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Appendices
APPENDIX VI
ADAPTEC AUTO-CONFIGURATION
Auto-configuration for non-listed drive types.
In DOS 3.X, Interrupts 60-67 are available for use as vectors to user programs.
Adaptec 23XX controllers use the memory space occupied by Int fJJ-67 as a data
area, instead of for vector pointers. We store the drive parameters there, in a
table. Sixteen bytes (Int 60-63) are for drive 1, and 16 bytes (Int 64-67) are for
drive 2. These tables contain the true cylinder, head and sector count for each
drive. This feature allows the user to install hard drives that do not match the
standard list of drive types in the AT BIOS.
Occasionally, products such as expanded memory or disk caching, will want to
use Interrupts 60-67 as vectors to their code. This will conflict with our use of
these locations, because our drive table will be overwritten by their pointers.
For this special case, we have included an auto-configuration driver in your
controller BIOS. This driver can be downloaded from your controller and put into
a CONFIG.SYS file on your hard drive. At system boot, DOS will execute the
device driver. With the driver installed, we do not use Int 60-67
to
store the drive
parameter table. Instead, the standard hard drive interrupts 41 and 46 are
used
as
vectors to point to our drive table, which is now in a protected memory location
reserved by DOS.
When to use the auto-configuration driver.
If
you have created volumes using Adaptec's partitioning, and put the
partitioning driver into a CONFIG.SYS file, then you do not need the
autoconfiguration driver. (It is included in the partitioning driver.)
If
you did not use Adapte'c partitioning driver, you may want to copy the auto-
configuration driver into a CONFIG.SYS file on your boot disk. This will
ensure that no software will conflict with your hard disk table. However,
if
you
have no software that uses Int 60-67, you can run without a device driver
installed.
The following have been reported to need Int fJJ-67 locations:
Superpck Cache
Desqview
IBM Displaywrite 3
adaptec
Triangle CICS/PC Emulator
Columbia Kermit
Wang Terminal-Emulator cards
A-10
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