oem.hlp (Table of Contents; Topic list)
Important Notice
The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.
DRIVER.SYS--Notes
Examples  Syntax
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
                             DRIVER.SYS──Notes
 
Disk-drive change-line support
 
The term "change-line support" means that a physical disk drive can detect
when the drive door is opened and closed. Change-line support allows faster
MS-DOS operation with floppy disks. The /C switch indicates to MS-DOS that
the physical disk drive can support change-line error detection. To
determine whether your disk drive has change-line support, see the
disk-drive manufacturer's documentation.
 
Modifying or redefining a supported physical disk drive
 
For information about modifying the parameters of a physical disk drive that
is supported by your hardware, see the <DRIVPARM> command. You can also use
DRIVER.SYS to redefine a physical floppy disk drive.
 
Limitations on DRIVER.SYS
 
You cannot use DRIVER.SYS with hard disk drives. For information about
substituting a logical drive letter for a hard disk drive, see the <SUBST>
command.
 
Creating a duplicate logical drive
 
Suppose you want to use one physical floppy disk drive to copy files from
one floppy disk to another. Because you cannot copy from and to the same
logical drive by using the COPY or XCOPY command, you must assign a second
drive letter to that physical drive.
 
If your system has just one physical floppy disk drive, you do not need to
install DRIVER.SYS for this purpose. MS-DOS already assigns both logical
drive A and logical drive B to that drive. Just copy files from drive A to
drive B and switch disks when MS-DOS prompts you.
 
If your system has more than one floppy disk drive, then you need to use
DRIVER.SYS to assign a second drive letter to the physical floppy disk
drive.
 
Creating a new logical drive with different parameters
 
If you use DRIVER.SYS to assign a logical drive that has parameters
different from those of the previously assigned logical drive, then the
parameters of the previous logical drive will be invalid. Therefore, you
should no longer use the drive letter corresponding to the previous logical
drive.
 
                                      ♦