Specifications

38 AMD Geode™ GeodeROM Functional Specification
Removable Media
32087C
5.2.7 Function 08h - Get Drive Parameters
Description:
Returns the geometry of the caller-specified drive in terms of cylinders, heads, and sectors. If the specified drive is a
“large” IDE drive whose physical cylinder count exceeds 1024, this function returns “logical” or “translated” parameters.
Supports:
Fixed disk and floppy disk.
Passed:
Returns:
Special Instructions:
The DL register returns what some manuals refer to as “the number of consecutive acknowledging drives”. This
means, “the number of drives of this type”. For example, if your application calls this function with DL = 0, upon return,
DL contains the number of installed floppy drives.
Related Functions:
None.
Parameter Description
AH 08h
DL Drive number
Parameter Description
CF 0 = Success
1 = Failure
AH Status code:
See AH in "Function 01h - Get Disk Subsystem Status" on page 33
BL Floppy drive type (AT, PS/2 only)
DL Number of installed drives of this type
DH Maximum head number (0-based)
CH Bits [7:0] = Maximum cylinder number bits [7:0]
CL Bits [7:6] = Maximum cylinder number bits [9:8]
Bits [5:0] = Maximum sector number bits [5:0]
ES:DI Far pointer to drive parameter table