If the bios cannot see the HD at all, then it cannot load software off it. The software package I dealt with had two options: Load from a smaller, recognized HD and use the biggie as secondary, or load from a floppy drive. The other option was to force the bios to see the HD by entering the heads, cyclinders, and sectors by hand (using smaller values than there actually were) which would allow the bios to see and boot off a smaller view of the hard drive, at which point the software loads itself and full hd becomes accessable. The original question was "How is any software that isn't part of the bios supposed to help the bios see the disk drive?" to which my answer was correctly addressed --> you either replace the bios software that controls just that little bit of work, or you intercept the data request, munge it, then call the original bios portion. When the computer boots up, and drives are recognized by bios, it builds a table in memory of the drives it can read and write to. It is a not difficult to add to this table so the bios can 'see' a drive it did not originally reconize itself. He did not ask, "How can bios *load* software from a drive it cannot see," so I did not answer with that in mind. -Adam Denny Esterline wrote: >This is all well and good, but the question that was asked was how can it be >loaded off the hard drive when the BIOS cannot see the harddrive at all. >Surely I (and I expect most everyone else here) can understand it if the >BIOS could access "some" of the drive, but the OP said the bios could not >see the drive at all. > > >-Denny > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "M. Adam Davis" >To: >Sent: Monday, September 29, 2003 12:46 PM >Subject: Re: [EE]: 40GB Hard Disk for a Pentium 200MHz PC > > > > >>Bios is simply software. You can replace parts or all of bios with >>other software, since BIOS is called through software interrupts. You >>simply replace their interrupt handler, or change the interrupt handler >>pointer, or change the handler pointer, then when you're done messing >>witht the data call the original bios handler to do the hard lifting. >> >>The software interrupt table is in memory, so it doesn't matter whether >>bios loads into memory or is run directly from flash. >> >>-Adam >> >>Olin Lathrop wrote: >> >> >> >>>>"Ontrack" disk manager software (often available free from the disk >>>>drive supplier) has helped overcome disk size limitations on several >>>>occasions. You MAY need an older version, but maybe not. >>>> >>>>Here's their site, but they probably won't give you the free version >>>>directly. >>>>But you can always ask. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>How is any software that isn't part of the bios supposed to help the bios >>>see the disk drive? >>> >>> >>>***************************************************************** >>>Embed Inc, embedded system specialists in Littleton Massachusetts >>>(978) 742-9014, http://www.embedinc.com >>> >>>-- >>>http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: >>>[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>-- >>http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: >>[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads >> >> > >-- >http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: >[PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads > > > > > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads