From: jj4public@gmail.com   
      
   On Fri, 22 Apr 2022 05:33:30 -0700 (PDT), muta...@gmail.com wrote:   
   > I vaguely recall (from circa 1990) configuring my BIOS   
   > to say what cylinders/heads/sectors I wanted my hard   
   > disk to be.   
   >   
   > Why was the end user involved in doing that?   
   >   
   > Thanks. Paul.   
      
   I think it's because, while harddisks has been around for quite some time at   
   that time, the ATA standard didn't exist yet. At that time, harddisks are   
   using proprietary controller via expansion card. Or a hard-card where the   
   harddisk is attached directly on the expansion card along with the   
   controller. So, there's not yet a common software API for accessing   
   harddisks. BIOSes only support one brand & model of each supported hardware   
   component type. It's not practical to include code to support various   
   hardware brand and models, where in the end, only one or two are used. It   
   would be a waste of the already limited BIOS chip storage capacity.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)