Adaptec ACB-232XB User Manual page 23

ACB-232XB User's Manual
Disable translation on drive 1 or 2? : 1
Disable translation on drive (1) now? (Y/N) : Y
Choice 4: Auto-Configuration driver.
Autoconfiguration 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 60-67 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 PC 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 autoconfiguration 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 autoconfiguration 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 60-67 locations:
Superpck Cache
Triangle CICS/PC Emulator
Desqview
Columbia Kermit
IBM Displaywrite 3
Wang Terminal-Emulator cards
How to use the autoconfiguration driver.
The autoconfiguration driver is accessible by using the DEBUG program
from your hard drive or your DOS floppy.
At the prompt enter:
A:\>DEBUG <CR>
-G=C800:5 <CR>
The Adaptec Disk Preparation Menu will come up on the screen.
Choose option 3, "for special options menu".
Then choose 4, to generate Adaptec auto-configuration device driver.
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