High Capacity Drive Support; Disk Device Support - Adaptec AHA-1540C User Manual

AHA-1540C/1542C User's Manual
tasks from the host CPU so that the CPU bandwidth can be dedi-
cated to other system functions.
High Capacity Drive Support
The AHA-1540C/1542C supports both fixed and removable media
devices with capacities above 1 Gigabyte (GByte). DOS drives
with capacities to 8 GBytes are supported by the Extended BIOS
Translation feature, which is accessible through the Configura-
tion Software when you start your system.
Operating systems such as Novell® NetWare®, OS/2® and
UNIX® support greater than 1024 cylinders and support drives of
far greater capacity, without requiring the Extended BIOS Trans-
lation feature.
.. All of the Configuration Software options are explained in
Chapter Four, Using the Configuration Software.
Disk Device Support
1-4
The DOS operating system and the AT BIOS support two fixed
disk drives, drive C and drive D. (DOS 5.0 and above supports up
to eight drives, seven per host adapter.)
@
If two non-SCSI fixed disk drives are installed, they
are the first two fixed disk drives accessible from the oper-
ating system.
• If one non-SCSI fixed disk drive is installed, the AHA-
1540C/1542C BIOS allows DOS to access the SCSI drives
as drive D and E, etc.
• If only SCSI fixed disk drives are installed, AHA-
1540C/1542C BIOS allows DOS to access the first SCSI
drive as drive C, the next as drive D, etc.
The most common non-SCSI drives are IDE and ESDI type
drives. Throughout this manual, references to IDE drives also
apply to ESDI drives.