XTIDE universal bios disk translation....

[prime]

Hi all,

Following on from my post about imaging....

Is there documented anywhere an explanation of the translation scheme used by the XTIDE universal bios ? Also is there a way of enquiring of the drive e.g. via an INT call to find out what scheme is currently in use?

Cheers.

Phill.

 

[hargle]

This is what the rev 1 XTIDE used when I did the BIOS on it which was quickly switched to XUB. There were no compatibility issues that I recall when converting, so it is fair to say XUB uses this same spec:
https://www.singlix.com/trdos/archive/pdf_archive/ATA_EDD_11.PDF

This is the only scheme I'm aware of, at least the only scheme that allows large hard drives to be fully accessed* and is compatible with modern hardware.
There is an eINT13 supported bit that can be checked, but I don't recall any other query available.

*the 8.4GB limit is a DOS/FAT limit. The BIOS can go way beyond that with eINT13 support.

 

[Trixter]

Can the 8.4GB limit be exceeded if one creates a large extended partition, then many 2G FAT16 logical drives in that partition? Or is the 8.4G the limit of extended partitions?

 

[hargle]

I've probably opened more of a can of worms than I wanted with that statement and didn't mean to drag the topic into the abyss.
The issue is DOS support of eINT13. Without it, DOS is going to be stuck standard INT13 which will top out at 8.4GB total, no matter how many partitions.
DOS7 (windows 95/98) and FreeDOS are the only ones that support eINT13 interface.
I believe XUB doesn't support eINT13 due to size constraints, so the point is a bit moot.