Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jarthur!ucivax!megatek!fridge!hollen From: hollen@megatek (Dion Hollenbeck) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc Subject: Re: Adding a Third Floppy Drivea Message-ID: Date: 8 Jan 91 17:38:30 GMT References: <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> Sender: hollen@megatek.UUCP Distribution: na Organization: Megatek Corporation, San Diego, California Lines: 39 In-reply-to: simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu's message of 8 Jan 91 00:21:39 GMT In article <1991Jan8.002139.9708@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> simpson@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Simpson David) writes: > > I have an 80386 computer with two floppy drives (A: and B:) and > a hard disk drive (C:). What would happen if I were to add > a third floppy drive, or say a CD-ROM drive? Would my hard disk > become drive D:, or would it stay drive C: and the new floppy > drive become D:? > 1) you must have a controller which will handle 4 drives. This will have places for TWO cables, one for A/B and one for X/Y. 2) the controller should have an installable device driver which will recognize the extra drives. What they will be named will be dependent on how your hard disk is set up. If you use partitioning such as SpeedStore or OnTrak Disk Manager and therefore have a device driver for the hard disk, then if you load the driver for the floppies AFTER the hard disk, they will become the next drives after the last hard disk partition. If however, you load the hard disk driver AFTER the floppy driver, you will get the following: A/B first two floppies C first hard disk partition (recognized by BIOS) D/E second floppies F...X rest of the hard disk partitions In general, drive letters are assigned in the order that the devices init functions are executed by the BIOS for internal floppy, internal hard disk, searching for ROM code between A000:0 and F000;0 and executing each it finds, and finally by DOS's init code executing in turn the init code for installable found in CONFIG.SYS in order that they appear. -- Dion Hollenbeck (619) 455-5590 x2814 Megatek Corporation, 9645 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121 uunet!megatek!hollen or hollen@megatek.uucp