Help needed on virtual drive
Quote:
>:
>: I am trying to write a program to create a virtual drive in DOS. I have a
>: new Pentium with no floppy drive and feel its a shame to let 80 floppies
>: go to waste. I have an old 386 which I can connect via a parallel cable,
>: which has the floppy drive on it.
... (snipped)
>: Is there a more elegent way of doing it? If I revector interrupts, must I do
>: them all?
>No, I think if you just revector int 13h you will find that ALL the other
>interrupts eventually call it. Well, at least when the device is known
>to be IDE or FLOPPY. In your case you want to revector to change the
>DRIVE A: device so it should be enough just to fix the int 13h interface...
Only problem is, DOS establishes which floppies exist at boot. Your best bet
seems to be to trick the BIOS *before* boot (ie, in your BIOS setup, specify
that a floppy *is* attached; make sure it doesn't try to boot from it though).
DOS will then believe there is a floppy drive and will use int 13h to access it
- so you will only need to revector this interrupt!
I've never tried this however. If BIOS (or DOS) tried to access the floppy
before your TSR was installed, there could be problems (an error message and
possible halting of the boot process).
As a complete alternative, just write a device driver to create an entirely new
drive, and then use SUBST (or an equivalent) to make A: reference the new drive.
Dav.
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DavMac - Sharking!!
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