Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt (
More info?)
Zbigniew Lisiecki wrote:
> Ken wrote:
>
>
>>Zbigniew Lisiecki wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hi,
>>>EZ-BIOS might be good bios, but they have this nasty feature, one cannot
>>>get rid of them so easy, and sooner, or later one we'll surely need it !
>>>
>>>I have no windows at all and Western Digital EZ-Drive (actually Data
>>>Lifeguard) is distributed as an *exe, allowing to create a proper floppy.
>>>Who knows where can i get the bootable floppy image itself ?
>>>
>>>best wishes, zbyszek
>>
>>Doesn't the execution of the file create a bootable floppy??? It used to.
>
>
> yes, it does,
> i cannot execute any window *exe files before i get rid of EZ-Drive,
> as i wrote before
>
> my second problem is, that i am not sure if this exe creates a floppy
> addjusted somehow to my environment, or it's just a standard floppy,
> which can be transfered from another computer.
> z
It makes a standard floppy but with the EZ-drive 'BIOS' on it.
All EZ-drive is is a loadable 'BIOS' (IDE driver portion) to replace the
insufficient IDE handler in older BIOSs. So, what happens is, when the
system boots from the hard drive the first thing that's loaded in is the
EZ-drive 'IDE BIOS" so the full drive can be accessed, supposedly just as
if you had a BIOS upgrade for the motherboard.
The problem is, if the drive does not boot then the 'BIOS' driver is not
loaded and floppy utilities, or anything else running on the older
motherboard, can't access the hard drive properly because there's no 'good'
BIOS driver for the large drive. So the .exe makes a boot floppy that loads
in the EZ-Drive 'IDE BIOS', just as it would have been loaded by the hard
drive, so that programs can again properly access the hard drive. But,
other than that, it's a perfectly 'normal' floppy.
I must have missed the original post because I don't quite understand what
your core problem is. The drive doesn't boot? You changed systems? Why do
you need a boot floppy?
Unless they've changed it, it's been a while since I used EZ-drive because
I avoid it like the plague, and if I remember correctly, an 'EZ-drive'
loaded hard drive can be read like normal when put in a system with a
'good' BIOS because the EZ-Drive's 'BIOS' is not needed then.