Limitations of Older DOS Versions: Support for Only Two Hard Disks
By
yuhong
Baker's choice. Dense with flavour, light on filler.
Summary
The article explores the limitations of older DOS versions (pre-5.0) in supporting more than two hard disks, often causing boot-up failures. It highlights the discovery of this issue through experimentation with the Microsoft OS/2 1.21 disk driver and Compaq's EXTDISK.SYS driver.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledDOS versions older than 5.0 do not support more than two hard disks exposed by the system’s BIOS.
The system may hang early during boot-up if there are 'too many' hard disks.
This seems to have been one of the many things that 'everyone knew' back in the day.
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