Hi, On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Pierre LaMontagne <plamo...@comcast.net> wrote: > > You're right though, I have 3 modern PCs with Win 7 on them, none of which > have a floppy drive controller.
Almost none of them have it pre-installed these days. I bought a Sony USB-hosted floppy drive, and it works (in DOS), but I've not used it a lot lately. > So, I resurrected an older PC that does > have a floppy controller. It's a P-III 733mhz that used to run Win 98 back > in he late 90s. I must say, running old DOS software on the 733 is so much > faster than what I used to run DOS in! I think the latter DOS days were on > a 486-66 or maybe it was the 386-40(not sure), though early on I started on > an 8088, 2 360k floppies, no HD, monochrome (my first 'clone' PC). Yes, "old" machines are more than adequate for most DOS stuff (and sometimes better, due to more compatible hardware). >> If not, you have to try something like Bret's USB drivers (and your >> machine must support UHCI) > > Sorry, what's UHCI? Apparently the damn stupid "universal" serial bus (USB) has various versions and host controllers or whatnot. UHCI is one of them, supported by Intel and VIA motherboards, I gather. Unfortunately, some computers (like this Lenovo desktop) don't support it, only other stuff (EHCI). Blech. I get it, floppies are small, slow, and error-prone. They're not perfect. I don't expect anybody to "want" to use floppies, but ... it's so much harder to get USB support on non-mainstream OSes. USB is just too complicated, but since "everybody" "only" uses Linux, Windows, ... then "nobody" cares about complexity nor requirements of anybody else. >> So from old machine to new machine? Old machine has floppy but new >> doesn't? I assume you don't (or can't or won't) have networking on the >> old machine (understandable! frustrating!). If you did (maybe even >> with mTCP + packet driver), that'd be one way. > > You're right on all counts. I thought about using an ethernet network since > the Win 7 PCs have it but wanted to avoid that headache if possible... :) It's definitely a headache, at least for me. Maybe some others here (Ulrich, Mike B.) can give hints, if you're curious. >> Otherwise, you have to have some drive (hard? floppy?) to install / >> use with the other machine. > > I do have a USB floppy drive that _could_ work. Using a flash drive would > be a lot easier though. Go for the flash drive. For me, RUFUS works well, so I can't complain (too hard) about lack of floppy support. >> In fact, if you can get USB drive working, >> you can copy files to and from that with ease. This is probably easier >> than constantly burning a CD-RW or whatever. > > I was thinking by using CDs, though, I would benefit by having a good > back-up and storage would be much more compact, (650mb vs 1.44mb). Storage > space is now a consideration for me especially since floppies are now > obsolete? Sure, compared to floppies, it's fine. But I'm not sure long-term storage is a realistic goal. Mainly because I've heard (but can't prove) that CD-Rs don't last but about 5-7 years anyways. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. This 200-page book is written by three acclaimed leaders in the field. The early access version is available now. Download your free book today! http://p.sf.net/sfu/neotech_d2d_may _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
