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Interrupt 26H
◄Summary► ◄Notes► ◄Back►
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▀ All registers except the segment registers may be destroyed.
▀ When this function returns, the CPU flags originally pushed onto the
stack by the INT 26H instruction are still on the stack. The stack must
be cleared by a POPF or ADD SP,2 to prevent uncontrolled stack growth
and to make accessible any other values that were pushed on the stack
before the call to INT 26H.
▀ Logical sector numbers are obtained by numbering each disk sector sequen-
tially from track 0, head 0, sector 1, and continuing until the last sec-
tor on the disk is counted. The head number is incremented before the
track number. Logically adjacent sectors may not be physically adjacent,
due to interleaving that occurs at the device-driver level for some disk
types.
▀ The error code is interpreted as follows: The lower byte (AL) is the
same error code that is returned in the lower byte of DI when an Int
24H is issued. The upper byte (AH) contains:
80H if attachment failed to respond
40H if seek operation failed
20H if controller failed
10H if data error (bad CRC)
08H if direct memory access (DMA) failure
04H if requested sector not found
03H if write-protect fault
02H if bad address mark
01H if bad command
▀ [4.0+] When accessing partitions larger than 32 MB under MS-DOS ver-
sion 4, this function uses a parameter block with the following format:
Bytes Description
═══════ ═════════════════════════
00H-03H 32-bit sector number
04H-05H number of sectors to read
06H-07H offset of buffer
08H-09H segment of buffer
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