DOS ain't dead

Don't miss that Georg updated his DOSUSB to version 1.4b
Although there isn't anz loud anouncement on his site it is very important update because now the USB disk driver is fixed and works.
So now we have a driver which allows to change flash disks without rebooting the computer!
Note that other drivers don't allow the USB hotplug but DOSUSB yes. I tested it, it works perfectly.

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DOS-u-akbar!

> Don't miss that Georg updated his DOSUSB to version 1.4b
> Although there isn't anz loud anouncement on his site it is very important
> update because now the USB disk driver is fixed and works.
> So now we have a driver which allows to change flash disks without
> rebooting the computer!
> Note that other drivers don't allow the USB hotplug but DOSUSB yes. I
> tested it, it works perfectly.

If it works perfectly for you, then perhaps you can supply a short description how to install it? Because I'm unable to get it to work. If I load USBDISK.SYS (with DEVLOAD.COM), it tells me a new drive H: is available. Then I load USBDOS.COM. Then I try to switch to H: and ............ nothing happens anymore.

If I load DOSUSB.COM before USBDISK.SYS - IMO the documentation should be a bit more clear about such issues - then both drivers also load (DOSUSB finds a device and USBDISK tells it has installed H:), but the freeze still happens ....



under Windows XP/ 9x there is no problem with this memory stick, it's formated with FAT16.

Edit:
I got it to work finally. The USBDISK.SYS has problems with the CD-ROM driver (SHCDX33C) loaded in CONFIG.SYS. It's unable to detect that SHCDX33C has installed itself for drive H: and reuses this drive letter. If the CD-ROM driver is commented out in CONFIG.SYS it works!



2. Edit:

It's also possible to assign another drive letter to the cd-rom and thus leaving a "hole" for USBDISK. This way there is no problem using a CD-ROM and USBDISK

However, USBDISK seems to have severe problems with writes. Reading works reliable, albeit slow. To copy a file to the stick, however, isn't successful. Worse, after the copy has been aborted (leaving a directory entry with file size 0), there are "exception 06" reported by Jemm, which might be an indication that there was an hazardous write to DOS memory.

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MS-DOS forever!

> Edit:
> I got it to work finally. The USBDISK.SYS has problems with the CD-ROM
> driver (SHCDX33C) loaded in CONFIG.SYS. It's unable to detect that
> SHCDX33C has installed itself for drive H: and reuses this drive letter.
> If the CD-ROM driver is commented out in CONFIG.SYS it works!
>

what about assigning a drive letter to the cdrom?

> what about assigning a drive letter to the cdrom?

i just tested and assigning drive letter to the cdrom works fine. i leave gaps between hd, cdrom and ramdisk. dosusb shows up as a ramdrive with the last drive letter.

> > what about assigning a drive letter to the cdrom?
>
> i just tested and assigning drive letter to the cdrom works fine. i leave
> gaps between hd, cdrom and ramdisk. dosusb shows up as a ramdrive with the
> last drive letter.

Good! And are you able to copy a file to the disk?

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MS-DOS forever!

> Good! And are you able to copy a file to the disk?

yes, but only small text files when testing. i didn't see your 2nd edit earlier so i didn't try large files.

> > Good! And are you able to copy a file to the disk?
>
> yes, but only small text files when testing. i didn't see your 2nd edit
> earlier so i didn't try large files.

the largest file i can find is 8mb so i copied it over and over in several nested directories. r/w works ok for me, but it really is slow. and if dosusb is not accessed for sometime, there is a delay the next time it is accessed. the behavior is similar to a cdrom that has spinned down.

> the largest file i can find is 8mb so i copied it over and over in several
> nested directories. r/w works ok for me, but it really is slow. and if
> dosusb is not accessed for sometime, there is a delay the next time it is
> accessed. the behavior is similar to a cdrom that has spinned down.

Ok thanks, so there are conditions where it will work, apparently. Because for me it does not. I can copy small files to the stick, but usually it crashes. It's also common that the whole disk is trashed then and must be formatted. No problems with this stick in Windows.

FYI, I also did a few tests with "superfloppy" format, that is, there's no MBR on the disk, just a FAT file system. AFAIKS USBDISK cannot handle this.

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MS-DOS forever!

Did you get my mail "HX in VPC2004 SP1" on Friday? Just asking, because I didn't get any response.

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Forum admin

> Did you get my mail "HX in VPC2004 SP1" on Friday? Just asking, because I
> didn't get any response.

Yes. But it's as thick as "Krieg und Frieden", I will need some time to read it.

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MS-DOS forever!

> Ok thanks, so there are conditions where it will work, apparently. Because
> for me it does not. I can copy small files to the stick, but usually it
> crashes. It's also common that the whole disk is trashed then and must be
> formatted. No problems with this stick in Windows.

This USB driver is crappy. I tried it on CF in USB 2.0 reader. It works for me but only for smaller files up to ~10MB. Transfer speed was ~400kB/s. When I copied bigger ~40MB file and read it back and compare them it shows some errors (~3kB of different bytes) beyond ~20MB offset (but it is not constant). And the 'best' thing was after I reboot I got completly messed up filesystem on CF - garbage in root directory, messed bootsector, only MBR survived... It do the same under DOS 6.22 and 7.10.

I have much better experiences with USBMASS/386 4.05 which is pretty fast (~5MB/s write, 6,5MB/s read), dynamically loadable and no data corruption. But it eats lot of lowmem.

I have aslo USB legacy support in BIOS but it doesn't handle USB 2.0 speed.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I have much better experiences with USBMASS/386 4.05 which is pretty fast
> (~5MB/s write, 6,5MB/s read), dynamically loadable and no data corruption.

May I ask why you provide a "hacked" version on your pages?

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Forum admin

> May I ask why you provide a "hacked" version on your pages?

bacause it's not time limited or else illness I don't know :) I got it from some bootable multitool cd image and didn't look around for original version.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Please, if you have any problems with DOSUSB report it to Georg Potthaust to his forum to be fixed it in the next version.
However I didn't have any problems with it so far.
(I use it with two Kingston flashdisks)

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DOS-u-akbar!

> > May I ask why you provide a "hacked" version on your pages?
>
> bacause it's not time limited or else illness I don't know :) I got it
> from some bootable multitool cd image and didn't look around for original
> version.

So it's an illegal download. I wish our members to respect copyrights.

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Forum admin

> However I didn't have any problems with it so far.
> (I use it with two Kingston flashdisks)

Even with large (over 40MB) files (compared for zero difference)?

EDIT: I send him report, he will try look at it.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> So it's an illegal download. I wish our members to respect
> copyrights.

Yeah, and I'm criminal (as noticed before :) And I wish that everybody takes care of his own website and don't bother with others. I did many hw/sw hacks that helped some people and maybe hurt some others. It's my choice. I will not follow any flamewar here.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Laaca wrote:

> any problems with DOSUSB report it to Georg Potthaust

also one letter too much But indeed please ( RayeR ) report the bugs you find.

rr wrote:

> So it's an illegal download. I wish our members to respect copyrights.

And I wish DOS to get rid of all piracy relations (ripping "DOS" from whatever) ... sorry for repeating myself again, I'm criminal too, even more

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> also one letter too much But indeed please ( RayeR ) report
> the bugs you find.

I did and new version is available.

Here's message from him:

> I found a bug in USBDISK.SYS and fixed it. Could you please download the new
> version from the web site and try that?
> Regards
> Georg Potthast

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I did and new version is
> available.

It also fixes the bug often discussed by DOS386 before:

Georg:
> and DOSUSB jumps over the data in the code section

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l

> > also one letter too much But indeed please ( RayeR )
> report
> > the bugs you find.
>
> I did and new version is
> available.
>
> Here's message from him:
>
> > I found a bug in USBDISK.SYS and fixed it. Could you please download the
> new
> > version from the web site and try that?
> > Regards
> > Georg Potthast

Thanks to both you and Georg! This version works a lot better.

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MS-DOS forever!

> I did and new version is available

USBDISK.SYS works sometimes: did work with FAT28 1.9 GiB stick, didn't with 3.8 GiB stick and 500 GiB HD (unpartitioned FAT28)

DISKSPY is unusable. Does it work for anyone ?

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> > I did and new version is
> available
>
> USBDISK.SYS works sometimes: did work with FAT28 1.9 GiB stick, didn't
> with 3.8 GiB stick and 500 GiB HD (unpartitioned FAT28)

what mean didn't work and FAT28?
I will try it on 1GB CF, I have aslo 16GB one but I don't want get data corrupted.

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> what mean [...] FAT28?

As specified by Microsoft, the upper 4 bits of each FAT entry of a "FAT32" file system are reserved and must be ignored. This results in only 28, not 32, actually usable bits in each FAT entry. (This also affects the size of the largest possible "FAT32" partition.)

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l

> I will try it on 1GB CF, I have aslo 16GB one but I don't want get data
> corrupted.

I got ver 1.4c and make a test again. 1st I copied a big 100MB file and group of 100 small
(batch) files. Reading of small files was done OK but when reading big file I got read error
in file manager and when press retry it hanged. I rebooted and tried it read again and
the second attempt was successfull. Comparison didn't show any differences and
also scandisk didn't find any error on filesystem. Seems to be a lot better but still not perfect...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

RayeR wrote:

> what mean didn't work

DOS was completely unable to access the drive, DIR didn't work.

> and FAT28?

A great filesystem offered by Micro$oft, being able (theoretically) to handle up to 2^28 clusters, in a not very efficient way, that I'm going to leave soon

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This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> A great filesystem offered by Micro$oft, being able (theoretically) to
> handle up to 2^28 clusters, in a not very efficient way, that I'm going to
> leave soon

Cool! What will you use instead? A self-written file system (FAT29? )?

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MS-DOS forever!

> Cool! What will you use instead? A self-written file system

Exactly

> FAT29?

Very wrong.

1. Not based on FAT
2. Up to 8 EiB volume and file size
3. Cca 128 KiB minimal volume size

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***