DC-395 Series User’s Manual
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4. DOS ASPI DRIVERS & UTILITIES
This chapter describes in detail the various ASPI Drivers and Utility programs that are
provided with the DC-395 Host Adapter Kit for use under the DOS operating system.
To get
up and running quickly under DOS, see Section 4.1 -
Easy DOS Driver Installation
Software
for easy installation instructions
.
The major ASPI Drivers and Utilities are:
•
T3X5ASPI.SYS: The ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) driver that
provides the basic communication interface for the host adapter and the DOS operating
system. It supports up to four coexisting host adapters, and is compatible with peripheral
drivers for Sytos (Plus), ARCserve/Solo tape subsystems, fixed disks, removable
cartridges, MO drives, Flopticals, CD-ROMs, CD-Changers and Scanners.
•
TRMDISK.SYS: This driver is for controlling those SCSI devices not supported by BIOS
INT 13H (See More Than 2 Drives Support and Included in BIOS Scan). These devices
would primarily be fixed disks, removable cartridges, re-writable optical disks (MO) and
flopticals. It allows the creation of valid partitions on these devices for use as logical
drives, and also recognizes data formats used by other adapter manufacturers.
•
TRMCD.SYS: The device driver for CD-ROM and CD-Changer devices. This driver is
loaded after T3X5ASPI.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS file.
•
TFDISK.EXE: A DOS-compatible disk partitioning utility program for SCSI hard disks,
removable media, and magneto-optical drives that are not managed by the BIOS of the
DC-395’s (Those managed by TRMDISK.SYS).
•
UTIL.EXE: Allows configuration of the PCU from DOS (as opposed to re-booting the
system and pressing the <F2> key).
DOS uses the ASPI manager as a software interface to communicate with SCSI devices. The
specific peripheral driver then talks to the ASPI interface instead of the host adapter
hardware. Under this architecture, multiple devices can share the host adapter without
conflict. The ASPI driver is typically installed under the following situations:
•
Multiple adapters coexist (up to four)
•
SCSI devices not controlled by BIOS INT 13H are installed (CD-ROMs)
•
Devices that use removable media are installed
•
An interface to Tape Drives, CD-ROMs and other SCSI devices is needed
Example:
You could operate 7 SCSI Hard Disks under MS-DOS with no ASPI drivers
loaded, as long as
More Than 2 Drives Support
is Enabled. If you were to add a
CD-ROM or tape drive, however, you would need to install the ASPI drivers.
