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- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Hello!
First I would like to thank those who are behind this great forum and the visitors who are supporting it by their informative feed backs.
My question deals with the Phoenix's BIOS implementation.
Can the Phoenix BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Spec be used to write a program that accesses the hard drive from a 16-bit DOS environment? This could be an already answered question, but when I tried to get the answer from Phoenix I found that the spec edditor's phone number is no more in service. The same for his e-mail address.
Here is more in-depth explanation:
The Disk Access Packet is a 16 bytes size data structure for the Int 13h Extensions. Along with other variables, it contains 2 different data types. One is a DOUBLE WORD that holds a 32-bit address of the transfer buffer which will be used by the Read/Write operations to transfer the data from HDD to Memory and vice versa. The other one is a QUAD WORD which is a 64-bit linear address that hold the LBA address.
I am not good at addresses and pointers. However, knowing the above information, can someone explain why would this data structure works fine when the program runs in Window MS-DOS and will malfunction when it runs from a booted 16-bit DOS environment. Also knowing that I have developed this program using a 16-bit Microsoft/IBM compiler in a 16-bit DOS environmetn.
Also note that I have previously used the CHS method for disk access, which works on small non-LBA drives ( < 8.4 GB ). But now I am using the Phoenix method in order to facilitate the access of large NAS devices in the range of terra bytes.
First I would like to thank those who are behind this great forum and the visitors who are supporting it by their informative feed backs.
My question deals with the Phoenix's BIOS implementation.
Can the Phoenix BIOS Enhanced Disk Drive Spec be used to write a program that accesses the hard drive from a 16-bit DOS environment? This could be an already answered question, but when I tried to get the answer from Phoenix I found that the spec edditor's phone number is no more in service. The same for his e-mail address.
Here is more in-depth explanation:
The Disk Access Packet is a 16 bytes size data structure for the Int 13h Extensions. Along with other variables, it contains 2 different data types. One is a DOUBLE WORD that holds a 32-bit address of the transfer buffer which will be used by the Read/Write operations to transfer the data from HDD to Memory and vice versa. The other one is a QUAD WORD which is a 64-bit linear address that hold the LBA address.
I am not good at addresses and pointers. However, knowing the above information, can someone explain why would this data structure works fine when the program runs in Window MS-DOS and will malfunction when it runs from a booted 16-bit DOS environment. Also knowing that I have developed this program using a 16-bit Microsoft/IBM compiler in a 16-bit DOS environmetn.
Also note that I have previously used the CHS method for disk access, which works on small non-LBA drives ( < 8.4 GB ). But now I am using the Phoenix method in order to facilitate the access of large NAS devices in the range of terra bytes.