43
43
Date
The
date
is displayed in standard format: MMM DD YYYY
(month - day - year); all the three fields
contain numerical values only.
Floppy disks 1..4
Each system incorporates a controller capable of driving up to four floppy disks, according to the
hardware mounted on-board. The floppy disks are numbered starting from
one
and the BIOS
maps these drivers starting form the letter “A”
.
Note:
during the floppy disk assignment it is a good practice filling the devices consecutively,
without any “hole” from one device to another.
Note:
when the
boot sequence
starts from floppy disk number one (DOS letter “A”), any device
selected as
floppy disk 1
can be a bootable disk. Obviously this device must represent a real
bootable disk, with a proper boot sector and containing a valid O.S.
Note: In the SpacePC 1232 only one external FDD can be connected.
All the
floppy disks
can be configured with the same options:
Option
Description
Note
None
No floppy disk selected
360 KB
Floppy disk 5 ¼ - size 360 Kbytes
1.2 MB
Floppy disk 5 ¼ - size 1.2 Mbytes
720 KB
Floppy disk 3 ½ - size 720 Kbytes
1.44 MB
Floppy disk 3 ½ - size 1.44 Mbytes
Common used size
Integrated SSD
On-board Flash EEPROM
Always available on all boards
The following one is the default configuration (as shown in the previous picture):
Floppy Disk 1: Integrated SSD
Floppy Disk 2: None
Floppy Disk 3: None
Floppy Disk 4: None
Note: with the previous default configuration, the Integrated SSD (that is a READ ONLY
MEMORY) is seen with the DOS letter “A”, and the system bootstraps from it. If you want
to use also a real Floppy Disk, you must set it as Floppy Disk 2. It will be seen with the
DOS letter “B”.
Note:
the floppy controller use the
same connector used by the parallel port
. In this case when
the floppy controller is enabled, the parallel port is automatically disabled, even if it was already
enabled in the Setup. The parallel port can be used again after disabling the floppy disk
controller.
Expansion Socket
The
Expansion Socket
is available to mount different type of
solid-state
memory devices. If you
want to use a PEROM or a SRAM, you must also configure a “Floppy Disk 1..4” as Expansion
Socket. Anyway a Disk On Chip (DOC) is always seen as a hard disk, and it doesn’t need a
further setting in the “Floppy Disk 1..4” section. If the assigned floppy is
FD1
and the
boot try
sequence
is
FD1/HD1
, the system starts bootstrapping from the memory mounted on the
expansion socket.
