Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors

2012-01-16 Thread Jack

Re: 4K sector sizes, I realized today that UIDE, UIDE2,
and UIDEJR likely will NOT be affected at all --

1) DOS has a 64K-byte limit for read/write requests, in
fact 127 sectors of 512 bytes (the UIDE drivers do
accept 128).   Since 4K-byte sectors fit into this
limit, no physical-level driver changes are needed.

2) All 3 UIDE drivers do ONLY physical block I-O  and
know nothing about directories, file systems, etc.
The drivers remain DOS independent, i.e. they just
read/write sectors at the orders of the DOS system
and user programs.   MUCH simpler and a LOT smaller!

3) UIDE/UIDE2 require, and UIDEJR can set, a 64K buffer
in XMS memory for misaligned or other I-O unsuited
to UltraDMA.   Since DOS cannot do more than 64K I-O
at a time, no change to the UIDE drivers' UltraDMA
buffering is needed.

4) UIDE/UIDE2 set cache blocks of varying sizes, 8K for
a 5-MB cache, up thru 64K for an 80-MB+ cache.   So,
the drivers have enough cache blocks in all cases to
be effective, in handling both directory sectors and
data files.   4K disk sectors fit evenly, into any
UIDE/UIDE2 cache-block size same as 512-byte sectors
do.   So UIDE/UIDE2 will need NO changes for caching
the larger disk sectors!

About all that MAY be needed in the 3 UIDE drivers is
some init logic to select using 4K-byte sectors, if a
hard-disk demands this (FOOLISH if so, in my opinion!).

Assuming boot or FDISK/FORMAT problems are dealt with
as required, my comment about 4K-byte sectors is Bring
'em on!   The 3 UIDE drivers will run fine with them
and so regular DOS I-O should not be any problem!

[In the U.S.A., we have an old engineering joke known
as the K.I.S.S. Principle, whose letters denote Keep
it SIMPLE, stupid!.   Less and less of a JOKE, as time
goes by and computers become unjustifiably COMPLEX!   I
and the UIDE drivers still OBEY the KISS Principle,
insofar as is possible!].


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Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors

2012-01-16 Thread Eric Auer

Hi Bertho, trying to reiterate / re-explain my plan / idea:

 By the way - a DRIVER could interface with any disk with
 any sector size and then just provide an int13 or int25/26 interface
 with 512 byte sector size for data transfer to DOS.

As explained in a longer mail this week, it actually SHOULD
work: Only a few values in the boot sector would differ from
a native 4k sector FAT filesystem compared to a filesystem
where things work in groups of 8 sectors of 512 byte each,
which is exactly what you would get when you make a 4k disk
(containing a native 4k based FAT partition) visible as if
it would have 512 byte sized sectors instead.

This means you cannot make the RAW DISK visible to DOS that
way, but you ONLY have to show DOS a modified boot sector to
make the rest of an otherwise unchanged PARTITION work from
native 4k sectors into show DOS 512 byte fake sec size.

Because DOS only checks partition tables at boot, it never
looks at a whole RAW DISK through block device drivers, not
counting those built into the kernel for your boot drives.

This means that it already is part of the normal job of any
loadable block device driver to process partition tables and
show sectors and boot sector properties to DOS. Software
has routinely modified boot sector properties on the fly to
show DOS tuned values for many years, e.g. for ramdisks etc.



Note, however, that the OTHER way round is NOT compatible
with other operating systems: You cannot FORMAT native 4k
sector disks in a way that uses areas of 512 byte size as
independent sectors and then show that disk to another OS
as 4k sector disk. The disk must be already formatted with
groups of 4k size in mind.

Again, you CAN safely use 4k disks with 4k FAT partitions
in a DOS with 512 byte sector size, as long as your block
device driver converts the boot sector BPB properties on
the fly into using 512 byte units. And as explained in my
earlier mail, this ALWAYS works on FAT32 partitions with
at most 2 TB size and at most 64 kB cluster size as limit.

A block device driver for accessing native 4k disks with a
fixed 512 byte per sector DOS kernel can easily show only
those partitions which are not more than 2 TB, 64k-cluster.

I mean my 15 Jan 2012 23:33 CET mail :-)



 This scheme won't work if the disk has to be usable aslo in other
 OSes like Windows XP, Linux, etc. that recognise the 4k sectors
 natively !

See above - disks partitioned and formatted in 4k compatible
way or simply using the native 4k sector size can be used in
all OSes in a compatible way, even in a 512 byte sector size
with the help of a converted view on the boot sector block
device driver in DOS which shows DOS each 4k sector as a row
of 8 sectors of 512. They also STAY compatible that way, so
DOS does not break anything by doing access in 512 byte units
on the block device driver size. It only is a bit SLOWER, as
the block device driver will still talk in 4k sectors when
talking to that native 4k sector size disk.



 Someone, maybe not Eric, asked what I have been using for accessing
 USB mass storage in DOS. Answer : a version of Panasonic's
 USBASPI.SYS. This allows access to 4k sectors using SCSI commands.

Interesting, but would that be easier than using Bret's or Georg's
USB storage drivers? As long as somebody explains me how to write
and read 4k sectors with those drivers, I should be able to show
how to show 512 sectors and a transformed BPB on the DOS side, in
that way making FAT32 partitions on that disk useable by unpatched
FreeDOS with a simple loadable block device driver in a safe* way.

*I cannot stop you from breaking the wonder by reformatting that
partition in a non-4k-compatible way, apart from write-protecting
the boot sector. You cannot repartition disks through block device
drivers anyway, so THAT part is safe. Also, DOSFSCK will be happy
(will not notice anything strange) and CHKDSK skips FAT32 anyway.

Regards, Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors

2012-01-16 Thread Eric Auer

Hi Bret,

yes you would see a problematic mismatch if you were to
talk raw SCSI or CHS to a disk while being inconsistent
about whether you use 512 byte or rather 4096 bytes per
sector...

However, when DOS mounts a partition with help of a
loadable block device driver, nothing would access the
raw view of the disk. In any case the kernel will not,
it will only talk to the block device driver. Anything
beyond that is of course evil, but so is dosfsck-ing a
partition in Linux while it is mounted at the same time.

Can you recommend any free int 13 or block device based
delayed / pooled write caching software? As far as I can
remember, all modern (LBA compatible, given disk sizes
on current PCs) implementations of this are commercial.

 ... This is why I suggest to first grow such a file to the final
 size, putting all FAT writes into ONE access and then writing the
 file's contents in large N kB chunks.
 
 Excellent idea, especially with USB.

Thanks, but can you benchmark it? ;-)

 So you actually do the virtual trick the other way around?
...
 if a buffer is 2048 and the sectors are only 512, the
 last 1536 bytes of the buffer are simply never used.

Ah, I had understood that you were showing a group of
4 native 512 byte sectors as if they were a 2k sector.

 Yes.  But for reasons already discussed, this should not be done by
 virtualizing the sector size -- that is asking for problems, IMHO.

Only if you can look beyond the virtualization in a bad
way... For example the same issue existed with ontrack
ezdrive drivers installed in the master boot record:

When you booted a native-LBA-enabled operating system,
the disk contents would appear shifted compared to the
virtual LBA as seen while the driver is loaded... Only
those versions of such drivers which tried to hide the
space taken up by the driver suffered from the problem.

In the suggested virtual 512 byte sector scenario, no
shifting happens, BUT DOS is allowed to write in units
of 512 bytes. Therefore, the virtual 512 byte sector
block device driver must NOT allow DOS to re-format the
partition because that would allow DOS to place things
which have to be whole native 4k sectors at fractional
locations. Also, DOS must NOT be allowed to repartition
the disk, but that is easily done by not giving int 13
access to it. Block device drivers do not provide int13
anyway, so that one is easy? As long as DOS is not able
to change partitioning or boot sector, the whole set of
FAT32 structures will stay nicely aligned to 4k units.

Apart from that, I still believe: Convert the BPB and
boot sector on the fly, and DOS will be totally fine
with looking at (and writing to!) a native 4k sector
partition through looks like 512 glasses... :-)

And of course it is nice that the magic values are
just before the end of the first 512 bytes even when
the native sector size is larger, makes things easy.

Eric


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Re: [Freedos-user] VirtualBox FreeDOS HowTo

2012-01-16 Thread Jim Hall
 I have started a VirtualBox HowTo in our FreeDOS wiki.
 It is a sort of installation walkthrough with many pictures.

 It can be found here:

 http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Installing_FreeDOS_in_VirtualBox

 That looks great, you've done an awesome job at posting such a detailed
 guide. I'm so happy I kept things simple for now so not that many issues
 will arise.
[...]
 Thanks for your guide, I hope Jim will link it from the download page.


I finally added this to the Download page. It looks great, thanks!

-jh

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Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors

2012-01-16 Thread Bret Johnson
 yes you would see a problematic mismatch if you were to talk raw
 SCSI or CHS to a disk while being inconsistent about whether you use
 512 byte or rather 4096 bytes per sector...

That's precisely the problem.  Depending on which DOS programs you use, some 
simply call DOS, some may use INT 25h/26h, some may use INT 13h, others may use 
raw SCSI/ASPI, and there are also other possibilities.  If you could force all 
calls through the DOS device driver, you could eliminate any potential problems 
with DOS.  But DOS doesn't force programs to do that, and there are certain 
kinds of programs (FDISK, FORMAT, SYS, CHKDSK, SCANDISK, ...) that require 
low-level access and can't go through the DOS Device Driver.  And that doesn't 
even address the potential issues of using that same device on another OS or 
BIOS.

The potential compatibility problems are just too great for me to even want to 
attempt this.  FYI, my driver provides an INT 13h interface (and I think it's 
the only one that does).  That allows you to use standard DOS utilities to 
partition and format and create bootable disks, without needing to resort (at 
least in some cases) to the special Windows and Linux utilities.

 However, when DOS mounts a partition with help of a loadable block
 device driver, nothing would access the raw view of the disk. In any
 case the kernel will not, it will only talk to the block device
 driver. Anything beyond that is of course evil, but so is
 dosfsck-ing a partition in Linux while it is mounted at the same
 time.

It actually isn't evil in DOS to do low-level maintenance on a mounted 
partition.  You just need to make sure you flush any buffers and caches, and 
re-mount if anything that DOS may care about (sector size, number of sectors, 
cluster size, ...) is changed.  In the case of removable media (like USB and 
floppies), that shouldn't even require a reboot.

 Can you recommend any free int 13 or block device based delayed / 
 pooled write caching software? As far as I can remember, all
 modern (LBA compatible, given disk sizes on current PCs)
 implementations of this are commercial.

I don't know of any, but there's definitely a need for one.  I normally don't 
use caches at all, but when I need one it needs to be a write-delay cache and I 
use MS SMARTDRV.  I actually don't like SMARTDRV very much (it uses too much 
memory and requires a reboot to uninstall), but I have it and it works OK.

I don't find write-through caches like LBACACHE and UIDE to provide enough 
speed benefit to be very helpful (though they might increase disk life to some 
degree).  In addition, LBACACHE and UIDE are INT 13h caches instead of INT 21h 
caches (like SMARTDRV is), so they don't work with all disks (including USB and 
SCSI).  When I really need to increase disk access speed (a big problem in some 
VM's), I copy my commonly-used utilities and batch files to a RAM disk.

 Thanks, but can you benchmark it? ;-)

I've already done a simple benchmark, though I don't think it's exactly what 
you're looking for.  It's discussed on pages 158 and 159 of USBINTRO.DOC (in 
the Sector Transfer Size discussion of the USBDRIVE section).  Basically, the 
speed increases when you pool large numbers of contiguous sectors and send 
them at the same time.  A true, valid benchmark would require all sorts of 
external parameter variability elimination, which I probably won't ever do.

 Only if you can look beyond the virtualization in a bad way... For
 example the same issue existed with ontrack ezdrive drivers
 installed in the master boot record:
 ...

There are lots of examples of this in the past.  I also remember when there 
were some programs that used incorrect formulas in the CHS - LBA translations 
that created all sorts of compatibility problems.  That's why I think it's 
dangerous to do anything unique that no other OS or BIOS does.


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Re: [Freedos-user] Re : Support for 4k byte sectors

2012-01-16 Thread Jack

To set the record straight on caches and on UIDE --

 Can you recommend any free int 13 or block device based delayed/
 pooled write caching software?   As far as I can remember, all
 modern (LBA compatible, given disk sizes on current PCs)
 implementations of this are commercial.

 I don't know of any, but there's definitely a need for one.  I normally  
 don't use caches at all, but when I need one it needs to be a  
 write-delay cache and I use MS SMARTDRV.  I actually don't like SMARTDRV  
 very much (it uses too much memory and requires a reboot to uninstall),  
 but I have it and it works OK.

I agree with the above -- Write Back (delayed-write) caches usually are
commercial, as they require a LOT of work and must be sold for a price.
And I too absolutely HATED SMARTDRV -- Takes the most memory but caches
the LEAST amount of data for it!   I used Norton NCACHE2 for years, which
is also a memory hog, but not as bad for the amount of data it handles.

 I don't find write-through caches like LBACACHE and UIDE to provide  
 enough speed benefit to be very helpful (though they might increase disk  
 life to some degree).  In addition, LBACACHE and UIDE are INT 13h caches  
 instead of INT 21h caches (like SMARTDRV is), so they don't work with  
 all disks (including USB and SCSI).  When I really need to increase disk  
 access speed (a big problem in some VM's), I copy my commonly-used  
 utilities and batch files to a RAM disk.

No cache will ever compete with a RAM disk.   RAM is always faster than
disks with their seek/rotational latencies and their much slower transfer
rates.   But I dispute your comment about Write Through caches offering
not-enough speed benefit, and I bet all VERY happy! users of UIDE might
argue with you, as well.

There is a REASON why Write Back caches are all so large -- they demand
MANY hooks of a non-generic type into a DOS system, to handle Ctrl/Alt/
DEL and other events that require a flush of sectors not-yet written to
disk.   UIDE only needs to hook the Int 13h vector to do its functions.
Also, UIDE is not just an Int 13h cache -- It CAN still be called by user
drivers which desire its caching, though I am sadly aware that no one has
ever done this.   DOS driver development, or enhancement, isn't done that
much any more.

I did everything possible to make UIDE a FAST Write Through cache.   It
integrates caching with UltraDMA I-O for disks/CDs/DVDs; it can do direct
UltraDMA to/from cache buffers to save time; it uses a binary-search when
looking for cached data blocks (NOT hashing, which breaks-DOWN in speed
at about a 35%-40% full search table); and it is only 5.2K (UIDE) or 4.5K
(UIDE2) of assembly-language, as I REFUSE to have God-forsaken C in any
SYSTEM driver as important as UIDE is!!

But, if you wish to continue giving-up 40K+ for SMARTDRV, 80K+ for Norton
NCACHE2 or however-many K for other Write Back schemes, feel free to do
just that!   I and others will continue using the 944-byte UIDE/UIDE2 and
will be VERY happy! with the speed increase we DO get, from doing so!

[And if there are still those who do not understand how UIDE/UIDE2 manage
to require only 944 bytes of upper/DOS memory, just call it Sorcery!!].


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[Freedos-user] questions on installation and acpi

2012-01-16 Thread TJ Edmister

Greetings, I wanted to try out FreeDOS on an old laptop where I have  
replaced the HDD with a CF card. I am looking to avoid floppies/CDs  
however, so I am wondering if anyone has an image that could be written to  
the CF card that would then boot into FreeDOS. I`ve found that once I have  
a bootable CF card I can dump the whole thing to an image using a sector  
editor, and use that image to make another CF card of equal or greater  
size bootable as well. Having a bootable image available would be  
convenient for some folks, am I right?

I`m also wondering if it is possible to install FreeDOS onto a FAT16/32  
partition alongside Windows NT4/2K/XP and add it to the Windows boot menu  
by pointing it to a file containing the FreeDOS boot sector. That is how I  
keep a win98 command prompt around as an option on 2K/XP boxes. The tricky  
part of course is getting that boot sector, along with the numbers in it  
that match the drive geometry. I`m assuming FreeDOS uses its own boot  
sector that is different than a DOS or win9x one, is this correct? Does it  
use IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS as system files or are they called something  
else?

The other thing I`m curious about is how speedstep and CPU states are  
working under FreeDOS. I have another laptop which had the CPU (a  
low-voltage one that is soldered to the board!) replaced with a faster  
model. Since the BIOS wasn`t designed to support this, it always boots up  
at the default (minimum) speed. There are utilities to manipulate the CPU  
speed under Windows but I haven`t found anything that runs under DOS. I  
tried FDAPM, and got an error about unable to parse ... but  
surprisingly, using the speed argument I was able to switch it to  
something even slower (but not faster). I didn`t know a Pentium M could  
run at less than 600MHz, but when I used speed4 it seemed like it was cut  
down to half that speed. (I took this opportunity to run the old bytemark  
CPU benchmark, which normally would crash on anything 600MHz or faster due  
to a bug)

TIA...

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[Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS

2012-01-16 Thread Bob Cochran
Hi,

I have an MSI brand motherboard which I need to flash to the latest 
BIOS. However, all my systems run Linux or *nix; I do not have a 
Microsoft Windows-based system for creating a bootable floppy. MSI seems 
to require a Windows or DOS-based operating system to do the BIOS 
flashing. Is there an easy way to do this with FreeDOS? I'd prefer to 
create a bootable CD that has the BIOS firmware file and *.exe flashing 
program right on it.

I searched your Wiki and the freedos.org site for advice or an FAQ on 
this question.

Help with this is deeply appreciated.

Thanks

Bob Cochran


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Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS

2012-01-16 Thread jhall
Hi. Others have created a BIOS-flashing FreeDOS floppy, so I know it can be 
done. Might be easiest to create a bootable USB flash fob drive, and boot from 
that with your BIOS flashing software. Be aware that USB drives often get 
recognized on DOS as the c: drive, through legacy mapping.

jh



On Jan 16, 2012, at 9:51 PM, Bob Cochran bcochra...@verizon.net wrote:

 Hi,
 
 I have an MSI brand motherboard which I need to flash to the latest 
 BIOS. However, all my systems run Linux or *nix; I do not have a 
 Microsoft Windows-based system for creating a bootable floppy. MSI seems 
 to require a Windows or DOS-based operating system to do the BIOS 
 flashing. Is there an easy way to do this with FreeDOS? I'd prefer to 
 create a bootable CD that has the BIOS firmware file and *.exe flashing 
 program right on it.
 
 I searched your Wiki and the freedos.org site for advice or an FAQ on 
 this question.
 
 Help with this is deeply appreciated.
 
 Thanks
 
 Bob Cochran
 
 
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Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS

2012-01-16 Thread Rugxulo
Hi,

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Bob Cochran bcochra...@verizon.net wrote:

 I have an MSI brand motherboard which I need to flash to the latest
 BIOS. However, all my systems run Linux or *nix; I do not have a
 Microsoft Windows-based system for creating a bootable floppy. MSI seems
 to require a Windows or DOS-based operating system to do the BIOS
 flashing. Is there an easy way to do this with FreeDOS? I'd prefer to
 create a bootable CD that has the BIOS firmware file and *.exe flashing
 program right on it.

You can convert an existing bootable DOS floppy image into a .iso for
burning to CD with the following (DOS) freeware tool:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/mkbiso.zip

And you can use the FreeDOS distribution and some kind of emulator
(QEMU, VirtualBox, etc.) to format and sys a suitable (presumably 1.44
MB) floppy image.

 I searched your Wiki and the freedos.org site for advice or an FAQ on
 this question.

 Help with this is deeply appreciated.

If the above isn't obvious enough, I can be more detailed.

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Re: [Freedos-user] Bootable FreeDOS CD or USB Drive for Flashing Motherboard BIOS

2012-01-16 Thread TJ Edmister
On Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:51:36 -0500, Bob Cochran bcochra...@verizon.net  
wrote:

 Hi,

 I have an MSI brand motherboard which I need to flash to the latest
 BIOS. However, all my systems run Linux or *nix; I do not have a
 Microsoft Windows-based system for creating a bootable floppy. MSI seems
 to require a Windows or DOS-based operating system to do the BIOS
 flashing. Is there an easy way to do this with FreeDOS? I'd prefer to
 create a bootable CD that has the BIOS firmware file and *.exe flashing
 program right on it.

 I searched your Wiki and the freedos.org site for advice or an FAQ on
 this question.

 Help with this is deeply appreciated.

 Thanks

 Bob Cochran


Check whether your MSI motherboard BIOS supports booting from LAN, a.k.a.  
PXE. If so, then you can insert the BIOS update into a bootable disk image  
(using winimage or similar) and make it available via TFTP from another PC  
on the LAN. Then when you power on the MSI system it can grab the disk  
image over the network and boot it as if it were a physical floppy. More  
details here:

http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Administration/Network-Booting-via-PXE-the-Basics/2/

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