DOS ain't dead

New UIDE Available -- No "Removable" HARD Disks! (Announce)

posted by Jack , Fresno, California USA, 11.06.2010, 22:29

Johnson Lam has posted a new DRIVERS.ZIP file dated 10-Jun-2010 on his
website at <http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/driver.html>.

The other drivers except UIDE are only re-dated as usual. As I noted
on this forum, UIDE is now changed to reject a BIOS unit numbered 080h
or greater (a hard-disk) which gets flagged "removable" by an EDD BIOS
"Int 13h AH=048h" request. To avoid such units from "appearing" at a
later time, UIDE will also reject any BIOS unit that shows "not ready"
(i.e. not-yet loaded!) when UIDE is initialized.

I regret having to make these changes. But UIDE and most variants of
DOS were never written to handle "removable" hard-disks. I cannot be
certain across all DOS variants that if a HARD disk presents a "media-
change" code to DOS, the system (especially its 512-byte disk buffers)
will "forget" all data for the previous volume in that disk! SERIOUS
data corruption could then result, which is NOT the fault of UIDE, and
I shall not permit UIDE to "get the BLAME!" for such corruption.

Thus, "removable" hard-disks, which I realize must be supported by the
USBDRIVE driver, will now be IGNORED by UIDE's SATA/IDE disk routines.
There are other issues in using UIDE with USBDRIVE (re-entrant Int 13h
calls by USBDRIVE are another BIG problem!), but the major problem was
"removability" that I felt needed to be addressed immediately, so UIDE
can continue to remain SAFE!!

---
(Account disabled on user's request.)

Complete thread:

• New UIDE Available -- No "Removable" HARD Disks! - Jack, 11.06.2010, 22:29 (Announce)
  • New UIDE Available -- No "Removable" HARD Disks! - Arjay, 12.06.2010, 01:55
  • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Jack, 18.06.2010, 06:01
    • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Arjay, 19.06.2010, 18:41
      • "Black Box" Approaches. - Jack, 19.06.2010, 20:51
        • UIDE mirrored on iBiblio.org for FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 19.06.2010, 21:47
        • "Black Box" Approaches. - Arjay, 19.06.2010, 22:27
          • "Black Box" Approaches. - Jack, 19.06.2010, 22:54
            • "Black Box" Approaches. - Arjay, 19.06.2010, 23:28
          • "Black Box" Approaches. - bretjohn, 21.06.2010, 23:35
          • "Black Box" Approaches. - bretjohn, 22.06.2010, 18:26
        • latest UIDE etc. (June 16, 2010) now mirrored on iBiblio.org - Rugxulo, 29.06.2010, 13:43
          • Latest UIDE etc. (July 4, 2010) - Arjay, 06.07.2010, 23:57
      • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Khusraw, 19.06.2010, 22:12
        • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Arjay, 19.06.2010, 23:15
          • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Khusraw, 20.06.2010, 01:35
            • New UIDE Update -- "External Entry" Logic Deleted. - Arjay, 20.06.2010, 04:17
              • pax vobiscum (aka, peace sells but who's buyin'?) - Rugxulo, 22.06.2010, 08:40
          • Recalling a sugestion - Khusraw, 20.06.2010, 02:58
            • Recalling a sugestion - Arjay, 20.06.2010, 03:29
            • Recalling a sugestion - rr, 20.06.2010, 13:49
  • New UIDE Available -- No "Removable" HARD Disks! - sol, 05.07.2010, 17:48
    • New UIDE Available -- No "Removable" HARD Disks! - RayeR, 17.07.2010, 16:51