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Dealying drivers during boot

NeXT

NeXT

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Oct 22, 2008
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Kamloops, BC, Canada
I'm making a floppy disk that I can pop into any laptop, boot from and then reinitialize PCMCIA hard drives in the event I hose the card down somehow.
To do so I need to first load (in order), socket services, card services and then the PCMCIA ATA driver so I can then access the card like a drive.
However, it seems like the ATA driver wants to load before the socket and card services, which causes it to fail and thus I can initialize and test the cards all day long but they won't appear in fdisk and I can't access or format them.

Is there any way I can delay the loading of the driver so that it loads after the card services are up and running?
 
Last edited:
BuMP
I know I should not really bump but I got all my disks and laptops strewn across the floor and they need to be packed away by tomorrow morning when my parents get home.
 
I assume we're talking about MS-DOS here and not Windows 9x. (If it's Windows 9x, it's a whole 'nother kettle of fish).

MS-DOS should load drivers in the order that they're encountered in the CONFIG.SYS file, so I'n not quite following you on this question.
 
Actually, to be technical I'm running PC-DOS 6.1 and that's it.
The line to load the driver is at the very bottom of the config.sys file as to delay its loading as much as I can but the driver is still loaded into memory before the services that the driver requires are loaded. The result is that first the driver loads, realizes it's accompanying Socket Services is not loaded, gives an error and the driver is not loaded. After a pause, THEN the card and socket services load but by then there is no way to tell the computer "Okay, now that these two services have loaded, NOW you can load the driver".
You following me here? It's kinda hard to explain.

In a nutshell, I just need the computer to hold back on loading the driver for about five seconds while the two pcmcia services load.
 
NeXT said:
Actually, to be technical I'm running PC-DOS 6.1 and that's it.

In a nutshell, I just need the computer to hold back on loading the driver for about five seconds while the two pcmcia services load.
Click to expand...

6 has the "INSTALL=" keyword for CONFIG.SYS to run a program. Have you tried using it (and a suitable time-killer) to slow things up a bit?

Failing that, we can always concoct a driver that delays a bit before it tells DOS it's not going to load.
 
I got too spoiled with later versions of windows. Unfortunately I remember little now on how DOS could be tweaked.
so I'm assuming that going:
Code: 
INSTALL=\DOS\PCSS.EXE
INSTALL=\DOS\PCCS.EXE
DEVICE=\PCMCIA\PCMATA.SYS
would do what I want as it starts the services before loading the driver, right?
 
NeXT said:
I got too spoiled with later versions of windows. Unfortunately I remember little now on how DOS could be tweaked.
so I'm assuming that going:
Code: 
INSTALL=\DOS\PCSS.EXE
INSTALL=\DOS\PCCS.EXE
DEVICE=\PCMCIA\PCMATA.SYS
would do what I want as it starts the services before loading the driver, right?
Click to expand...

It should--at least it wouldn't hurt to try. It could be that the services require more information (as provided by AUTOEXEC.BAT) that isn't available at CONFIG.SYS time.
 
hmm.
Well I added that to the config.sys file, removed the identical lines in autoexec.bat, saved, rebooted and it STILL tried loading the driver before the services. :confused:
That does not make sense. It's defying what I know about line sequential execution unless config.sys has its lines randomly executed by the system....which it does not. :/

What gives?
 
"Block" type device drivers, i.e., those that provide access to devices

via a drive letter, such as VDISK, disk partitioners, and CD-ROM devices,

cannot be loaded by this program. Only "character" type device drivers

can be loaded.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately this specific driver is a block device so the device command is no good.
 
Can you post your entire config.sys and autoexec.bat? It might give us an idea on what is going wrong.
 
Can you either post a copy of those file or email them to me? I'd like to try this out on my own.

Stupid question:

Have you tried loading PCSS.EXE and PCCS.EXE as drivers? Not all device drivers end in .SYS. The little research I've done on them (30 seconds under google) says that your CONFIG.SYS should look more like this:

Code: 
DEVICE=C:\CARDWARE\PCSS.EXE
DEVICE=C:\CARDWARE\PCCS.EXE
...
 
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If ixed the issue. It appears that once the cards are initilized they have to be less than a certain size, otherwise you with the FAT16 limitation or something similar. It's all working now.
 
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