Re: [Freedos-user] USB Floppy

[Ralf Quint]

On 11/15/2020 6:27 AM, Marv wrote:
I was under the impression an external USB floppy wouldn't work under 
FreeDOS 1.3, but I just noticed my installation of FreeDOS 1.3 on a 
circa 2011 Gateway laptop with an external USB Chuanganzhuo floppy 
does work.


I'm not sure what driver FreeDOS is using on the Gateway, but if I 
plug the floppy into my HP Windows 10 laptop, it says it's a TEAC USB 
UF1000x USB device using a default Windows sfloppy.sys driver. It was 
plug-n-play. I didn't install any drivers on either laptop.


I didn't buy this floppy drive for FreeDOS. My main FreeDOS machine 
has a builtin floppy drive. I bought it to read some old floppies on 
my HP Windows 10 laptop.


I am using USB floppy drives to exchange data between my Windows PC(s) 
and my FreeDOS box(es). They work just fine on all of my DOS machine as 
long as it floppy drive is connected when the machine is turned on. The 
BIOS of all machines in this case (2x Dell, 1x Compaq) just presents it 
as a standard 3.5" floppy drive. Hot swap of course doesn't work, but 
that hasn't really bothered me at all so far...


Ralf



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Re: [Freedos-user] USB Floppy

[Eric Auer]

Hi Marv,

> I'm not sure what driver FreeDOS is using on the Gateway, but if I plug the
> floppy into my HP Windows 10 laptop, it says it's a TEAC USB UF1000x USB

FreeDOS does not use any USB driver by default, as far as I know.

So you probably have USB storage device support in your BIOS and
FreeDOS simply enjoys using the BIOS disk :-) In particular after
booting from it, or when having it already connected during boot.

Note that sizes other than 1.44 MB or low level formatting might
not be working in your BIOS USB floppy support, but you can try.

Regards, Eric



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[Freedos-user] USB Floppy

[Marv]

I was under the impression an external USB floppy wouldn't work under
FreeDOS 1.3, but I just noticed my installation of FreeDOS 1.3 on a circa
2011 Gateway laptop with an external USB Chuanganzhuo floppy does work.

I'm not sure what driver FreeDOS is using on the Gateway, but if I plug the
floppy into my HP Windows 10 laptop, it says it's a TEAC USB UF1000x USB
device using a default Windows sfloppy.sys driver. It was plug-n-play. I
didn't install any drivers on either laptop.

I didn't buy this floppy drive for FreeDOS. My main FreeDOS machine has a
builtin floppy drive. I bought it to read some old floppies on my HP
Windows 10 laptop.

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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...

[michael]

>> I bet Freedos could be in place of MS-DOS if you only use HIMEMX.
 
Q-Soft for the Tyco QSP-2 installs to MS-DOS 5.22 and is a real time system on
the DOS side.  It installs via actual floppy disk.  If you are running the GUI
computer (Windows 9x) on say QEMU and emulating the floppy...  but that would 
involve reengineering the system.  The real time system for example uses ISA 
heavily.  There are PCI variants of many of the cards where four ISA cards are 
replaced by say one PCI card, but that would involve reengineering of a 20 year
old system.

> Which reasons do you have to use MS DOS instead of FreeDOS?
> Reasons to use FreeDOS could be to have more free RAM and
> the FAT32 support. You can use most FreeDOS drivers together
> with MS DOS if you like, too.

Q-Soft is available as an executable designed to run on MS-DOS 6.22.  May 
work just fine in Freedos, may not, have not been able to try it because 
of floppy disk issue.

> Floppy drives do not break easily and most have the same
> geometry and interface, so finding one might be easier
> than finding any supply of still working disks for them.

Understood, but I'm pretty sure my Teac USB floppy drive has
failed.  I fished a disk cover that came off out of it and
there could be a smaller part loose still inside the drive.  
The drive simply does not work now.  I doubt that disks that
are generally new are suddently all bad let alone that sector
0 is magically unwritable on all of my disks.
 
> Regarding your security concerns, you are right that flash
> chips make it hard to securely wipe data due to built-in
> distribution of writes to load-balance. You could avoid
> the problem by having only encrypted files on the portable
> drive. Then destroying the key effectively zaps the data.
> DOS versions of infozip at least support some encryption
> and you can use other tools such as 7zip for DOS as well.

If I run Linux and KVM I can emulate the floppy on a flash 
drive.  Sadly, that won't work well on an old Pentium 4 where
it would work much better on say a modern i7.  Going from PICMG 
1.0 though to PICMG 1.3, forget about the ISA shared memory 
card.  The real time system which is ISA only would have to be
completely reconsidered.  A Tyco QSP-2 is a 20 year old system
now that depends on MS-DOS and Windows 98SE or Windows ME.  You 
don't just replace the two computer heads with one without a lot 
of reengineering.  PPM owns the system now and has reengineered
it around Windows 7 and possibly Windows 10...  different 
system with different bugs.  Considering that this is a $30k
plus piece of equipment for placing small electronic components
on a circuit board, surface mount packaging, fixing the old
system makes more sense than switching to the newer variant.
You can't just upgrade the heads either as computers have 
changed so much in twenty years.  Most people don't even know
what a floppy drive is anymore.

For the color computer 3 there is a floppy replacement that uses a 
2GB flash memory card and stores 360k images on it.  That device 
could be adapted I bet to work with an SBC that has a floppy 
controller.  No emulation needed, direct hardware replacement.
As far as DOS is concerned, that is a floppy disk in a floppy
drive.  In reality, it's flash memory holding multiple disks.
 
> Eric
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Oh, the EVOC board lacks a floppy header.  It has 3 USB 2.0 channels
and of course it expects you to plug in a USB floppy drive if you need
one.  Sadly, I don't think Freedos 1.3 RC2 can use a USB floppy drive even
on an EVOC supported through some weird AMI BIOS.  I tried an ISA multi
I/O plus floppy card, but without BIOS support for it I don't think that
will work either.  I currently have the disable jumper set for the floppy
controller.  If only I could get the source code for the AMI BIOS on this
thing and add support for the ISA floppy controller...


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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...

[Eric Auer]

Hi Michael,

> I'm working with an EVOC brand SBC on a PICMG 1.0 backplane.

That sounds exotic, but still your BIOS has a menu item
where you can enable an on-board hardware floppy controller.
Do you imply that there is no header on the board to plug
a classic floppy to that classic controller?

> I know USB 1.1 isn't part of the DOS specification

Correct, but often the BIOS supports storage USB media.
In older BIOS, this only works if you boot from the
medium in question, such as a flash drive / USB stick,
but it is clearly better than nothing. USB flash sticks
are usually supported better than USB floppy by BIOS!

There also are very few USB drivers for DOS which you
can load after booting if your BIOS lacks support. In
general, those also are better with USB sticks or USB
harddisks than with USB floppy. So the question would
be why you prefer floppy over other media?

I actually have booted DOS and started Windows 3 from
USB stick many years ago. It was horribly slow but the
BIOS already had the feature :-)

> Another thought, if building a USB device with a 34 pin
> floppy output for legacy 1.44 m floppy drives...

You mean an USB case / housing for classic floppy? That
is how most USB cases work, also for IDE and SATA disks.

> Why not emulate a floppy drive if desired as well?

Well, why yes? Other media have so much more capacity.

> I'm thinking a CF to usb adapter with a 34 pin floppy connector.

Your problem is that your mainboard has no floppy connector
if I understand you correctly. So you need a CF to USB and
not a CF to 34 pin. The name for CF to USB is cardreader ;-)

> DOS if I'm not mistaken expects the floppy support to be in the BIOS.

Usually yes. That means you can also simulate floppy using
anything which takes over from the BIOS. The famous memdisk
(often used with GRUB and similar boot menus) does exactly
that: Put a floppy disk image on your boot medium (harddisk,
USB, CD, DVD, many types supported) and load memdisk. This
pretends that the floppy image is an actual BIOS floppy disk
and boots it :-)

> The advantage of floppies is they are easily destroyed.
> 
> Try destroying a USB flash key

How about breaking the silicon chips into pieces? Silicon is
very brittle. You can also use high voltage to break things.

> with Linux and Microsoft moving away from floppies, should
> Freedos support emulated floppies?

See above, there already is memdisk for that. Note that it
does not usually write changes back to disk, but if you want
persistent storage, you can just use any normal disk anyway.

About your ATAPI ZIP question: I think some BIOSes support
booting from that and using that as well. They are a bit
weird because they mix floppy use style and harddisk size.
DOS might treat them as normal harddisk and get confused
when you try to swap disks.

> bet Freedos could be in place of MS-DOS if you only use HIMEMX.

Which reasons do you have to use MS DOS instead of FreeDOS?
Reasons to use FreeDOS could be to have more free RAM and
the FAT32 support. You can use most FreeDOS drivers together
with MS DOS if you like, too.

Floppy drives do not break easily and most have the same
geometry and interface, so finding one might be easier
than finding any supply of still working disks for them.

Regarding your security concerns, you are right that flash
chips make it hard to securely wipe data due to built-in
distribution of writes to load-balance. You could avoid
the problem by having only encrypted files on the portable
drive. Then destroying the key effectively zaps the data.
DOS versions of infozip at least support some encryption
and you can use other tools such as 7zip for DOS as well.

Eric



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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...

[tom ehlert]

> I'm working with an EVOC brand SBC on a PICMG 1.0 backplane.

> I have not been able to get floppy disk support in Freedos 1.3, period.

as far as I understand it, you have been working with MSDOS 6.x for
the last 25 years.

I recommend another 20 years.


the alternative would have been to

a) send the hardware to my home adress, with exact and complete
description of symptoms and wanted outcome, and ~5000USD attached. no
warranties, unfortunately.


> I know USB 1.1 isn't part of the DOS specification that freedos is
> targeting, but a USB floppy driver is needed since that is what this 
> particular SBC offers.

> I'm wondering if freedos could be reasonably modified to support a USB floppy 
> drive as A drive?

> Another thought, if building a USB device with a 34 pin floppy
> output for legacy 1.44 m floppy drives... Why not emulate a floppy drive if 
> desired as well?
> I'm thinking a CF to usb adapter with a 34 pin floppy connector.

Yep. Sure. great idea, but not entirely new. IIRC that was ~5000 EUR
per adapter. in ~2007.

Tom



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[Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...

[michael]

I'm working with an EVOC brand SBC on a PICMG 1.0 backplane.

I have not been able to get floppy disk support in Freedos 1.3, period.

I know USB 1.1 isn't part of the DOS specification that freedos is targeting, 
but a USB floppy driver is needed since that is what this particular SBC offers.

I'm wondering if freedos could be reasonably modified to support a USB floppy 
drive as A drive?

Another thought, if building a USB device with a 34 pin floppy output for 
legacy 1.44 m floppy drives... Why not emulate a floppy drive if desired as 
well?
I'm thinking a CF to usb adapter with a 34 pin floppy connector. Another 
option, MicroSD card like the ones used on the Raspberry Pi.

DOS if I'm not mistaken expects the floppy support to be in the BIOS. It also 
expects IRQ 6, DMA 2, I/O address something...

The advantage of floppies is they are easily destroyed.

Try destroying a USB flash key, they are more resilient than floppies and much 
higher capacity, but they are NOT easily destroyed.

What I'm asking is with Linux and Microsoft moving away from floppies, should 
Freedos support emulated floppies?

If say you are connecting via USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, or 3.1 that is different than 
what traditional DOS expects. Modern PCs lack the traditional floppy 
controller. 
Can freedos be tweaked to work around the no floppy controller issue in a 
compatible fashion? I'm thinking ATAPI devices such as Zip drives can be a 
floppy replacement, but can they be pointed to as the A: drive? I have a Zip 
750 Atapi drive coming tomorrow and 3 sealed 750 meg zip disks.

Atapi zip drives work in Windows XP and Windows 9x, but they don't work in 
MS-DOS and they don't work in Freedos unless I'm mistaken.

I may be stuck with MS-DOS 6.2 for the real time system that the Tyco QSP-2 
uses. I bet Freedos could be in place of MS-DOS if you only use HIMEMX.
Haven't had a chance to test the real time system on freedos because I don't 
have floppy support unless the SBC in question that I'm testing with has a real
floppy controller and a real 1.44M floppy drive in working condition is 
available.

I'm not an EE, but I know someone who is and I would like to contribute an open 
hardware and driver specification for a floppy replacement that is compatible 
with MSDOS, Freedos, Linux, Windows...

Magnetic media is easily disposed of, but it less than reliable in many cases 
and the capacities tend to be low. Something modern that is higher capacity and 
that
can replace what came before is needed. Something that is easily destroyed like 
floppies but readily available and higher capacity. CD-R media is great, but it 
isn't
as rewriteable as floppies. I'll be testing my Zip750 disks to see how 
destructible and how reliable they are and I'll be looking to see if I can 
replace A: with them.

As far as using a USB floppy drive, I think I broke mine. Even so, I don't 
think freedos is able to use USB devices let alone floppy replacements.
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 5:57 PM, Ralf Quint  wrote:
> On 1/2/2017 12:18 PM, dmccunney wrote:
>>
>>> In particular, here's "Installing Windows 2000 on an SD Card"
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/user/Druaga1/
>>
>> I have Win10 and Ubuntu installed on an SSD on my desktop, and it
>> speeds things up a treat.
>>
>> I could install Win2K to SSD, but there's no point.
>
> A "SD card" and a SSD drive are two totally different animals, it's
> pretty much comparing a Vespa with a Ferrari. Both have a motor, wheels
> and come from Italy, but they both simply service different purposes and
> have hugely different performance...

Okay, this was partially my fault for the confusion. I didn't remember
which videos of his were SSD or not, all I remembered was various
Windows reinstalls, including the (relevant to our conversation)
Win2k, which turned out to be SD instead.

He does a lot of SSD videos, apparently, that's his gimmick (almost).
This wasn't really a true, technical suggestion by me for a learning
tutorial but more along the lines of "hey, look at this guy's videos,
it seems funny / interesting, if you're bored".

On his YouTube channel, I count 11 videos with "SSD" in the title, and
that's just the first page of most recent stuff.

Eventually I'm going to watch the ReactOS video (but it's an hour
long, hence my procrastination, but boy did he upload that one fast!).
Though I don't expect any huge changes in recent updates (e.g. buggy
NTVDM).

P.S. Just to pretend to stay on topic, he does have a few "Ultimate
DOS Machine" videos, too (that I also haven't watched yet).

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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Ralf Quint]

On 1/2/2017 12:18 PM, dmccunney wrote:
>
>> In particular, here's "Installing Windows 2000 on an SD Card":
>>
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-hDOiI0-6s
> I have Win10 and Ubuntu installed on an SSD on my desktop, and it
> speeds things up a treat.
>
> I could install Win2K to SSD, but there's no point.
A "SD card" and a SSD drive are two totally different animals, it's 
pretty much comparing a Vespa with a Ferrari. Both have a motor, wheels 
and come from Italy, but they both simply service different purposes and 
have hugely different performance...

Ralf

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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Louis Santillan]

If the drive (vs. the floppy) itself remains an issue in the 486,
devices like these [0] are becoming popular.  Just plugin some old USB
flash drive with the image file and you're good to go.

Gotek Floppy Drive Emulator
[0] http://a.co/48x3vtl

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 6:52 PM, dmccunney  wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Thomas Mueller  wrote:
>>> That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
>>> which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
>>> floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
>>> now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
>>> varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
>>> deserved what you got.
>>
>>> Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
>>> get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
>>> lying around.
>>
>> I went to that website, mainly for curiosity.
>>
>> Now I don't know how or if the USB floppy drives work, whether some modern 
>> OSes are temperamental in that regard.
>
> I have one here.  It works on my machines, and is seen as A: under
> Windows and /dev/fd0 under Linux (IIRC - not in Linux at the moment.)
> The other modern OS that might be in use is OS/X, but I'm pretty sure
> USB floppy drives work there too.
>
> For more obscure stuff, you try it, and if it breaks, you get to keep
> the pieces.
>
>> For the internal drives, modern motherboards, as far as I can tell, no 
>> longer have floppy headers, making it impossible to connect a regular floppy 
>> drive.
>
> Which is why you use a USB floppy drive if you need to read floppies.
>
>> The modern "floppy" is a USB stick.
>
> Yep.  When I installed Linux to dual boot on my desktop, I did so from
> a bootable USB stick with the Ubuntu installer on it.
>
> That worked because my machine could be set to boot from a USB stick.
> I have FreeDOS installed on an ancient (2005) Notebook.  It has a USB
> 2.0 add-on card and can read USB sticks, but cannot *boot* from them.
> If I were trying to install DOS as the OS on the HD in that machine,
> I'd have to boot from a DOS floppy in the USB floppy drive.  *That*
> will work.
>
>> There are also external USB hard drives, and Micronet Fantom (micronet.com) 
>> external hard drives with both USB 3 and eSATA, up to 8 TB, if my memory is 
>> accurate.
>
> Sounds about right.
>
>> But FreeDOS, and I believe all other DOSes, have trouble with multi-TB hard 
>> drives, and I would want to partition with GPT, meaning not compatible with 
>> FreeDOS or ReactOS.
>
> Yes, they likely will have problems.
>
> DOS understood FAT16 as the file system.  The smallest area of disk
> readable/writable under DOS is the cluster, and every cluster must have
> a unique address.  FAT16 used a 16 bit address, so you had a maximum
> of 65,536 clusters.  The format routine maxed out at 32K cluster sizes,
> so you got a 2GB limit on volume size for early HDs.  Hard drives got much
> larger, and creating multiple 2GB partitions to stay within DOS's FAT16 limits
> got irksome, so MS created FAT32.  But by that point, Windows was taking
> over.  Getting plain DOS to work on a FAT32 file system on larger drives can
> be a challenge. (I believe current FreeDOS kernels have FAT32 support.)
>
> My old notebook was set to multiboot, with Win2K Pro, a couple of
> flavors of Linux, and FreeDOS on separate HD partitions. IIRC, I
> formatted the FreeDOS partition FAT32.  But getting FreeDOS to *boot*
> from a grub2 menu was a challenge, and I had to do a lot of fiddling
> before it worked.  I never did figure out just which fiddle did the
> trick.  Then an unrelated problem forced me to wipe and reinstall 2K
> and redo multi-boot under grub2.  I got Windows and Linux booting
> again, but never could get FreeDOS back.
>
> I haven't even booted the machine in a year or more.
>
>> My computer hardware no longer has any floppy capability.
>
> Nor most of mine, but that's why a USB floppy drive is a useful accessory.
>
>> Tom
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 8:56 PM, Thomas Mueller  wrote:
>> That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
>> which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
>> floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
>> now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
>> varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
>> deserved what you got.
>
>> Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
>> get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
>> lying around.
>
> I went to that website, mainly for curiosity.
>
> Now I don't know how or if the USB floppy drives work, whether some modern 
> OSes are temperamental in that regard.

I have one here.  It works on my machines, and is seen as A: under
Windows and /dev/fd0 under Linux (IIRC - not in Linux at the moment.)
The other modern OS that might be in use is OS/X, but I'm pretty sure
USB floppy drives work there too.

For more obscure stuff, you try it, and if it breaks, you get to keep
the pieces.

> For the internal drives, modern motherboards, as far as I can tell, no longer 
> have floppy headers, making it impossible to connect a regular floppy drive.

Which is why you use a USB floppy drive if you need to read floppies.

> The modern "floppy" is a USB stick.

Yep.  When I installed Linux to dual boot on my desktop, I did so from
a bootable USB stick with the Ubuntu installer on it.

That worked because my machine could be set to boot from a USB stick.
I have FreeDOS installed on an ancient (2005) Notebook.  It has a USB
2.0 add-on card and can read USB sticks, but cannot *boot* from them.
If I were trying to install DOS as the OS on the HD in that machine,
I'd have to boot from a DOS floppy in the USB floppy drive.  *That*
will work.

> There are also external USB hard drives, and Micronet Fantom (micronet.com) 
> external hard drives with both USB 3 and eSATA, up to 8 TB, if my memory is 
> accurate.

Sounds about right.

> But FreeDOS, and I believe all other DOSes, have trouble with multi-TB hard 
> drives, and I would want to partition with GPT, meaning not compatible with 
> FreeDOS or ReactOS.

Yes, they likely will have problems.

DOS understood FAT16 as the file system.  The smallest area of disk
readable/writable under DOS is the cluster, and every cluster must have
a unique address.  FAT16 used a 16 bit address, so you had a maximum
of 65,536 clusters.  The format routine maxed out at 32K cluster sizes,
so you got a 2GB limit on volume size for early HDs.  Hard drives got much
larger, and creating multiple 2GB partitions to stay within DOS's FAT16 limits
got irksome, so MS created FAT32.  But by that point, Windows was taking
over.  Getting plain DOS to work on a FAT32 file system on larger drives can
be a challenge. (I believe current FreeDOS kernels have FAT32 support.)

My old notebook was set to multiboot, with Win2K Pro, a couple of
flavors of Linux, and FreeDOS on separate HD partitions. IIRC, I
formatted the FreeDOS partition FAT32.  But getting FreeDOS to *boot*
from a grub2 menu was a challenge, and I had to do a lot of fiddling
before it worked.  I never did figure out just which fiddle did the
trick.  Then an unrelated problem forced me to wipe and reinstall 2K
and redo multi-boot under grub2.  I got Windows and Linux booting
again, but never could get FreeDOS back.

I haven't even booted the machine in a year or more.

> My computer hardware no longer has any floppy capability.

Nor most of mine, but that's why a USB floppy drive is a useful accessory.

> Tom
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Thomas Mueller]

> That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
> which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
> floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
> now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
> varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
> deserved what you got.
 
> Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
> get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
> lying around.

I went to that website, mainly for curiosity.

Now I don't know how or if the USB floppy drives work, whether some modern OSes 
are temperamental in that regard.

For the internal drives, modern motherboards, as far as I can tell, no longer 
have floppy headers, making it impossible to connect a regular floppy drive.

The modern "floppy" is a USB stick.

There are also external USB hard drives, and Micronet Fantom (micronet.com) 
external hard drives with both USB 3 and eSATA, up to 8 TB, if my memory is 
accurate.

But FreeDOS, and I believe all other DOSes, have trouble with multi-TB hard 
drives, and I would want to partition with GPT, meaning not compatible with 
FreeDOS or ReactOS.

My computer hardware no longer has any floppy capability.

Tom


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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Santiago Almenara  wrote:
> 2017-01-01 18:52 GMT-05:00 dmccunney :

>> That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
>> which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
>> floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
>> now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
>> varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
>> deserved what you got.
>>
>> Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
>> get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
>> lying around.
>
> Excuse me, I don't want to start a flame war but
>
> I always thought that floppy disks production were pretty dead, maybe some
> obscure Chinese brand were still making them.
> In the other hand, are Imation, 3M or Sony still making floppies???

AFAIK, yes.

But in the stated case, it doesn't matter.

I believe the OP wants to put DOS on a floppy he can boot from, and
from there install it on a hard drive.

It doesn't have to be a top quality, long lasting disk, as nothing of
value will be stored on it long term.  It just has to format and work
long enough.  Cheap noname Chinese floppies will do.

> Santiago
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Santiago Almenara]

Excuse me, I don't want to start a flame war but

I always thought that floppy disks production were pretty dead, maybe some
obscure Chinese brand were still making them.
In the other hand, are Imation, 3M or Sony still making floppies???

Happy New Year!


Santiago


2017-01-01 18:52 GMT-05:00 dmccunney :

> On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Thomas Mueller 
> wrote:
>
> > I never had a USB floppy drive but have experience with regular floppy
> drives, 3.5" and 5.25".
> >
> > In the later years, I had great trouble with floppy drives.  Ability to
> write was lost before the ability to read.  5.25" floppies seemed to have
> better shelf life than 3.5".
> >
> > FreeDOS did better than Linux with floppy drives, and Linux did better
> than FreeBSD or NetBSD.
> >
> > Error messages you got with that floppy disk were roughly consistent
> with what I would get with floppies from 1995 and thereabouts.
> >
> > Even floppies that I had never used proved unusable.
>
> That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
> which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
> floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
> now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
> varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
> deserved what you got.
>
> Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
> get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
> lying around.
>
> > Tom
> __
> Dennis
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519
>
> 
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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[dmccunney]

On Sun, Jan 1, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Thomas Mueller  wrote:

> I never had a USB floppy drive but have experience with regular floppy 
> drives, 3.5" and 5.25".
>
> In the later years, I had great trouble with floppy drives.  Ability to write 
> was lost before the ability to read.  5.25" floppies seemed to have better 
> shelf life than 3.5".
>
> FreeDOS did better than Linux with floppy drives, and Linux did better than 
> FreeBSD or NetBSD.
>
> Error messages you got with that floppy disk were roughly consistent with 
> what I would get with floppies from 1995 and thereabouts.
>
> Even floppies that I had never used proved unusable.

That brings back memories.  Back in the day, there was discussion of
which *brand* of floppies to use, if you wanted to write something to
floppy, put it on a shelf, and be able to read it again 5 years from
now.  At the time, the "gold standard" was Dysan.  Floppy disk media
varied in quality, and if you bought based on lowest price, you
deserved what you got.

Floppies are sill made and sold - see http://www.floppydisk.com/.  I'd
get new ones to try this on instead of trying to reuse ancient stuff
lying around.

> Tom
__
Dennis
https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519

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Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy cannot read medium on modern PC and Linux.

[Thomas Mueller]

> I was asked why I cannot put FreeDOS on a floppy. Here is the reason. I
> just tried another floppy disk that I found. It is original from before
> 1995, so it may be broken. I can try to check on my 486 once it is up
> and running, but for now this is what I get on Linux when I put the disk
> into the USB floppy drive.



> [14502.458855] usb 3-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 11 using ehci-pci
> [14502.592376] usb 3-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0409,
> idProduct=0040
> [14502.592381] usb 3-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2,
> SerialNumber=0
> [14502.592385] usb 3-1.2: Product: NEC USB UF000x
> [14502.592387] usb 3-1.2: Manufacturer: NEC
> [14502.594614] usb-storage 3-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
> [14502.594740] usb-storage 3-1.2:1.0: Quirks match for vid 0409 pid 0040: 1
> [14502.594802] scsi host6: usb-storage 3-1.2:1.0
> [14503.654640] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access NEC  USB UF000x
1.60 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
> [14503.666875] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
> [14507.558821] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result:
> hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
> [14507.558827] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
> [14507.558831] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Cannot read medium -
> unknown format
> [14507.622812] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is on
> [14507.622821] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 46 94 80
> [14507.686775] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] No Caching mode page found
> [14507.686782] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through
> [14508.134833] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result:
> hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
> [14508.134842] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : Medium Error [current]
> [14508.134847] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Add. Sense: Cannot read medium -
> unknown format
> [14508.390739] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
> [14511.206876] EXT4-fs (sdc): unable to read superblock
> [14511.270868] EXT4-fs (sdc): unable to read superblock
> [14511.334865] EXT4-fs (sdc): unable to read superblock
> [14511.398905] FAT-fs (sdc): unable to read boot sector


> I don't really expect help here. It is just a message to get the
> understand for why I cannot load FreeDOS onto a floppy at this time.


> Happy 2017!

> Userbeitrag.

I never had a USB floppy drive but have experience with regular floppy drives, 
3.5" and 5.25".

In the later years, I had great trouble with floppy drives.  Ability to write 
was lost before the ability to read.  5.25" floppies seemed to have better 
shelf life than 3.5".

FreeDOS did better than Linux with floppy drives, and Linux did better than 
FreeBSD or NetBSD.

Error messages you got with that floppy disk were roughly consistent with what 
I would get with floppies from 1995 and thereabouts.

Even floppies that I had never used proved unusable.

Tom


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[Freedos-user] Usb floppy drive

[James Collins]

Hello,

I have freedos running as a virtual machine in virtualbox. I am running mac os 
x 10.7 lion as my guest operating system.

I have a usb floppy drive that my mac recognizes. I am wondering if i can 
enable the usb floppy drive so freedos recognizes it?

Sent from my iPhone
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Re: [Freedos-user] Usb floppy drive

[Bernd Blaauw]

Op 2-9-2011 17:57, James Collins schreef:
 Hello,

 I have freedos running as a virtual machine in virtualbox. I am running mac 
 os x 10.7 lion as my guest operating system.

 I have a usb floppy drive that my mac recognizes. I am wondering if i can 
 enable the usb floppy drive so freedos recognizes it?

If your virtualisation platform allows physical floppy drives (be it 
traditional 34pin or USB) as devices for guest systems, then everything 
should be OK. I know VMware (on Windows) allows it, likely VMware on Mac 
also. I don't know if VirtualBox likes physical floppy drives. Your 
alternative if it wouldn't work, is to make a (1.44MB) floppy disk image 
file (using dd?) and present that as virtual floppy.

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