CP/M BIOS setup

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Sat Oct 7 15:30:14 2000

"Fred Cisin (XenoSoft)" <cisin_at_xenosoft.com> wrote:
> Earlier in this thread, Richard proposed gathering ALL the information
> form a bootable diskette by examining the BDOS. Unfortunately, that is
> not quite feasable, since too much is done in the BIOS.

I think you're still not quite getting what Richard is really suggesting.

He's not proposing to figure out the parameters by looking at tables in
the BDOS. As you correctly point out, that stuff is in the BIOS.

Richard's point is that on a bootable disk, some set of sectors contain
the BDOS code, which has known contents (for any specific DRI CP/M release).
The point is that some of the disk parameters can be worked out by matching
what sectors on the media contain what pieces of the BDOS code.

It may not tell you everything about the disk format, and it obviously
only works on bootable diskettes, but I think it is a good start.

Eric
Received on Sat Oct 07 2000 - 15:30:14 BST