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USBASPI 2.27x tests (Announce)

posted by Doug E-mail, 07.01.2011, 21:52

It's good to see development continue on other DOS USB drivers --
cheers!

Ok, i tried both the revised USBASPI.SYS and new USBEXFAT.COM...
and had mixed results. I'm still in the process of testing
USBEXFAT, so i'll focus here on the USBASPI.

I'll make a few comparisons between this 2010 revised USBASPI
driver (v2.27x) and the 2008 (latest?) Panasonic USBASPI driver
(v2.27).

(Note that there's also another "revised" USBASPI.EXE fork --
v2.28 (2008) -- that's hosted at mdgx's site, but i've found it
to be kinda buggy. It looks to be a revision of Panasonic v2.24
(2007). The good news about that one is that it has command-line
help with /? -- tells what most switches mean.)

As RayeR already mentioned, the 2.27x USBASPI.SYS can load from
the command line with the David Woodhouse / Eric Auer DEVLOAD.COM
-- this makes it convenient to load these drivers at some point
during a DOS session, so otherwise won't take up memory. (Note
that they can't be unloaded -- this requires a reboot.)

A text scan of the de-compressed 2.27x file shows command-line
switches similar to (the same as?) the later Panasonic series.

Nicely, 2.27x seems to load *way* quicker than the original
Panasonic 2.27 driver! Without the /U, /O, or /E switches
(actually with only /V), using DEVLOAD, flashdisc in root hub, my
measurements:

2.27x USBASPI.SYS: 01.17 sec
2.27 USBASPI.SYS: 12.86 sec

That difference is a factor of 11! Quite noticeable.

Also nice, 2.27x does NOT install in memory when it can't find a
target USB device -- unlike the Panasonic drivers which load into
memory regardless (frustrating, in that it requires a system
reboot if you want to try again).

The 2.27x driver detects all of the following devices on my
current system (with Intel 82801EB/ER ICH5/ICH5R):

Zip-100 drive (UHCI)
Verbatim 16m (!) flashdisc (UHCI)
PNY 2g0 flashdisc (EHCI)
Vivitar binoculars/camera (UHCI)
IBM (Teac) diskette drive (UHCI)
Microtech (Teac) diskette drive (UHCI)

However, that doesn't mean that USBEXFAT can successfully assign
drive letters to them! (USBEXFAT results to come....)

What didn't work? ZiO! Smartmedia Card Reader/Writer (UHCI),
SanDisk 12-in-1 Card Reader/Writer (EHCI). I guess that's to be
expected.

All in all, nice work! Looks like i'll be using the USBASPI
v2.27x revision for most of my USB mass-storage stuff.

- Doug B.

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