MS DOS and disk drives

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Fri Mar 14 13:57:00 2003

> This is pretty typical of MS-DOS; it has a 504Mb limit. There are a number

The 504M limit is BIOS, NOT MS-DOS.

But MS-DOS before version 3.31 had a 32M limit.
But the 32M limit did not apply to the network redirector. Therefore, to
handle CD-ROMs (3.10 and above), MICROS~1 provided MSCDEX.EXE, which made
the CD-ROM look like a network drive. Try a CHKDSK of a CD-ROM on MS-DOS
3.10 through 6.22 - it will say: "Cannot CHDSK a network drive"


> (Worst episode of this fault I rememeber was using a caching IDE controller
> [expansion board with own memory] which reported a 1Gb disc, but wrapped
> around at 504Mb - overwriting the boot sectors and root directory as we
> wrote the 505th Mb...)

As easy as bashing MICROS~1 is, we can't blame the OS for BIOS or hardware
faults.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred        cisin_at_xenosoft.com
Received on Fri Mar 14 2003 - 13:57:00 GMT

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