Hi! Not all DOS USB disk drivers are one part... A driver pair that works well is for example USBASPI ASPIDISK where the former gives block level access while the latter connects DOS block devices to those partitions on the USB disk which are FAT formatted. You can have (write) some ASPINTFS driver which would use USBASPI for the lowlevel stuff, for example :-).
Eric >> system of drivers. The kernel supports BIOS int13 drives as well >> as FAT filesystems. After booting, you can load drivers to give >> the kernel access to the sectors of other FAT drives, such as ZIP, >> USB drives or ramdisks, and the kernel does the FAT handling. >> >> Or you load drivers based on the network redirector and its close >> cousin the "CDEX" (mscdex, shsucdx) for optical drives... > The common problem of both interfaces is that they don't communicate > anything between each other. So if someone has written, lets say, a DOS > block device driver that allows DOS to access USB storage media, and then > you load some redirector-type DOS NTFS driver you (usually) still won't be > able to access NTFS partitions found on USB storage media. In fact, I > don't know any redirector that uses DOS's block devices for device access > instead of relying on direct Int13 access. You could write such a driver but you have to remember that "DOS block device" already implies FAT anyway. A more lowlevel block view would communicate directly between lowlevel driver and non- FAT filesystem driver, as in the above ASPINTFS example. This is just between both drivers (via ASPI) so there is no need for the kernel to give any support. Another example is GCDROM / SHSUCDX: The lowlevel ATAPI access and CDEX can use any interface for the communication with each other, the DOS kernel does not have to be involved at all. In the ATAPI CD/DVD case, that interface is some int2f and some "DOS character device" interface, nothing "block". Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by: SourcForge Community SourceForge wants to tell your story. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sf-spreadtheword _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
