Using a Single Diskette Drive

MS-DOS expects the computer to have at least two diskette drives, and it displays prompts and messages accordingly. If your system has a single diskette drive, MS-DOS treats your one drive like two logical drives. This helps you perform operations that normally require two diskette drives.

Usually, MS-DOS recognizes the first diskette drive (the top drive on the Equity 386SX) as drive A and a second diskette drive as B. If you have only one diskette drive, MS-DOS can treat it as both A and B.

For example, if you enter a command to copy from A to B, MS-DOS copies from the first diskette you place in the drive

(A)to the computer’s memory. Then MS-DOS prompts you to insert another diskette (for drive B) and copies from memory to the new diskette. When copying is complete, you see a prompt to insert the original diskette (for drive A).

Because you may often swap diskettes this way, it is important to remember which diskette is which. It is also a good idea to write-protect your original diskette.

If you have a hard disk and one diskette drive, you can load the operating system and application programs from the hard disk, create and store your data there, and use the diskette drive just for copying data to or from diskettes.

If you have only one diskette drive and no hard disk, you need to use that drive to load the operating system as well as the application programs you are using. First load the operating system; this copies it to the computer’s memory (RAM) so you do not need to leave the system diskette in the drive. Then you can remove that diskette and insert the program diskette you want to use, and load that into memory too. See your application program manual for detailed instructions.

Using the Equity 386SX

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