DOS Days

DRIVPARM

Introduction

The PC BIOS is able to detect how many floppy drives there are and what type they are, aside from actually controlling the drives themselves. DOS is able to override this drive count and the type of drives (if for any reason the BIOS gets it wrong) via the DRIVPARM conifiguration line in CONFIG.SYS:

DRIVPARM=/D:drive /F:format /T:tracks /S:sectors /N /C


where:
drive = the drive number in the BIOS from 0 - 3.
format = the drive type (0=360KB 5.25", 1=1.2MB 5.25", 2=720KB 3.5", 3=8" single-density, 4=8" double-density, 5=hard drive, 6=tape drive, 7=1.44MB 3.5")
tracks = the number of tracks (usually 40 or 80)
sectors = the number of sectors per track (usually 8 or 9)
/N = drive is not removable
/C = drive supports "change line"