Hello,
I'd like to raise the issue of the boot drive value in the boot sector. Now our SYS stores 0 if the drive is A: or B: and FF in all other cases. Then the boot sectors check if this value is FF and if so, use DL from BIOS, else use the drive number from the boot sector. While this smart boot sector code behaviour overcomes wrong values in DL stored by some "brain-dead" BIOSes if the boot drive is A: (but not if it's C:), the FF value written to by SYS causes a compatibility problem. What happens if someone decides to overwrite our boot sector later with a boot sector from another DOS? The FF will remain there (I checked that with PC-DOS) and the new boot sector will try to boot off drive FF, which will fail. Being too smart sometimes hurts (if everyone else is dumb ;-)
So, I propose that SYS stores 0 if the drive is A: or B:, 80 if the drive is C: or D:, and FF in all other cases, and that we add a special boot drive option that can be used by advanced users to store whatever value they like. We could also just leave that value unchanged from the old boot sector as most other SYSes doo, thus placing the responcibility on FORMAT ;-) Please express your opinions on this issue. Changing the SYS behaviour is easy, but taking the right decision isn't.
Thanks, Lucho
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