From: Jason Green <news AT jgreen4 DOT fsnet DOT co DOT uk>
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: 18-sector limit with biosdisk()
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2001 22:37:15 +0000
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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"Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il> wrote:

> > > Does this mean that if we bump the limit to 21 sectors, programs might 
> > > choke with som BIOSes?
> > 
> > Yes - unless you think it could mean something else.
> 
> English is not my first language.  If you aren't sure as well, perhaps
> we should ask whoever wrote that.

I'm not familiar enough with BIOS level programming to understand
exactly what biosdisk() does or what the OP wants to do with it, but
when I saw that DJGPP had an 18-sector limit I remembered the earlier
post and an alarm bell rang.

> > If there is some doubt then it would be worth to do a simple test
> > before any serious development work on libc.
> 
> If there's a chance of breaking the library by this change, I think we
> better not do it.  People who need to read non-standard floppies can
> always use __dpmi_int directly.

I'm not saying libc will break.  If someone wants to post a complete
test example I would be happy to test it with the BIOS that choked
trying to boot Linux kernel from an oversize floppy.