Floppy Controller Variations

[partis]

Hi all,

I just purchased an old Toshiba Libretto 100CT from eBay for OS testing, but it has a non-standard floppy interface...

It is a PCMCIA floppy, which has a normal FDC IC, but it uses PIO, IRQ#15 and IO at 0x3a8.

I can easily fudge my floppy driver to handle this, but I'd rather be able to pick up the true access parameters via an automated method at boot time.

Are there any 'hidden' BIOS calls for returning FDC access parameters such as IO address etc - even if it is on a model-by-model or company-by-company basis?

Thanks in advance

Gary Partis

[Selenic]

Are there any 'hidden' BIOS calls for returning FDC access parameters such as IO address etc - even if it is on a model-by-model or company-by-company basis?

RBIL is always useful for that type of stuff, including model-specific calls. A quick look turns up this and this, which both look promising. Failing that, you can always just fall back to using BIOS calls if you're told that there is a floppy but can't find it.

[bewing]

AFAIK, PCMCIA has a device enumeration scheme that is somewhat similar to PCI. So, I think you need to have a driver for the pcmcia controller, use it to access the pcmcia bus, get the configuration spaces of all the devices on it, discover that one is a floppy controller, and read its access parameters. But hopefully Selenic's method is easier.

[partis]

Hiya

Many thanks

I would have prefered the quick and simple BIOS solution, but it appears to be a non-starter...

Instead, I am going to enumerate the PCMCIA slots looking for a floppy drive adapter; but I suppose I'll use the same code to check for other devices at boot time, such as HDD devices (CF/MicroDrive etc) and serial ports etc.

Thanks again

Gary Partis