DG>
  > Anyone 'round here have any experience accessing drives via
  > BIOS function 13,02?
  >
  > [...]
  >
  > Try running the same program under a DOS session in OS/2, and success is
  > variable. Sometimes info is dropped, others it claims that floppies are
  > unreadable. It somehow managed to crash the DOS session once last night, Wh
  > really amuses me is that it appears to force a reset to *both* floppy drive
  > whether I ask it to or not! :/
DG>

  That's because OS/2 is locking the floppy drives when it detects a
  Virtual DOS Machine using BIOS calls to access the floppy drives, and
  when it unlocks them again, the filesystem manager performs a media
  check and device reset.

  The easiest way to read a boot sector in OS/2 is to write a native OS/2
  program, unsurprisingly enough.  The BIOS routines in a Virtual DOS
  Machine are not the lowest layer of the whole system as they are on a
  DOS machine.  When a DOS program running on OS/2 makes a BIOS call for
  HD/floppy access, the VDDs translate that into a sequence of "lock
  device"/"perform operation"/"unlock device"
calls to the OS/2 kernel's
  file management routines.  A native OS/2 program can use the OS/2
  services more efficiently.

  > JdeBP <
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