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
> __
> Dennis
>
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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
__
Dennis

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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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