LANGASTUFF My current WinMag column ( http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/1999/1206.htm ) is a kind of core dump of what I knew, so far, about DMA, and I ended the column by asking readers to share what they know as well. As usual---you folks are great!-- - we got some excellent responses. For example, reader Jay (who is a webmaster at wanganui.com) dug this out of the Microsoft site; it's information on how to test your hard drives directly for DMA compliance. Boot to DOS. At the command prompt, type: debug At the hyphen prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after each line. Do not type the semicolon (;) or the comment after the semicolon. NOTE: The first character of each line is the letter o, not the numeral zero. o 1f6 a0 ; a0 (a-zero) is for a master drive, use b0 for a slave. o 1f2 22 ; 22 is for DMA mode 2, use 21 for DMA mode 1. o 1f1 03 ; 03 (zero-3) is to program the hard disk timing. o 1f7 ef ; ef is the set feature command for the hard disk. i 1f1 ; Reads in the error status; a value is returned. To quit Debug, type the letter "q" and press ENTER. If the number returned after entering "i 1f1" is 00, the hard disk accepts the DMA protocol timing that you have entered with the "o 1f2" statement, and the hard disk supports DMA. A return value of 04 indicates that the hard disk does not support a DMA multiple-word protocol. If the value returned is not 00 or 04, you may not have typed the characters correctly, or you may need to quit Windows. Reader Mike Kemmerrer also found some other gems hidden elsewhere in the underbrush of the Microsoft site. He writes: I found some useful articles on the windows website on how to tweak DMA settings in NT4.0 and 2000. Also a note on hangs in win98 with DMA running. winNT/Win2k: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q198/1/27.ASP http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q158/8/73.ASP win98: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q193/4/73.ASP