Jack, >> There is not much to "do" there, as you only tell the disk once >> and then the disk itself does the rest. > > "Amen!", so let the user handle this thru the BIOS setup routines > and let the BIOS "tell the disk" what to do during system "boot"! > BIOS vendors have many more programmers than just "me by myself"!
I have not yet seen a desktop BIOS which implements this, alas. I do have an adware DOS tool for it, showing a splash screen for a BBS or similar when you run it and of course bigger than needed, but free. > Actually, UIDE has NOT changed any disk-configuration settings by > the BIOS since late 2005, when I "got into TROUBLE" doing so with > some BIOS programs! UIDE now only "reads" I-O and DMA addresses Interesting, but which trouble did which setting cause? > Any hard-disk function but 2/3/42/43 (reads and writes) is "passed" > to the BIOS, so function 0 would not be so timed-out by UIDE. Nor > would UIDE ever declare a "timeout" Why not? There is an error code (0x80) defined for that in int 0x13. > If DOS does 5 retries, as you indicate, this would cost the user a > maximum of 35 seconds (my 7 seconds * 5 tries) and thus is NOT any > sort of an indefinite "hang"! What I meant is that when the disk is in a state where only a reset can make it continue, the driver will wait 7 seconds. If it is in a state where nothing will make it continue (e.g. un-hotplugged it?), DOS will take 35 seconds until it displays an error message. In the 7 second case, the user will in the worst case see a delay of 7 sec plus the time needed to spin up, but more likely only the always- present delay caused by the time needed to spin up. > That was only my "Thought while eating breakfast!" this morning, > but I shall "test it out", later today! Have a nice afternoon then :-) Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Achieve unprecedented app performance and reliability What every C/C++ and Fortran developer should know. Learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help boost performance applications - inlcuding clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
