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out of date.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►
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DRIVER.SYS
Creates a logical drive that you can use to refer to a physical floppy disk
drive. This device driver must be loaded by a <DEVICE> or <DEVICEHIGH>
command in your CONFIG.SYS file.
A logical drive is a pointer to a physical disk drive in your system. The
logical drive is associated with a drive letter (for example, A or B). You
can specify parameters to describe the disk drive to MS-DOS.
Syntax
DEVICE=[drive:][path]DRIVER.SYS /D:number [/C] [/F:factor] [/H:heads]
[/S:sectors] [/T:tracks]
Parameter
[drive:][path]
Specifies the location of the DRIVER.SYS file.
Switches
/D:number
Specifies the number of the physical floppy disk drive. Valid values for
number are in the range 0 through 127. The first physical floppy disk
drive (drive A) is drive 0; a second physical floppy disk drive is drive
1; a third physical floppy disk drive, which must be external, is drive
2. For a computer with one floppy disk drive, drives A and B are both
numbered 0; for a computer with multiple floppy disk drives, drive B is
numbered 1.
/C
Specifies that the physical disk drive can detect whether the drive door
is closed (change-line support).
/F:factor
Specifies the type of disk drive. Valid values for factor are as
follows:
0 160K/180K or 320K/360K
1 1.2 megabyte (MB)
2 720K (3.5-inch disk) or other
7 1.44 MB (3.5-inch disk)
9 2.88 MB (3.5-inch disk)
The default value for factor is 2.
Generally, if you use the /F switch, you can omit the /H, /S, and /T
switches. Check the default values for these switches to make sure they
are correct for the type of disk drive you are using. To determine the
appropriate values for the disk drive, see the disk-drive manufacturer's
documentation.
If you specify the /H, /S, and /T switches, you can omit the /F switch.
/H:heads
Specifies the number of heads in the disk drive. Valid values for heads
are in the range 1 through 99. The default value is 2. To determine the
correct value for your disk drive, see the disk-drive manufacturer's
documentation.
/S:sectors
Specifies the number of sectors per track. Valid values for sectors are
in the range 1 through 99. The default value depends on the value of
/F:factor, as follows:
/F:0 /S:9
/F:1 /S:15
/F:2 /S:9
/F:7 /S:18
/F:9 /S:36
To determine the correct value for your disk drive, see the disk-drive
manufacturer's documentation.
/T:tracks
Specifies the number of tracks per side on the block device. Valid
values for tracks are in the range 1 through 999. The default value is
80, unless /F:factor is 0, in which case the default value is 40. To
determine the correct value for your disk drive, see the disk-drive
manufacturer's documentation.
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