Re: Kernel newbie finds "infelicity", if not bug, in IDE[-PROBE]. C ?

Mark Lord (mlord@pobox.com)
Tue, 20 Apr 1999 16:16:18 -0400


BROWN Nick wrote:
>
> >That "probe_cmos_for_drives()" fragment is one of the few
> >surviving bits from Linus's original hd.c driver.
> >
> >Nowadays (in 2.3.xx) we could/should just trash it.
>
> Well, either that, or fix the code in setup.S which initialises it by
> copying the BIOS drive parameter tables that are lying around in the INT
> 41h/46h pseudo-vectors, which is what seems to be causing the problem in
> this case; it's the kind of thing that could easily get forgotten by a BIOS
> maker. I can see two ways:
>
> - call INT 13h AH=8 and use the resulting ES:DI pointer as the FDP table.
> - call INT 13h AH=8 and fill in head, cylinders, sectors, and the control
> byte (just the "head > 8" flag) by hand.
...

It gets considerably more complicated that just that.

I believe Andries Brouwer (the fdisk guy) is working
on a more comprehensive solution.

-- 
mlord@pobox.com

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