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From: wlsmith@valve.heart.rri.uwo.ca (Wayne L. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: Using IDE and MFM Drives together
Message-ID: <3253@ria.ccs.uwo.ca>
Date: 3 Jun 91 21:37:50 GMT
References: <1991Jun2.045900.15627@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <3224@ria.ccs.uwo.ca> <1991Jun3.200840.23282@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
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Organization: The John P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario
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>In article <3224@ria.ccs.uwo.ca> Patrick Draper writes:
>The IDE drive controller has its own BIOS on board. It doesn't need to
>know anything about the PC's BIOS.

If an IDE drive has it's own bios (and it is sophisticated enough to have
a built in controller/rom), then this `bios' is `local' to the drive and is
not accessible by the pc (at least I can't find it).

The PC`s bios talks to the drive through the interface card (for IDE drives).
For SCSI and some MFM/RLL controllers, the bios on the controller shoe-
horns itself into pc memory, and dos et all talks to the drive through
the bios on the controller (the pc's hard drive bios routines are not used).
I think I've got this right ;-i ...