MO> PS (here's another plea for help) Have you a routine for getting the
  > BOOT sector or PARTITION table from a HD(s). I currently use a debug
  > script, created at run time shelled & piped to debug. It's a bit messy,
  > but it does work!

Well I tried writing the one below and it works fine for floppy disks
but, for some reason, when I try it with a hard disk all it returns is
garbage. I've checked it and checked it, using Norton Disk Editor and
Ralf Brown's interrupt list as references, but I can't see where it's
going wrong at all.

It's just possible that it might work for you because my computer has
DOS 7/Windows 95 installed and I've heard that it locks your computer
against direct disk access. However if this were the case then I'd
expect it to return an error in the carry flag instead of just sending
back garbage.

There's probably a stupid error someone in the code so, if anybody who's
reading this can spot it, do please let us know. I don't mind egg on my
face as long as we can get the flipping thing working!

--- cut here ---------------------------------------------------------------
' BOOTSEX.BAS   displays information from the boot sector and
'               partition table of the specified disk drive.
'
'   Author:     Christy Gemmell
'   For:        Martin Overton
'   Date:       30/6/1995
'
'   $INCLUDE: 'QB.BI'
'
    DECLARE SUB BootSex (Drive$, Done%)

    CONST FALSE = 0, TRUE = NOT FALSE

    DIM SHARED Regs AS RegTypeX
    DIM SHARED Sector AS STRING * 1024

    CLS : PRINT : Drive$ = "C:"         ' Read from drive C:
    BootSex Drive$, Done%               ' Read boot sector
    IF Done% THEN                       ' If successful...
       PRINT "Boot Sector for Drive "; Drive$
       PRINT "========================"
       PRINT "Media descriptor  = "; HEX$(ASC(MID$(Sector, 22, 8)))
       PRINT "OEM Identifier    = "; MID$(Sector, 4, 8)
       PRINT "Volume label      = "; MID$(Sector, 44, 11)
       PRINT "Serial number     = ";
       FOR I% = 43 TO 40 STEP -1
               PRINT RIGHT$("0" + HEX$(ASC(MID$(Sector, I%, 1))), 2);
               IF I% = 42 THEN PRINT "-";
       NEXT I%
       PRINT : PRINT "File system       = "; MID$(Sector, 55, 8)
       PRINT "-----------------------------------------------------------"
       PRINT : I% = 446: P% = 1
       DO
              PRINT "Partition"; P%;
              IF ASC(MID$(Sector, I%, 1)) = 128 THEN
                     PRINT TAB(21); "ACTIVE PARTITION";
              END IF
              OS% = ASC(MID$(Sector, I% + 4, 1))
              PRINT TAB(41);
              SELECT CASE OS%
                      CASE 0
                               PRINT "Empty"
                      CASE 1
                               PRINT "DOS 12-bit FAT"
                      CASE 4
                               PRINT "DOS 16-bit FAT (up to 32MB)"
                      CASE 5
                               PRINT "Extended partition"
                      CASE 6
                               PRINT "16-bit FAT (over 32MB)"
                      CASE 7
                               PRINT "OS/2 HPFS or Windows NTFS"
                      CASE ELSE
                               PRINT
              END SELECT
              I% = I% + 16: P% = P% + 1
       LOOP UNTIL P% > 4
       PRINT : I% = 511
       Sig& = ASC(MID$(Sector, I%, 1)) + (256& * ASC(MID$(Sector, I% + 1, 1)))
       IF Sig& = &HAA55 THEN
              PRINT "Valid boot block"
       END IF
    END IF
END

'   Read the boot sector of a specified drive into memory
'
SUB BootSex (Drive$, Done%)
    LSET Sector = STRING$(1024, 0)      ' Fill read buffer with zeroes
    Disk% = ASC(UCASE$(Drive$)) - 65    ' Get drive number
    IF Disk% > 1 THEN                   ' Adjust for
       Disk% = (Disk% + 128) - 2        '   hard disk
    END IF                              '     drives
    Head% = 0                           ' Read from head zero
    Regs.cx = &H1                       ' Get sector 1, track zero
    Regs.dx = (Head% * 256) + Disk%     '   from selected drive
    Regs.ax = &H201                     ' Read one full sector
    Regs.bx = VARPTR(Sector)            ' Offset of read buffer
    Regs.es = VARSEG(Sector)            ' Segment of read buffer
    INTERRUPTX &H13, Regs, Regs         ' Read sector into memory
    IF Regs.flags AND 1 THEN            ' Test carry flag for error
       Done% = FALSE                    ' If set report an error
(Continued to next message)

 * 1st 2.00o #323 * Man: the useless bit of skin on the end of a {*filter*}.