How to detect/disable SMARTrive on CD-ROM
Steve
CD-ROM drive (or any other cache program for that matter, but SMARTDrive
is probably the most widely used). Once I find this info I would also
like to disable it if possible.
This is for a multimedia program running under Windows, but I can
probably make any technique that work under DOS work for Windows too.
Thanks for any pointers.
- Hotrod
Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby
>
> I'm looking for a way to determine if SMARTDrive is caching a given
> CD-ROM drive (or any other cache program for that matter, but SMARTDrive
> is probably the most widely used). Once I find this info I would also
> like to disable it if possible.
SMARTDrive cannot cache CD-ROM drives, neither will most other disk caches
since CD-ROM's appear to DOS as network drives, which are left well alone
by SMARTDrive (and most others).
Problem solved :-) ?
Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby.
Stephan Hermann
The SMARTDRIVE of DOS 6.x can cache CD-ROM'S
C ya,
Stephan Hermann
-------------------------------------------------------------
Stephan Hermann
Dortmund, Germany E-Mail: q393...@bonsai.fernuni-hagen.de
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Steve
: The best for that is to use SMARTDRV's info screen: (where H: is CD-ROM)
<stuff deleted>
: smartdrv /s|find "H:" >nul
: if errorlevel 1 goto notCached
Thanks for the suggestion, but I guess I wasn't specific enough in my
original question. This is to be done by a program, so I would prefer a
point to an interrupt hook or something like that. I suppose I could try
to work something out with the EXEC command, but I would greatly prefer
a hook-type method.
Still searching...
Hotrod
SILASI C A
: Problem solved :-) ?
: Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby.
Smart Drive version 5.0+ does cache CD-ROM drives if allowed. There are
also quite a few CD-ROM disk cache programs.
You can query SmartDrive on the drives it caches and (if I remember
correctly) tell it not to do it in software. All these calls (Int2F)
are in the MS-DOS Programmer's Reference by Microsoft.
I think there is a program called Info+ on Simtel (\utils???) that
comes with full sourcecode and shows the status of all drives
(cached/double_buffered/double_spaced, etc) so you can get the
snippets of code from there.
Check out the Ralph Brown's interrupt list (book, text and WinHelp
format). The files are on CICA - /programr/intw4?a.zip, intw4?b.zip
and intw4?c.zip.
The question mark is because the CICA mirror that I use has version
4.2 while the new version is 4.4 ...
Hope this helps.
Adrian
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Silasi
City University
London
(ce...@city.ac.uk)
Nigel Horne
p...@mround.bt.co.uk "Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby" writes:
> SMARTDrive cannot cache CD-ROM drives, neither will most other disk caches
> since CD-ROM's appear to DOS as network drives, which are left well alone
> by SMARTDrive (and most others).
The most recent versions of smartdrv include a CD-rom cacheing facility.
--
Nigel Horne, G0LOV. Technical Director, SoftCare Media Systems Ltd.
Internet: n...@smsltd.demon.co.uk; Fidonet: Nigel Horne @ 2:250/408;
Packet: QSP Via G4LUE@GB7WRG; Phone: +44-1226-283021.
Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby
> In article <3g7vef$8...@pheidippides.axion.bt.co.uk>
> p...@mround.bt.co.uk "Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby" writes:
>
> > SMARTDrive cannot cache CD-ROM drives, neither will most other disk caches
> > since CD-ROM's appear to DOS as network drives, which are left well alone
> > by SMARTDrive (and most others).
>
> The most recent versions of smartdrv include a CD-rom cacheing facility.
My humblest apologies folks :) I only have DOS 5.0 here and didn't know about
the wonders of later version of SMARTDrive....
[not so] Phlash.
Gregory Scott Murray
Not exactly. DOS 6.x and above include SmartDrive 5.0 which does
indeed read cache CD-ROM drives. In order to disable this caching, as
required for programs like Wing Commander III, either use the /U
option, which turns off cacheing of all CD-ROM drives by SmartDrive,
or use [drive letter]- (eg. "D-") on the SmartDrive command line in
order to disable caching of a specific CD-ROM drive.
Scott
--
===============================================================================
"Good, bad ... I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash, "Army of Darkness"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Murray : murr...@newton.ccs.tuns.ca
4th Year Computer Science Student | Technical University of Nova Scotia
===============================================================================
Andrew Talbot
> In article <3g7vef$8...@pheidippides.axion.bt.co.uk> Phil ~Phlash~ Ashby <p...@mround.bt.co.uk> writes:
> >hot...@tyrell.net (Steve) wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm looking for a way to determine if SMARTDrive is caching a given
> >> CD-ROM drive (or any other cache program for that matter, but SMARTDrive
> >> is probably the most widely used). Once I find this info I would also
> >> like to disable it if possible.
> >
> >SMARTDrive cannot cache CD-ROM drives, neither will most other disk caches
> >since CD-ROM's appear to DOS as network drives, which are left well alone
> >by SMARTDrive (and most others).
> >
> >Problem solved :-) ?
>
> Not exactly. DOS 6.x and above include SmartDrive 5.0 which does
> indeed read cache CD-ROM drives. In order to disable this caching, as
> required for programs like Wing Commander III, either use the /U
> option, which turns off cacheing of all CD-ROM drives by SmartDrive,
> or use [drive letter]- (eg. "D-") on the SmartDrive command line in
> order to disable caching of a specific CD-ROM drive.
>
of RAM, you've still lost that 2MB, even though SmartDrive is not active.
What would be *really* neat would be if SmartDrive could be unloaded, to free
up whatever extended memory had been allocated to it!
--Andy Talbot (and...@sunrae.uel.ac.uk)