Hard Disk Parameter Table
This 16-byte structure can be found at the vector address of INT 41H (the
4-byte address at 0:0104).
The parameters for a second hard disk (if any) are found at the vector for
INT 46H. These tables specify a variety of critical variables for hard
disk drive operations.
XT The switches on the controller board select one of four drive
types for each hard disk drive. At boot time, the BIOS sets
INT 41H and INT 46H as indicated on these switches.
AT The INT 41H and INT 46H vectors are set according to the
AT Drive Type value which is a CMOS Memory variable stored by
the "Setup" program.
HardDiskParmRec
Offset Size Contents
▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
+0 2 wMaxCyls maximum number of cylinders
+2 1 bMaxHds maximum number of heads
+3 2 wRWCyl starting reduced-write current cylinder
+5 2 wWPCyl starting write precompensation cylinder
+7 1 bECCLen maximum ECC data burst length
+8 1 rOptFlags drive step options:
bits 2-0: drive option
bit 7: disable retries
bit 6: disable ECC
+9 1 bTimeOutStd standard timeout value
+0aH 1 bTimeOutFmt timeout value for format drive
+0bH 1 bTimeOutChk timeout value for check drive
+0cH 4 res (reserved)
16 length of a HardDiskParmRec
See Also: INT 13H (disk I/O)
Diskette Parameter Table
Data Structures
-♦-