Draft:Diskette Parameter Table

Submission declined on 22 March 2025 by Spiderone (talk).

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Declined by Spiderone 6 days ago. Last edited by Spiderone 6 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author.

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Diskette Parameter Table (DPT) is a group of bytes that stores the information about the active floppy disk that bootloader loaded from by BIOS.

It can be achieved using the Interrupt vector table in x86 microprocessor architecture family. The DPT's Interrupt index is 1Eh. The starting address of DPT can be achieved using LDS/LES REG16, [1Eh * 4] instructions in x86 microprocessors. The values in DPT are mostly used to calculate the Cylinder-head-sector address from linear addresses of data in the diskette.

Layout

A usual Diskette Parameter Table consists of 11 bytes:

Structure of a DPT
Offset	Description
00h	bits 7-4 : step rate bits 3-0 : head unload time
01h	bits 7-1 : head load time bit 0 : non-DMA mode (always 0)
02h	Delay until motor turned off. (In clock ticks)
03h	Bytes per sector. 00h = 128 01h = 256 02h = 512 03h = 1024
04h	Sectors per track. (Maximum if different for different tracks.)
05h	length of gap between sectors 2Ah for 5.25" 1Bh for 3.5"
06h	Data length (Ignored if bytes-per-sector field nonzero)
07h	Gap length when formatting 50h for 5.25" 6Ch for 3.5"
08h	Format filler byte (default F6h)
09h	Head settle time in milliseconds
0Ah	Motor start time in 1/8 seconds

External links

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