PC Hardware Arcana

[Scott Lanning]

On Mon, 24 May 1999, Richard Royston wrote:
...
>Since I now have the floppy I need, my pragmatic friends tell me I don't
>need to worry. Well, I'm willing not to worry, but I am curious, and
>would like to know more about BIOS's and how they work with hardware to
>talk to it, and what commands floppies deal with. Does anyone know where
>I can find out? I'd be most grateful for some pointers.

Hi, Here are some links. I don't claim to be an expert; even
more, I claim to not be an expert.

Basic information (easily readable) about architecture is available
at the LDP site, http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/LDP/tlk/tlk.html
Check out also the Assembly HOWTO. As far as I know, interrupts
are accessible only by kernel (module).
    http://d1.ifmo.ru/library/dosint/INDEX.HTM has the famous
interrupt list compiled (somehow..) by Ralf Brown, translated to
html (so you don't have to download..). It is vast. In particular,
there are interrupts dealing with floppy access from BIOS.
Maybe also go to the library or a bookstore to get a book on
assembly language or computer architecture.
    A site that has lots of detailed information is
http://developer.intel.com/design/litcentr/. It has nice
information, but it's Intel, so they use Intel syntax rather than
gcc's AT&T syntax, so maybe you want to get the NASM assembler...or
just skip this wussy assembly stuff and program machine language.. :)
(that info is there too, but unrecommended unless you're bored.)
Maybe you want to try the search, with words such as
"BIOS AND floppy NOT upgrades".

Play hard.

--
Scott Lanning, slanning at buphy.bu.edu, http://physics.bu.edu/~slanning
Resume: http://physics.bu.edu/~slanning/resume

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