simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Simpson David) (01/08/91)
I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and
a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add
a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk
become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy
drive become D:?
Thanks for any help.
David Simpsonhollen@megatek (Dion Hollenbeck) (01/09/91)
In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Simpson David) writes: > > I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and > a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add > a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk > become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy > drive become D:? > 1) you must have a controller which will handle 4 drives. This will have places for TWO cables, one for A/B and one for X/Y. 2) the controller should have an installable device driver which will recognize the extra drives. What they will be named will be dependent on how your hard disk is set up. If you use partitioning such as SpeedStore or OnTrak Disk Manager and therefore have a device driver for the hard disk, then if you load the driver for the floppies AFTER the hard disk, they will become the next drives after the last hard disk partition. If however, you load the hard disk driver AFTER the floppy driver, you will get the following: A/B first two floppies C first hard disk partition (recognized by BIOS) D/E second floppies F...X rest of the hard disk partitions In general, drive letters are assigned in the order that the devices init functions are executed by the BIOS for internal floppy, internal hard disk, searching for ROM code between A000:0 and F000;0 and executing each it finds, and finally by DOS's init code executing in turn the init code for installable found in CONFIG.SYS in order that they appear. -- Dion Hollenbeck (619) 455-5590 x2814 Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121 uunet!megatek!hollen or hollen@megatek.uucp
kls30@duts.ccc.amdahl.com (Kent L Shephard) (01/09/91)
In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen (Simpson David) writes: > >I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and >a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add >a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk >become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy >drive become D:? Hard disks are automatically labled after the floppies present. So if you have 3 floppies (like me) you hard disks will start as D: > >Thanks for any help. > David Simpson -- /* -The opinions expressed are my own, not my employers. */ /* For I can only express my own opinions. */ /* */ /* Kent L. Shephard : email - kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com */
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (01/09/91)
In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen (Simpson David) writes: > >I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and >a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add >a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk >become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy >drive become D:? > I don't know about the CD-ROM, unless it looks like a floppy, but a floppy drive will become (if recognized by BIOS), drive C: and the hard disk wil become D:. Note that many system BIOS'es won't recognize the additional drives. I suggest getting the JDR auxilliary floppy controller. It has BIOS on it that will install the floppies into the drive table. Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254
cd5340@mars.njit.edu (Charlap David) (01/09/91)
In article <HOLLEN.91Jan8093830@fridge.megatek> hollen@megatek (Dion Hollenbeck) writes: >In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Simpson David) writes: >> >> What would happen if I were to add >> a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk >> become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy >> drive become D:? >> >1) you must have a controller which will handle 4 drives. True. I have one. It's a no-name brand I got at a show. I know that DTK makes one which is also pretty good. >2) the controller should have an installable device driver which will > recognize the extra drives. What they will be named will > be dependent on how your hard disk is set up. Not always. Some controllers (like mine) have their own BIOS chips with the driver software on-board. These need no installable drivers. My third floppy is drive C:. My hard drive is E:. (D: is unused - the card reserves space for 4 floppies even if you only use one or two.) --- Dave
r3hjl@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU (Howard J. Lymor) (01/09/91)
In article <68yq028t04=X01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes: >In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen (Simpson David) writes: >> >>I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and >>a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add >>a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk >>become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy >>drive become D:? > >Hard disks are automatically labled after the floppies present. So if >you have 3 floppies (like me) you hard disks will start as D: >> >>Thanks for any help. >> David Simpson >/* Kent L. Shephard : email - kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com */ I'm not so sure about that. It's been our experience that the hard disk drive designator is done by the Fdisk (or some other suitable partioning, initializing program). After that, ANY drive, floppy, hard, CD that is added, is given the next available letter by the (help me out here for you rom and bios folks) bios(?, maybe DOS, but I doubt it). Anyway, that has been our experience with older pc's, xt's and 2 AT's. Good luck, hope this helps, Howard ------------------------------------------------------------------- | Howard J. Lymor | r3hjl@vax1.cc.uakron.edu | | My opinions are my | Or you can try me through good ole AT&T | | own, and even I | | | disown them! | (216) 434 - 9157 (after 10PM EST) | -------------------------------------------------------------------
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (01/10/91)
In article <932@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU> r3hjl@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU (Howard J. Lymor) writes: >In article <68yq028t04=X01@JUTS.ccc.amdahl.com> kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes: >>In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen (Simpson David) writes: >> >>Hard disks are automatically labled after the floppies present. So if >>you have 3 floppies (like me) you hard disks will start as D: >>> >>>Thanks for any help. >>> David Simpson >>/* Kent L. Shephard : email - kls30@DUTS.ccc.amdahl.com */ > >I'm not so sure about that. It's been our experience that >the hard disk drive designator is done by the Fdisk (or some >other suitable partioning, initializing program). After that, >ANY drive, floppy, hard, CD that is added, is given the next >available letter by the (help me out here for you rom and bios >folks) bios(?, maybe DOS, but I doubt it). Anyway, that has >been our experience with older pc's, xt's and 2 AT's. > No, fdisk does not place any letter designation on the drive. It just makes the correct FAT entries. The onboard BIOS will find the first two drives (if connected). Some (but not all, this causes a problem) will also find the second two. As drives are encountered, they are placed in a drive table, incrementing the letter. Hard disks are also put in the drive table. If your onboard BIOS doesn't recognize the second floppy disks, it won't make it in the drive table. If it doesn't, at least on my system, I can't even use DRIVER.SYS, it just can't find the drive. What you need in this case is a controller card with BIOS on board that installs the drive into the BIOS drive table. When DOS boots, it looks through the drive table and assigns letters appropriately. This means that floppies would be A:, B:, C: and hard disks would start at D:. (three floppies). If four floppies are present then the hard disk starts at E:. Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254
flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) (01/11/91)
This isn't directly related to the "third floppy" question, but it may be informative to people. (In any case, it is a gripe of mine, and I haven't flamed anything this year yet, so I'm due.) The way drive letters are assigned in DOS is ridiculous. If you have one hard disk with partitions C, D, and E on it, then add a second hard disk with 2 partitions on it, the partitions on the second disk become D and F, and the existing ones on the first disk become C, E, G: it alternates disks! (A sensible move would be to make the 2 added ones be F and G, right?) Boy would I love to get my hands on whoever figured out that brain-damaged system: you end up totally messed up trying to remember what was where. You're even worse off it the original setup had a directory in the path of .bat files to invoke stuff on all the other disks (to keep the length of the PATH short) since you end up editing all those files. And then there's the clever software packages which you installed in directory d:\package (that are now in e:\package) which notice they aren't in the same directory they were installed in, so they assume they've been illegally copied and stop working. Also, there are packages which contain a .bat file to start themselves up, and within the .bat file they invoke another executable in the same directory by the executable's full path name, including drive letter. Oh, and don't forget to edit your autoexec.bat, to fix half the env vars in it that are now wrong, like your TMP vars that point to the ram disk, your PATH, SOUND, UUCP vars, etc. The way drive letters are assigned is also bad under VPIX. Assume you have DOS on your hard drive as a bootable C: partition, and add a UNIX system in the next partition. Now set up VPIX, and it creates a file within the UNIX file system to be C:, and lets you use the DOS partition on the hard disk as D:. If you want to use the system sometimes as a DOS machine and sometimes under VPIX, you have to really mess around because sometimes the software will be on C: and other times on D: and you have the added confusion of trying to remember if you booted under DOS or under UNIX that day. If anyone who works on the CMOS setup or fdisk is listening who wants to do us all a big favor, make it so that we can specify what drive letter to assign to each partition when we partition the disk. As for VPIX, it ought to let you specify what partition it will boot from, so that when it boots the UNIX file it now calls C: would be F: and it would boot from F:, then have C: be the bootable DOS partition just as if you had booted the machine under DOS. Make it so that we can specify that we want our ram disk to always be t: (even if there are drive letters unused between c and t). If I add a 3rd floppy, I'd like to be able to tell the system what drive letter to assign to that floppy, not have the system tell me. (For those UNIX people out there, consider how messed up you would be if / and /usr were exchanged. That's about what having drive letters swap around like musical chairs does to you.) -- Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc. 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165 uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com
flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) (01/12/91)
jwbirdsa@amc-gw.amc.com (James Birdsall) writes: >>If you have one hard disk >>with partitions C, D, and E on it, then add a second hard disk with 2 >>partitions on it, the partitions on the second disk become D and F, >>and the existing ones on the first disk become C, E, G: it alternates >>disks! > What version of DOS are you using? I have exactly this setup (first >drive has 3 partitions and second has 2) and this does NOT happen. The >first drive has letters C, E, and F; the second drive is D and G. This is >with PC-DOS 3.3. You're right: (I remembered/wrote it slightly wrong) it goes to the 2nd disk for D then stays with the first disk. The effect is the same tho, every drive except c: gets relettered. > The letters are assigned at boot time as software drivers are loaded >(yes, even normal drives have device drivers which appear in the device >driver table). Messing with the CMOS or fdisk isn't going to help. Changing >the boot sequence would, but that's not easy to do for anybody but >Microsoft and they aren't... >-- >James W. Birdsall WORK: jwbirdsa@amc.com {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!jwbirdsa >HOME: {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!picarefy!jwbirdsa OTHER: 71261.1731@compuserve.com >========== "Think of an animal that's small and fuzzy." "Mold." -- RM ========= >=========== "For it is the doom of men that they forget." -- Merlin =========== The solution probably isn't to muck around with the boot sequence, but to create a simple aliasing system. For example, a table on the boot disk with one line for each disk with a "logical=physical" setup would let you fix all your problems by editing that one file, which might look like this, if semi-colons begin comments: ; 2 floppies, 2 partitions on 1st hard disk, 1 on 2nd hard disk, & ram disk: a=a ; 1st floppy on A: will still be referred to as A: always f=a ; Or you can also refer to the 1st floppy as F: ; Added 2 below when 2nd hard disk was added, so D: remained D: d=e ; 2nd partition on 1st hard disk referred to as D: e=d ; 1st partition on 2nd hard disk referred to as E: r=f ; RAM disk F: referred to as R: so floppy can use F: If you want an analogy, UNIX doesn't make you refer to files by their physical locations (/dev/dsk/1s3) but by names you select for the partitions (/usr) instead. DOS can do the same thing. -- Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc. 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165 uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com
gordo@pro-gateway.cts.com (Gordon Aikman) (01/12/91)
In-Reply-To: message from simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu WOW! I've never thought of that. I doubt that you can have more than A: and B: logical floppies. If you put a CD-ROM in make it D: and leave C: alone. Internet/ProLine: gordo@pro-gateway.cts.com +-----------+ UUCP: crash!pro-gateway!gordo |Pro-Gateway| ARPA: crash!pro-gateway!gordo@nosc.mil |214/6445113| +-Dallas,TX-+
plim@hpsgwp.sgp.hp.com (Peter Lim) (01/14/91)
/ flint@gistdev.gist.com (Flint Pellett) / 3:31 am Jan 12, 1991 / writes:
$ You're right: (I remembered/wrote it slightly wrong) it goes to the 2nd disk
$ for D then stays with the first disk. The effect is the same tho, every
$ drive except c: gets relettered.
$
Just an interesting observation. I noticed that the SUBST command can move
drives around quite well. Assuming I have 4 hard disk partitions, C:, D:,
E: and F:. I can do the sequence :
subst d: e:\
subst d: f:\
... now I can refer to drive E: as D: and drive F: as E:. The only problem
is that the original drive D: is "invisible" now. If only we can swap the
drive assignment instead of just replacing.
However, it seems to me that if SUBST is able to do replacement, a little
extension should be able to get it to do swapping. And somehow, I believe
somebody has already done this out there. Anyone want to own up ?
$ If you want an analogy, UNIX doesn't make you refer to files by their
$ physical locations (/dev/dsk/1s3) but by names you select for the
$ partitions (/usr) instead. DOS can do the same thing.
$
Well ....., UNIX uses the ONE ROOT directory model whereas MS-DOS uses the
multiple ROOTs (drives) model. So, it is not exactly the same. If you
prefer this (and assuming that JOIN works properly ---- somehow, I don't
quite trust this utility), try say join d: c:\usr (syntax ??). And join
every other drives to drive C: ... then you eliminate the drive letter
problems :-).
$ --
$ Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
$ 1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL 61874 (217) 352-1165
$ uunet!gistdev!flint or flint@gistdev.gist.com
$ ----------
$
Regards, . .. ... .- -> -->## Life is fast enough as it is ........
Peter Lim. ## .... DON'T PUSH IT !! >>>-------,
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