Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Ext. drive on Z-181
Message-ID: <866@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 87 14:28:11 GMT
References: <3457@whuts.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 35
Keywords: Z-181 driver.sys
Summary: Ahhh, the braindamages of DOS...


I've had problems adding extra drives with DOS 3.2 (havne't had to
do it with 3.3 yet).  There are complications too with whether or
not the system BIOS already knows about 3-1/2 inch drives.

I stalled a 3-1/2 inch 1.44 meg drive on an AST 286.  I had to set
the CMOS using SETUP first to indicate that a 1.44 meg drive was
there.  I was surprised that 1.44 meg was one of the options in
SETUP-- guess AST is on the ball.

Getting the drive to function required two entris in CONFIG.SYS.
First,

DRIVPARM = blah, blah, blah

(don't have the dox handy, so I don't remember exactly what blah...
was).   Anyway, those were the parms for a 720K drive.  The system
belived it was drive B.  If I used parms for a 1.44 meg drive, the
system wouldn't recognize any drive B.

Second,
DEVICE = DRIVER.SYS /blah /blah /blah

In this case, blah was the parms for the 1.44 meg drive.  This
drive was recognized as D: since a fixed drive was present.
Putting in two DRIVPARM lines in CONFIG.SYS yielded an error
message, so this was the only way this drive could be made to work
in both modalities.

Grrrr. Typical DOS braindamage I suppose.  If anybody figures out a
way to make the drive have the same letter for both densities, I'd
be interested in hearing too!

Season's greetings,
Bill