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From: jmonroy@netcom.com (Jesus Monroy Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: [REPOST] FDC DRIVER
Message-ID: <1993Mar5.111401.1711@netcom.com>
Date: 5 Mar 93 11:14:01 GMT
References: <1993Feb25.094348.23685@marie.uucp>
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Lines: 37
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>> + In article <1993Feb25.094348.23685@marie.uucp> perryh@marie.uucp (Perry Hutchison) writes:
>> + > Of course, some controller manufacturers have since done the obvious,
>> + > and provided support for two hard drives plus all four floppy drives on
>> + > a single card.
>>
>> + Have any done the obvious and provided support for 4 hard drives on an MFM
>> + controller, and 7 on an ESDI controller? I'd take that over extra floppies,
>> + myself.
>>
>> 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. (Some BIOS, and some DOS
>> versions, will support 4 floppies since the original IBM PC and XT did.)
>>
For a minor point I will interject. MS-DOS can support more
that 2 Hard Drives it just depends on which MS-DOS you get.
The IBM version will support more than two drives, but
again as a kludge... namely SCSI.
Most HD and HD controller manufactures know and do patch
their equipment in via an on board "BIOS".
IDE drives are famous for sector translation, as well as
some SCSI controllers... which goes back to another
MS-DOS problem... NO more than 1024 cylinders to a drive.
The circle of problems, patches and work-arounds is
vicious.
Bottom line MS-DOS and IBM systems can have more than
2 hard drives... but it will cost you $$$.
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Jesus Monroy Jr jmonroy@netcom.com
/386BSD/device-drivers /fd /qic /clock /documentation
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