Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!botter!star.cs.vu.nl!ast
From: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Initialization in floppy.c (IBM/AT Minix 1.3d)
Message-ID: <1831@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 20 Dec 88 12:47:32 GMT
References: <5994@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum)
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 14

In article <5994@louie.udel.EDU> jnall%FSU.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (John Nall 904-644-5241) writes:
>Within the last few weeks (or perhaps months) someone posted a message
>which stated, essentially, that the floppy disk driver was not being
>initialized properly

I don't quite understand how this could happen.  The boot block uses the
BIOS to read in the operating system.  Having read in 100K + of data, the
BIOS has used the floppy disk controller over and over, and it certainly
is initialized to something.  If you use a 360K diskette for booting and
1.2M after that, it should still work because floppy.c detects the error
and tries other densities.  Could someone please explain the problem more
clearly?

Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)