Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
>> 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 > > ___ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user 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... ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
> 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 ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] USB floppy saga...
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. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
