Comments on: 378Kb disk hack for Fractint 15.1 http://www.reenigne.org/blog/378kb-disk-hack-for-fractint-15-1/ Stuff I think about Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:39:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Scali http://www.reenigne.org/blog/378kb-disk-hack-for-fractint-15-1/comment-page-1/#comment-4317 Scali Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:20:14 +0000 http://www.reenigne.org/blog/?p=927#comment-4317 Ah yes, I remember that program! Or at least, I used one of those, not sure if there were others. It was called FDFORMAT. You could tweak tracks and sector counts and such. Another very nice feature was its custom bootsector: it would automatically boot the HDD for you. Back in those days it was a very valuable feature, since you could not disable floppy boot in most BIOSes. So if you accidentally left your floppy in the drive when you booted up, it would try to boot from the floppy. You'd have to remove it and press a key to boot from HDD. With an FDFORMAT-formatted floppy, it would just boot the HDD immediately, so you could leave your floppies in the drive without worrying. I was intrigued by this, so I disassembled the bootsector myself to see what it did. Turned out it was really simple: it would just use some BIOS routines to load the first sector of the HDD to the right segment and jump to it. I later used this trick to make my own custom bootsectors, which would show a message or even some simple graphics, and booted from HDD when you pressed a key. Ah yes, I remember that program!
Or at least, I used one of those, not sure if there were others.
It was called FDFORMAT. You could tweak tracks and sector counts and such.
Another very nice feature was its custom bootsector: it would automatically boot the HDD for you.
Back in those days it was a very valuable feature, since you could not disable floppy boot in most BIOSes. So if you accidentally left your floppy in the drive when you booted up, it would try to boot from the floppy. You'd have to remove it and press a key to boot from HDD. With an FDFORMAT-formatted floppy, it would just boot the HDD immediately, so you could leave your floppies in the drive without worrying.

I was intrigued by this, so I disassembled the bootsector myself to see what it did. Turned out it was really simple: it would just use some BIOS routines to load the first sector of the HDD to the right segment and jump to it.
I later used this trick to make my own custom bootsectors, which would show a message or even some simple graphics, and booted from HDD when you pressed a key.

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