Command: drives
USBDOS is a collection of different USB drivers and tools:
DRIVES shows details about all available disk drives in DOS.
Syntax:
DRIVES
Options:
This program displays the information about all of the disk drives it
can find and lets you know some technical information about them.
The information includes things like important memory addresses related
to the disk drivers, whether or not the drive has been accessed yet,
and the capacity of the drive.
Comments:
DRIVES is a program designed to let you view details about your disk
drives (drive letters) in the same way that DOS looks at them. There is
a table that DOS uses to manage disks, called the Current Directory
Structure Table or CDS Table. Each entry in the CDS Table is a single
CDS, and corresponds to a single drive letter (starting at A:). As the
name implies, the CDS table keeps track of the current directory for
each drive, as well as a small amount of other information (such as
whether it is a physical drive or a network drive). Other than the
current directory information, the most important thing stored in the
CDS is a pointer to another structure called the Drive Parameter Block
or DPB, which is where most of the critical information about the drive
is actually stored. The DPB is discussed in the next paragraph. The
total number of entries in the CDS Table (the total number of drive
letters available) is determined by the LASTDRIVE setting in your
CONFIG.SYS / FDCONFIG.SYS file, and cannot be changed after DOS
has booted.
For each valid CDS, there is a corresponding Drive Parameter Block or
DPB. The DPB contains most of the critical details about the drive,
including the FAT type, capacity, physical disk and partition
information, etc. The DPB also contains a pointer to the device driver
for the drive, usually installed by the DOS kernel or by a special
driver in the CONFIG.SYS / FDCONFIG.SYS file. DOS never accesses
the drive directly -- it always does it through the device driver.
The Drive Parameter Block also contains a flag which becomes set when
the drive has been Accessed in some fashion by DOS (when DOS has read
some data from the drive). This flag is very critical, because until a
drive (at least a removable drive, such as a floppy or USB disk) has
been accessed, none of the other details in the DPB can be trusted. For
example, the default DPB entry for a 3-1/2 inch floppy drive usually is
set up to look like a low-capacity (720 kB) disk, but the Accessed flag
is cleared. This tells DOS that there is a slot to plug in a disk, but
because it hasn't been Accessed, we don't know how big the drive
actually is. If you insert a 1.44 MB floppy, but don't read any data
from it, the contents of the DPB won't change (it will still show an
unaccessed 720 kB floppy). When you actually read some data from the
drive, DOS will change the DPB entry to correspond to an accessed 1.44
MB drive. However, with floppy drives, DOS will regularly unset (clear)
the Accessed flag, since DOS can't actually tell if you've changed disks
(media) or not. If the media has changed but the Accessed flag is not
cleared, DOS will probably corrupt the new disk (because it thinks it is
still the old disk).
DRIVES simply shows you some of the details that are in the DOS Current
Directory Structure (CDS) Table, and the corresponding Drive Parameter
Block (DPB) entries. This is a "snapshot" view of all the disks you
have, as viewed from the perspective of DOS. It is critical to keep in
mind that if the drive has not been accessed yet (if the "ACCESd" column
is not "Y" for a particular drive letter), none of the other details in
the output may be accurate. That is simply how DOS handles removable
disks which can be of different formats and capacities.
For more information see:
https://gitlab.com/FreeDOS/drivers/usbdos/-/tree/master/DOC/DOSUSB
OR:
C:\FREEDOS\DOC\usbintro.doc (too big for edit, please use
another edito, e.g. Blocek!)
OR:
https://bretjohnson.us/
Examples:
drives
See also:
boundtst
config.sys/fdconfig.sys
fdisk
hidsupt1
inklevel
irq
lastdrive
ps2mtest
rdisk
scantest
shsucdx
thrust
uni2asci
usbdevic
usbdos
usbdrive
usbhosts
usbhub
usbjstik
usbkeyb
usbmouse
usbprint
usbsupt1
usbuhci
usbuhcil
vendorid
Copyright © 2007-2009, Bret E. Johnson, help version 2023 W. Spiegl.
This file is derived from the FreeDOS Spec Command HOWTO.
See the file H2Cpying for copying conditions.