I am in High School and am taking a Pascal (7.0) programming class.
I have been working on a couple of various things on my own, and
need a little help.  On a couple of projects, I have needed to be able
to directly access hardware to the extent that I could make the hard drive
light come on without actually accessing a file.  I know there are ways
to do this in assembly, so maybe sticking a couple of lines of in-line
assembly code into it or something.  But, the class has only been going
a couple a months, so I am still kinda illiterate as to some of the finer
aspects of Pascal.  Since I don't think it would be too long, could
someone write it out for me.  Or, if all else fails, just the code for
opening a file and closing it to put in a loop to make the hard drive
flicker a few times.  But, thanks now for any help!

                                Varon

I suppose it's possible, though I've never tried it.  What I *have* done is a
short program that blinks the lights on the floppy drives by activating and
deactivating the stepper motors.

program flippit;

{
 Flips the floppy lights on and off.  Only tested on 2-drive systems, but
 should work on a 1-drive system.

 Written by Scott Earnest (set...@ix.netcom.com)

 DISCLAIMER:  Standard.  Use at your own risk, and if you do something
 socially, morally, or legally unacceptable with this code, that's your
 fault, not mine.

var
  d : byte;

procedure motor_on (drive : byte);

begin
  port[$3f2] := $0c+drive+1 shl (4+drive);
end;

procedure motor_off (drive : byte);

begin
  port[$3f2] := $0c+drive;
end;

begin
  d := 0;
  while keypressed do readkey;
  repeat
    motor_on (d);
    delay (150);
    motor_off (d);
    d := 1-d;
  until keypressed;
  while keypressed do readkey;
end.