Telling (MS)DOS about a second floppy drive...

[Jules Richardson]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 3/10/06, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Can't remember if there's a way of doing this or not!
>>
>> I've acquired a nice compact HP PC which I had plans to use as a data recovery
>> box - except that I've just discovered that the braindead BIOS only supports
>> one floppy disk drive; I need a 3.5" HD drive as the first disk and a 5.25" HD
>> drive as the second...
>>
>> Assuming that the FDC will work with two (I've never heard of an FDC that
>> won't?), is there a way of telling MSDOS about the second drive even when the
>> BIOS refuses to acknowledge its presence?
>>
>> If not, the whole machine's off to the tip... stoopid PCs, grrr! (actually,
>> I'll freecycle it, which is where I got it from, but the thought of it being
>> crushed makes me feel better right now)
> 
> DRIVER.SYS, isn't it?
> 
> device=c:\dos\driver.sys (parms)

Hmmm, I forgot that DOS 5 or 6 or whatever it is that I was running came with 
help - looks like driveparm *should* do it, except that it's not clear how the 
device numbering works...

Instead of using drive letters, it uses drive numbers - so according to the 
docs 0 would be A:, but 1 could either be B: if a second drive was found, or 
C: if it wasn't.

Got horribly confused at that point, decided that I didn't want a messed-up 
hard disk if the B: drive wasn't seen, and kicked the machine. :-)

I've gone back to a previous system now which has a sensible BIOS (and 
on-board SCSI and audio, which may be handy for other data recovery stuff 
anyway). Shame the case is huge, but at least there's room for four 5.25" 
devices, and I could probably shoehorn an 8" drive on it's side in there too 
if needs be with a bit of hacksaw work!

> Not that I've tried this in some 15y or so...

No, nor me - last time was on an XT somewhere around 1990 I think...

cheers

J.