BIOS Quick Reference • CC5-RAVE
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EKF Elektronik GmbH * Philipp-Reis-Str. 4 * D-59065 HAMM (Germany)
Tel. +49 (0)2381/6890-0 * Fax. +49 (0)2381/6890-90 * E-Mail [email protected] * Internet http://www.ekf.de
Configuring Floppy Drive Types
If true floppy drive file systems (and not their emulators, such as ROM, RAM, or flash disks) are
mapped to drive letters, then the floppy drives themselves must be configured in this section.
Floppy0 refers to the first floppy disk drive on the drive ribbon cable (normally drive A:), and
Floppy1 refers to the second drive (drive B:). If a floppy drive is not present, you must select
"None", otherwise there will be long delays during the POST and system boot, caused by
timeouts in the corresponding disk I/O routines.
Configuring IDE Drive Geometry
If true IDE disk file systems (and not their emulators, such as ROM, RAM, or flash disks) are
mapped to drive letters, then the IDE drives themselves must be configured in this section. The
following table shows the drive assignments for Ide0-Ide3:
File System Name (Usage)
Controller
Master/Slave
Ide0 (external HD drive)
Primary (1f0h)
Master
Ide1 (external device, HDD, DVD etc.)
Primary (1f0h)
Slave
Ide2 (on-board CompactFlash)
Secondary (170h)
Master
To use the primary master IDE drive in your system (the typical case), just configure Ide0 in this
section, and map Ide0 to drive C: in the Configuring Drive Assignments section. The IDE Drive
Types section lets you select the type for each of the four IDE drives: None, User,
Physical, LBA, or CHS.
User
- This type allows the user to select the maximum cylinders, heads, and sectors per track
associated with the IDE drive. This method is now rarely used since LBA is now in common use.
Physical
- This type instructs the BIOS to query the drive’s geometry from the controller on each
POST. No translation on the drive’s geometry is performed, so this type is limited to drives of
512 Mbytes or less. Commonly, this is used with embedded ATA PC Cards.
LBA
- This type instructs the BIOS to query the drive’s geometry from the controller on each
POST, but then translate the geometry according to the industry-standard LBA convention. This
supports up to 16-Gbyte drives. Use this method for all new drives.
CHS
- This type instructs the BIOS to query the drive’s geometry from the controller on each
POST, but then translate the geometry according to the Phoenix CHS convention. Using this type
on a drive previously formatted with LBA or Physical geometry might show data as being missing
or corrupted.
Geometry can either be entered directly in format cylinder/head/sector or can be automatically
recognized, if this is supported. Automatical recognition supports physical addressing, LBA
addressing and addressing according to Phoenix standard. For IDE drives smaller than 504MB
and CD-ROM drives you should select option "AUTOCONFIG, PHYSICAL", for greater drives select
"AUTOCONFIG, LBA". Option "AUTOCONFIG, PHOENIX" is not in common use any more. Select
