DOS ain't dead

UIDE has been updated to 10-29-2007 and can now run only hard-disks or only
CD/DVD drives, as requested by Laaca and others.

UIDE is available at <http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/drivers.html>.

UIDEL will be replaced in the 11-01-2007 release with a "small size" UIDES.
It is the small 1.75K UIDE in a 6K "packed" object file. Lucho has tested
UIDES and will include it in his next "boot" diskette release.

Really nice and unique drivers! I'll definetly test them.
I see, that they are packed now. By the way, is there any ASPI layer, that can use your UIDE driver for access to CD-ROM hardware? Problem is actual - SATA CD-recorders are becoming widespread, and CDRTOOLS are requiring ASPI layer.

I know only one solution - huge ASPI.SYS from OAK technologies (no SATA, no UDMA).

Best regards,
Alexey

Sorry, but as its name implies, UIDE works only with "IDE" devices.

ASPI is a NIGHTMARE, and firms like Adaptec or Iomega are NOT friendly about
providing DOS specs. Others who know ASPI can call UIDE's "external drive"
logic or add a new "internal driver" to cache such drives. I lost 6 months
trying to write a ZIP driver, gave up and got a nice Gigabyte "Combo CD/DVD"
using ATAPI. Much less expensive, anyway. No more ASPI or Iomega for me!

> ASPI is a NIGHTMARE, and firms like Adaptec or Iomega are NOT friendly
> about providing DOS specs. Others who know ASPI can call UIDE's "external
> drive" logic or add a new "internal driver" to cache such drives.

I really understand problems with SCSI and ZIP drivers and even don't think about them - they are not widespread. But I'm speaking about another driver - ASPI emulation layer for IDE/ATAPI CD/DVD drives. Drive is IDE/ATAPI, software interface is ASPI. I think, that it may be a separate driver interacting with UIDE.
Scheme is:
DEVICE -- UIDE/UDVD/QCDROM -- ASPI EMULATOR (and MSCDEX) -- CDRECORD.EXE

> I really understand problems with SCSI and ZIP drivers and even don't
> think about them - they are not widespread. But I'm speaking about
> another driver - ASPI emulation layer for IDE/ATAPI CD/DVD drives.
> Drive is IDE/ATAPI, software interface is ASPI. I think, that it
> may be a separate driver interacting with UIDE ...

UIDE handles CD/DVD drives for data input only, not any sort of data
output. The spec for a "CD-ROM Redirector" like SHCDX33C or MSCDEX
never included write functions, as it was done before CD/DVD burners
were available.

Instead of adding write logic in UIDE, you should keep your "burner"
driver separate. If it only does output, UIDE can still input data
files, since UIDE and the "burner" driver will not be running at the
same time. If the "burner" driver DOES do file input, it can still
call UIDE's "external entry" routine for data caching like UDVD did.
Slightly different "linkage", but it can still work O.K.