Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!psueea!parsely!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re^2: Request for boot sector information
Message-ID: <1574@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 19 Jul 89 06:40:28 GMT
References: <1046@krafla.rhi.hi.is> <101000055@hpcvlx.HP.COM>
Organization: Rick's Home-Grown UNIX; Portland, OR.
Lines: 21

everett@hpcvlx.HP.COM (Everett Kaser) writes:

<I think you're on shaky ground, because the string starting in the 4th byte of
<the boot sector is the OEM identification string; i.e. there are going to be
<a significant number of different ones, up to (but not likely) as many as there
<are OEM's of MS-DOS.  On the HP Vectra PC that I'm using with MS-DOS 3.3 (OEM'd
<from Microsoft by HP) the ID string says "IBM  3.3".  I suspect that many
<clone manufacturers that supply MS-DOS use the "IBM" string in order to be as
<compatable as possible with IBM.  But I know that on a couple of HP's earlier
<computers, different strings were placed there.

The reason so many OEMs use IBM as the ID string is thaty IBM in it's
typically obnoxious way, released several versions of PC-DOS that
*refused* to read a disk if the ID didn't say IBM!!!

Isn't it nice to see how IBBM feels about the competition? :-(
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
Let's start with typewriters." -- Solomon Short