OpenEuphoria

Re: Interface to DOS info

• Posted by John Kinne <JDKINNE at MIAMIU.BITNET> Jun 27, 1996
• 2792 views

>>I would like to collect a bit of info about the DOS machines:  I can get
 >>the DOS version, hard drive size, amount of conventional memory
 >>by using interrupts.  From contents on the hard drive I can determine the
 >>existence of Win31.  I can not find anyway to determine
 >
 >...
 >I know some Assembler programmers can get the information by reading the
 >BIOS data somewhere, but being Assembler-illiterate, I do not know how to do
 >that.
 >
 >...
 >
 Yes, and the Euphoria PEEK instruction would let me read data
 directly from memory.  Being a mainframer, I expect that DOS keeps
 lots of interesting data in memory - like my mainframe systems
 do.  My mainframe systems come with logic manuals that detail
 what is kept in memory, and how to find it.  When I took on this
 project I expected that reporting the model number of the machine
 the program is executing on would be trivial.  Not so.
X-Mailer:     MailBook 95.01.263

I have found very generic descriptions of how DOS uses memory.
But as far as I can tell, it is up to each manufacturer of each
model PC to store a byte here or there that might indicate what
model machine this is.  Very different than the tight adherence
to standards to which I am accustomed.

Not to slam the technology!  It is just a bit of a challenge.

Thanks for the note.

John Kinne