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Low level disk access and device physical information.

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andradrr

Programmer
Dec 20, 2009
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Hi people.

Please, does anybody has the knowledge to obtain a disk drive serial number? I do not mean the "Volume Disk Number" that changes everytime you format it, but the embeeded physical serial number/ID of the device.

I've read the INT 13 (also the EDD specification) and INT 21 functions reference and I could not found anything about it. These interruption services only gives you the disk geometry (at least it is what I understood about it).

To be more precise with my problem, I need a way to read a Compact Flash CIS (Card Information Structure) area. This compact flash is attached to the computer through an IDE-CF passive adaptor. By passive I mean that there if no interface components between the CF and the motherboad IDE connector. The IDE-CF adaptor that I use only direct wires the CF to the IDE port. To be honest it only have 2 resistors and 1 ceramic capacitor.

The only problem (or not I hope) is that I need a way to read this information under DOS. Real Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22, not Windows 95/98/ME DOS. So, any BIOS/DOS interruption and ATA commands can be used.

I'm 'Googling' for weeks and I simply can't find this info. No one else appears to use DOS anymore and the fews that still have this info in their head, probably work for hardware companies and not provide this kind of information I guess...

I know that it can be done because the CIS area is where Product ID, Model, vendor ID, etc. are stored. Linux applications like "hdparam" and "pccardc dumpcis" do that job. I'm also not sure if these functions gives you the CIS information as fields, but it reads the CIS area for sure. Also when you plug a CF card on the computer (using the IDE-CF adaptor) and boots up windows, a baloon will pop up near the system time clock warning that windows identified a new hardware. The card model, description and vendor information that appears in the baloon was extracted from the card CIS area.

What I will do with that information?

I'm trying to find a way to develop a copy protection mechanism for an application that is distributed on a CF card, and the only way I found to do this is with the CF card serial number. Even if you make a raw byte-to-byte copy of the card that serial number (or any other unique information) will not match uppon the application copy protection verification.

If you you also have any other idea, please, tell me. Really!

If you don't know how it can be done, but knows any company can can do that, this information would be also very, very usefull. I'm not hiring anybody from here, please. I just want to know if anybody knows where I can get that info. If I will pay for it or not, it is beyond the scope of that conversation. The fact is that I'm really desperated.

Thank you very, very much in advance for any help and/or idea.

Cheers,

Rodrigo.
 
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