplabs!hpsmtc1!swh HPG200/13 (408) 447-5580 ---------------------
chasm@killer.UUCP (Charles Marslett) (06/01/88)
In article <11470033@hpsmtc1.HP.COM>, swh@hpsmtc1.HP.COM (Steve Harrold) writes: > What are the differences between PC-DOS and MS-DOS? > > I always thought they were the same except for device drivers and other > machine dependent considerations. Recently, there have been postings > alluding to the fact that the diskette sector/track formats are different. > Steve Harrold ...hplabs!hpsmtc1!swh > HPG200/13 > (408) 447-5580 Actually, the disk format (sectors per track and how the -magic- sectors are iterpreted are very much disk driver dependent. Most vendors try to copy the general layout and iterpretation of the IBM disk I/O down to the detail of calling the same BIOS functions in the same order to make HD controllers that really are not MFM/Western Digital compatible but pretend to be more likly to work. Compaq even calls the two parts of MSDOS IBMBIO and IBMDOS like IBM does, just in case! Charles Marslett chasm@killer.UUCP