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From: nfs@notecnirp.Princeton.EDU (Norbert Schlenker)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: can you tell if a logical drive is a ramdisk
Summary: Try tracing Norton Utilities SI
Message-ID: <25665@princeton.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 10 Apr 90 14:42:15 GMT
References: <1990Mar31.034515.7622@rducky.uucp> <7442.261cbd19@dit.ie> <4049@plains.UUCP>
Sender: news@princeton.Princeton.EDU
Reply-To: nfs@notecnirp.UUCP (Norbert Schlenker)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Princeton University
Lines: 22

In article <4049@plains.UUCP> harlow@plains.UUCP (Jay B. Harlow) writes:
>In article <7442.261cbd19@dit.ie> alawlor@dit.ie (Aengus Lawlor) writes:
>>In article <1990Mar31.034515.7622@rducky.uucp>, jrp@rducky.uucp (JIM PICKERING) writes:
>>> I am writing an application that needs to determine is a logical drive
>>> (E for example) is a ramdisk.  Is there any way?  Perhaps there is some
>>> information in the BPD obtained through an ioctl() call?

The infamous SI in Norton Utilities appears to be quite reliable when
it comes to determining what sort of device a drive is.  I don't know
that it's foolproof, but SI has always come up with the right total
for floppies, hard drives, and RAM disks on any machine I've used. Try
spending a little time with Codeview (or debug if you have more
patience) to see how it does what it does.

This technique worked well for me when I needed a method for
distinguishing NEC V20/V30 chips from Intel 8088/8086 chips.

Since SI is copyright Norton Computing, I advise you not to steal the
code outright.  The technique it uses (whatever it is) is freely
available.

Norbert