devolder@festus.ksu.ksu.edu (Eric DeVolder) (05/08/91)
Okay, all you IBM PC techno gurus, here is a question for you. What I have in mind is this: Is it possible to create your own device driver, for DOS or some other OS, that does not use the BIOS but rather communicates directly with the drive controller and make the drive believe that it is a 1.44M disk? I have noticed, as I am sure hundreds of other people have, that alot of the problems of trying to add a higher density drive to a PC is that the BIOS does not support it. So, why not bypass BIOS and create your own subroutine(s) to handle the disk drive. Outside of the check for the 1.44M hole on the actual disk, I don't really see any problems in doing this. If this is possible or it has already been done, I would welcome any pointers as to where to this driver or source to a driver would reside. Thanks, Eric DeVolder
enzerinkp@topaz.ucq.edu.au (Hello, hello. What's going on here then?) (05/10/91)
In article <1991May7.185223.27362@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>, devolder@festus.ksu.ksu.edu (Eric DeVolder) writes: > Okay, all you IBM PC techno gurus, here is a question for you. What I have > in mind is this: Is it possible to create your own device driver, for DOS > or some other OS, that does not use the BIOS but rather communicates directly > with the drive controller and make the drive believe that it is a 1.44M disk? I assume you are then going to use 1.44mb disks rather than opting for the dangerous practice of punching a hole in a 720k disk. I suppose it depends on the drive itself. One of the differences between high and low density drives is the accuracy with which the mechanism operates. If you are making a low density drive you obviously do not need as much precision in your movement and writing as with a high density. The answer then comes down to the quality of the drive. As an aside a device driver which allows larger than normal capacity on a variety of disks is a bios modifier called FDREAD. Its overhead is about 128 bytes and it can give you some whopping increases in capacity. Most larger capacities are of course only readable when using the driver. Still... -- "Hello, Hello. What's going on here then?" ^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v Peter Enzerink 3rd year Student, Bachelor Applied Science (Computing) University of Central Queensland Internet: ENZERINKP@TOPAZ.UCQ.EDU.AU Rockhampton 4702 or ENZERINP@JASPER.UCQ.EDU.AU Australia