Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 10:06:35 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
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To: Jason Green <news AT jgreen4 DOT fsnet DOT co DOT uk>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: 18-sector limit with biosdisk()
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On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Jason Green wrote:

> > Well, many bioses will not boot with the 'compact' option, because they
> > don't know how to deal with a full-track 21-sector read.  They can read
> > one sector at a time up to track 21, but if you say, 'read 21 tracks to
> > the buffer starting at track 0', they choke.  So, with LILO you have to
> > NOT have the 'compact' option.  Now, in the case of the kernel loading,
> > directly without LILO, maybe it is combining the reads the same way and
> > failing that way?
> > 
> > -Tom
> 
> If I understand this correctly it means that certain BIOS
> implementations limit the read buffer size.  On the other hand I could
> just as easily have the wrong end of the stick... ;-)

Does this mean that if we bump the limit to 21 sectors, programs might 
choke with som BIOSes?