Silicon-Disk Interface; Configuration - Kontron MOPS/386A User Manual

Kontron

SILICON-DISK INTERFACE

14.
The MOPS/386A comes with a silicon disk, which works as bootable Flash hard disk and
which mounts on the board. The size of the disk on standard boards can either be 1.8MB or
3.8MB. You can request a disk size of 5.8MB, too, as a special board version. The customer
cannot extend the silicon disk size.
The silicon disk is controlled by a Kontron BIOS extension, which is basically software
interrupt INT13hex BIOS interface. You only can use this disk with DOS in real mode. There
is no support for operating systems that run in protected mode or real-time environment.
Use a Kontron chipDISK as an add-on module on the IDE interface if you require a Flash disk
for other operating systems. Set the silicon disk to disabled when not used.
However, if you use the silicon disk using DOS, it is totally transparent to the user and can
be accessed like any other hard disk in the system. When using the silicon disk under DOS
with Expanded Memory Managers (EMM), configure the EMM drivers with care. (See
Appendix A: Memory Map chapter for more details.)

Configuration

14.1
You can configure the silicon disk from the system's BIOS setup. You can set the disk to
disabled or configure it as Drive 80 up to Drive 83. Under DOS, Drive 80 corresponds to
drive-specifier C:, Drive 81 to drive-specifier D:, etc. If there is another hard disk in the
system connected to the IDE interface, it is automatically rerouted to the first free drive
specifier. Make sure that you can find the bootable drive as C:.
The silicon disk can be write-protected and erased on the next system boot, if required.
Please refer to the Flash Disk submenu in the Appendix B: BIOS Operation chapter for
additional information on configuration.
MOPS/386A User's Guide 27 Silicon-Disk Interface