First post, by Jo22
- Rank
- l33t++
So what's about it ? I've recently come across an article at os2museum.com
some of us may should have a look at: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/the-ihc-damage/
Long story short: When Win9x acesses an unprotected disk,
it replaces the OEM identifier (such as ‘MSDOS5.0’) in the boot sector with an ‘IHC’ signature.
Harmless isn't it ? Well, for Win9x that doesn't matter.
But if you using your 9x retro rig for file transfer or backups of you XT machine it may matter.
The OEM indentifier is important for recent DOS versions (3.3 onwards) to check,
wether the disk was created with DOS later than 3.1.
If DOS detects an earlier version, it will try to fix the BPB on the fly.
But why ? Early versions (3.1 to 2x) focused more on the media descriptor byte,
and were buggy when writing correct drive geometry in the BIOS Parameter Block.
Details here: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos-boot-sector-b … escriptor-byte/
I know my writing is abit messed up. I've got a flu right now and don't feel very well.
Comments welcome.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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