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Subject:
From:
Drew Dunn <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
PCBUILD - Personal Computer Hardware discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 10 Dec 1998 20:45:11 -0700
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (57 lines)
After speaking to my former cohorts at Micron Electronics, they tell me that
if you select your Zip drive to be the bootable drive, it will become the A:
drive and the former A: drive will become the B: drive.

That's the only drive letter changing that will happen.  I couldn't begin to
tell you what would happen if you already have two floppies, but if I had to
take a guess, I would say that whatever drive is the second floppy will not
be seen by the operating system.

Drives A: and B: are considered as floppies because of tradition, that is,
because that's the way it's always been done.

Remember, we're just talking about Zip drives here.  If you have a JAZ drive
and you make it the bootable device, it's still just a hard drive...it
doesn't become a "floppy", and it will be detected by the operating system
as a hard drive, thus its letter will be C: or greater.  Likewise with a
CD-ROM.  I don't know about tape drives...I haven't heard about any
motherboards that would let one of them be a boot device, but I haven't seen
every motherboard.

Alas, my knowledge is limited because I've only looked at this issue from
the point of view of the computers that Micron builds and ships.  That's a
pretty narrow range of components and configurations.  So, all that I can
say is that this is the way it works with Intel's OEM motherboards
(particularly the Seattle) and Iomega's OEM ATAPI Zip drives.

If anybody out there would like to give this a try, I'd really like to hear
about it.  In fact, if anybody wants to write some sort of "report" on what
they found out, Bob and I would be happy to post it on the web site at
http://www.nospin.com.

Thanks,

Drew Dunn
[log in to unmask]
http://adsl24.bois.uswest.net/drew/index.htm

> Drew, now that's an interesting concept, and a possible cause for
> considerableproglems.  If a removable drive device is made bootable, it is
> perceived to be a floppy.  That being the case, why can only
> drives A and B
> still be considered floppies?  Suppose you make your ZipDrive, your CD-ROM
> drive, either or anywhere from two to four hard drives, and your
> tape backup
> device, all bootable.  Oh, yes, some BIOS setupus only allow for a limited
> number of bootable devices.  What happens to the ZipDrive if you
> still have
> a 3.5-inch flop as Drive A: and a 5.25-inch flop as Drive B:, and
> you still
> want to have the Zip be bootable?  What will it be called, and will it be
> recognized as a 3.5-inch floppy, or treated like a CD-ROM drive?

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