Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]
Hi there, Ooops. First posted using a private address not the list address. :( Sorry all for the delay in replying - life intervened but I've now had the chance to investigate this a little. On Sun, 8 Sep 2024, Eric Auer via Freedos-user wrote: Actually, many reasonably new computers supported the following: - boot from USB storage devices (flash sticks, SD cards in card readers, USB zip, USB floppy, USB CD/DVD, harddisks, SSD etc.) - use USB keyboards as if they were PS/2 - use USB mice as if they were PS/2 You may have to first configure the BIOS setup to tell it that you want to boot in legacy (BIOS, not UEFI) mode and that you want USB legacy support. The unreasonably old boxes which I'm using don't seem to support USB keyboards but do boot from USB. My application has no use for a mouse. Using one of these boxes I've found that booting FreeDOS from USB not only allows a USB keyboard to function properly but also seems to let me hotplug the keyboard reliably - even if FreeDOS is booted with no keyboard connected. FWIW with the appropriate setup it also seems to run my business software too (but I'm sure nobody cares about that:). Much testing will be needed before it goes live at a customer site... Having established this, I moved on to testing the Bret Johnson USB drivers under MS-DOS. In case anyone is interested, loading the UHCI host controller and keyboard drivers successfully enabled me to use the USB keyboard on the same machine. I had to specify the interrupt to be used by the host controller as otherwise (and in conflict with the docs) it insisted on using IRQ 12, otherwise no apparent problems. On Sun, 8 Sep 2024, Karen Lewellen via Freedos-user wrote: ... Does the computer you intend for this keyboard support USB at the bios level? No, see above. ... I use a fine USB dos driver. ... Is this the one I mentioned above from Bret Johnson? That seems to work for me, at least so far, but it's very early days. May I personally applaud your dedication to solid DOS based business practices! No worries about ransomware with no network stack. :) -- 73, Ged. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]
Hi Daniel, Sorry for the late acknowledgement. Issues. :( I found your post absolutely fascinating. The more so because, about 25 years ago, I learned to fly a helicopter. :) On Sun, 8 Sep 2024, Daniel Essin via Freedos-user wrote: This is more of an fyi than an answer to anything. During the Vietnam War, Richard Piick developed a system for the Marine Corp to manage the helicopter You mean Pick? I do remember hearing about it many many years ago, but at the time it seemed very niche. Little did I know, it now seems! spare parts inventory. It combine an os, a database, query language and report writer. In the early 80's t was released for the 8086 pc (ibm AT). It required only 640 k memory an 20 mb hd and supported up to 16 users on serial terminals. It was multi-user but single-tasking. Multi-user, single task - exactly how I've always described my software. It was used for many business applications and became the goto system for early healthcare systems in the UK and Australia. I used it to build a medical charting system for doctors and added a billing module. I demoed on a compaq portable III with a 5-1/4 " floppy, 20 meg hd and 4 accessory serial ports. In addition to the one or two ports which used to be standard on most PCs, I've used several different (ISA) four-port and one eight-port serial cards with my system. Never had any trouble with any of them. Now that I have USB connectivity on DOS, I'm thinking about USB-serial as well as planning to be able to use PCI cards. There will need to be some assembly code tweaks. :/ It was anything but "open source". It was later ported to various linux platforms It is still on the market and many users. I guess it's from Rocket Software now? I don't think they offer any version for bare-metal intel boxes. If it wasn't for the drm the old pc versions would undoubtedly still run. It could probably be reverse engineered ( a lot of work). Having done something similar myself, I can pretty much guarantee that it would be a lot of work! :o I mention this to illustrate the power of old hardware if used thoughtfully. It's seemed to me for many years that most software development simply adds bloat and consumes all the available hardware performance without actually giving much to the poor user. It riles me. My 625k or so of code runs a business. To send quarterly returns to the Tax Man it now takes a hundred megabyte Java VM plus half a gigabyte of browser. The entire return consists of ten numbers in a CSV of about 80 characters! They could go in an email but that wouldn't suit top brass at the UK's Inland Revenue. They call it "Making Tax Digital". It's all required by law. Nothing I can do about it. Trouble is they seem to have very little idea what digital even means. Once you have the numbers in the computer, they have to go from there to the Tax Man without ever being typed by a human again. But they can go on a USB stick, and be posted to some accountant - who can download the numbers to his computer, and then send them to the Tax Man from there. The other day my accountant (who does this sort of thing for a lot of businesses) told me that his account on the government's tax return service had been compromised by criminals who had changed one return period from quarterly to monthly, and then used it to claim a tax refund of eight thousand pounds. When he asked the Tax Man to change the return period back to quarterly and cancel the refund request, they said they couldn't do it! It's barmy! Seems like nobody's capable of using technology thoughtfully any more. I kept asking Companies House to stop putting their CSS and Javascript in the text/plain parts of their emails. So they changed the encoding to base64. No change to the actual content. I'm thinking of trying a different approach. }:-) I encourage you to chase your issues until they are resolved. Within the strict limits of my discretion it's looking good so far. :) -- 73, Ged. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]
Hi g. W. Writing with a question, and an answer to your USB keyboard situation. For the record, I am typing with one, right now, in DOS which is the only operating system on my computer. However, which leads to the question. My BIOS has USB support, and at first that was enough to run the keyboard, no other drivers required. Does the computer you intend for this keyboard support USB at the bios level? if so, it can work on its own. Still, I added the at first to my sentence above because I use a fine USB dos driver. Once I got that installed on my currently new for me computer the keyboard works much better. its a small thing I type very fast, with my keystrokes spoken, so noticed the wrong thongs announced even with the right things typed. In short though, if the computer you have in mind supports USB at the BIOS level, it should work without issue. I do have a copy of the DOS browser, but I only send it privately. May I personally applaud your dedication to solid DOS based business practices! Cheers, Karen On Sun, 8 Sep 2024, G.W. Haywood via Freedos-user wrote: Hi there, If you're not interested in the background, please skip to THE QUESTION. :) On Saturday, June 1st, 2024 at 2:51 AM, Roger via Freedos-user wrote: Would be really interesting to hear, how people continue actively using DOS today, including their hardware/software environment. ... See below. I hope it's interesting. On Mon, 3 June, 2024 at nine seconds before midnight Jim Hall wrote: ... I met with someone last year who uses FreeDOS to drive a CNC router to make actual products. (CNC = "Computer Numerical Control" .. that is the fancy term for "a machine controlled by a computer.) I recall that the CNC was running from a Dell PC, and they had a serial selector that let the PC control two (or three?) different CNC routers .. but one at a time. Maybe I can help the guy. :) More on that later. But this is more of a quest for information than an offer of help. About 40 years ago I started writing software to help run my business. We still use it, as do several customers. I'm still working on it as the government keeps moving the goal posts - but that's another story. It's all on bare metal except for the build system (it's compiled in a DOS emulator) and for some development, both just for convenience. Initially it only ran on DOS, and for serious use (e.g. sending bills to customers) it's still only used on DOS although since the early 2ks it has also run on Linux, mostly for maintenance and training. On DOS there were several ways of using more than the base 640k of memory but over the years most of them fell by the wayside; my make files still theoretically can build several different 'models', but for many years I've built only DPMI executables using the venerable X32 DOS extender. The C/C++ compiler and a few libraries are the original Zortech tools which I actually paid for back in the day. They've been upgraded over the years and are now provided free by Digital Mars, but I'm terrified of unexpected issues so I've never upgraded them. There were quite a few gremlins in the early days, some of them not immediately obvious. The tools I'm using now are those which have stood the test of time. As far as the business uses are concerned there's no particular reason to move from DOS, and there are good reasons not to move (particularly the need for caution with business data) but I'm considering FreeDOS for a number of reasons, listed here I guess in ascending priority: 1. Debugging - for example I have some machines which will apparently run DOS, but not my business software. It isn't easy to debug MS-DOS. 2. Development - it might make some things easier for me. It could be useful to have a DOS network connection for development but I'll avoid it like the plague for systems with real business data. 3. Probably the most pressing right now, USB support. Few machines thesedays are equipped with PS/2 keyboard connectors. Thus far I've simply relied on older gear. Eventually that won't be an option, so I'd like now to set up a FreeDOS system which uses a USB keyboard. THE QUESTION 8<-- I've looked at quite a bit of the documentation (and as you see in the mailing list archives) but I haven't seen it written in so many words. So here's the main question: Will FreeDOS, out of the box, work on a machine with a USB keyboard? Several of the threads I've seen here seem to be telling me that the answer is 'no'. I've seen a couple of stand-alone USB drivers for DOS mentioned here and there with caveats, but I haven't seriously looked at them yet. If there's experience Out There which may smooth my path I'll be very grateful to hear it. I'm sort of expecting that I'll have to load a third-party driver early in the boot process. That's OK I suppose. 8<--
Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]
This is more of an fyi than an answer to anything. During the Vietnam War, Richard Piick developed a system for the Marine Corp to manage the helicopter spare parts inventory. It combine an os, a database, query language and report writer. In the early 80's t was released for the 8086 pc (ibm AT). It required only 640 k memory an 20 mb hd and supported up to 16 users on serial terminals. It was multi-user but single-tasking. It was used for many business applications and became the goto system for early healthcare systems in the UK and Australia. I used it to build a medical charting system for doctors and added a billing module. I demoed on a compaq portable III with a 5-1/4 " floppy, 20 meg hd and 4 accessory serial ports. It was anything but "open source". It was later ported to various linux platforms It is still on the market and many users. I don't thing they offer any version for bare-metal intel boxes. If it wasn't for the drm the old pc versions would undoubtedly still run. It could probably be reverse engineered ( a lot of work). I mention this to illustrate the power of old hardware if used thoughtfully. I encourage you to chase your issues until they are resolved. On 9/8/2024 10:04 AM, G.W. Haywood via Freedos-user wrote: Hi there, If you're not interested in the background, please skip to THE QUESTION. :) On Saturday, June 1st, 2024 at 2:51 AM, Roger via Freedos-user wrote: Would be really interesting to hear, how people continue actively using DOS today, including their hardware/software environment. ... See below. I hope it's interesting. On Mon, 3 June, 2024 at nine seconds before midnight Jim Hall wrote: ... I met with someone last year who uses FreeDOS to drive a CNC router to make actual products. (CNC = "Computer Numerical Control" .. that is the fancy term for "a machine controlled by a computer.) I recall that the CNC was running from a Dell PC, and they had a serial selector that let the PC control two (or three?) different CNC routers .. but one at a time. Maybe I can help the guy. :) More on that later. But this is more of a quest for information than an offer of help. About 40 years ago I started writing software to help run my business. We still use it, as do several customers. I'm still working on it as the government keeps moving the goal posts - but that's another story. It's all on bare metal except for the build system (it's compiled in a DOS emulator) and for some development, both just for convenience. Initially it only ran on DOS, and for serious use (e.g. sending bills to customers) it's still only used on DOS although since the early 2ks it has also run on Linux, mostly for maintenance and training. On DOS there were several ways of using more than the base 640k of memory but over the years most of them fell by the wayside; my make files still theoretically can build several different 'models', but for many years I've built only DPMI executables using the venerable X32 DOS extender. The C/C++ compiler and a few libraries are the original Zortech tools which I actually paid for back in the day. They've been upgraded over the years and are now provided free by Digital Mars, but I'm terrified of unexpected issues so I've never upgraded them. There were quite a few gremlins in the early days, some of them not immediately obvious. The tools I'm using now are those which have stood the test of time. As far as the business uses are concerned there's no particular reason to move from DOS, and there are good reasons not to move (particularly the need for caution with business data) but I'm considering FreeDOS for a number of reasons, listed here I guess in ascending priority: 1. Debugging - for example I have some machines which will apparently run DOS, but not my business software. It isn't easy to debug MS-DOS. 2. Development - it might make some things easier for me. It could be useful to have a DOS network connection for development but I'll avoid it like the plague for systems with real business data. 3. Probably the most pressing right now, USB support. Few machines thesedays are equipped with PS/2 keyboard connectors. Thus far I've simply relied on older gear. Eventually that won't be an option, so I'd like now to set up a FreeDOS system which uses a USB keyboard. THE QUESTION 8<-- I've looked at quite a bit of the documentation (and as you see in the mailing list archives) but I haven't seen it written in so many words. So here's the main question: Will FreeDOS, out of the box, work on a machine with a USB keyboard? Several of the threads I've seen here seem to be telling me that the answer is 'no'. I've seen a couple of stand-alone USB drivers for DOS mentioned here and there with caveats, but I haven't seriously looked at them yet. If there's experience Out There which may smooth my path I'll be very grateful to hear it. I'm sort of expecting
Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]
Hi! Actually, many reasonably new computers supported the following: - boot from USB storage devices (flash sticks, SD cards in card readers, USB zip, USB floppy, USB CD/DVD, harddisks, SSD etc.) - use USB keyboards as if they were PS/2 - use USB mice as if they were PS/2 You may have to first configure the BIOS setup to tell it that you want to boot in legacy (BIOS, not UEFI) mode and that you want USB legacy support. One limitation is that PS/2 mice lack many extra features USB mice may have, so you will usually not get support for much more than 3 buttons, one of which can be a wheel. When doing some reaction time experiments, I also noticed that actual PS/2 keyboards had a more predictable delay between pressing the button and DOS noticing it. USB legacy support had more jitter and it was noticeable that USB processing sometimes delayed other activities of my app. So I preferred PS/2 keyboards in my experiment. I do not know whether USB serial or USB printer port devices are covered by BIOS based USB legacy support, but it would be interesting to know! Note that most BIOSes do not support plugging or changing legacy USB storage after boot. So you can only access USB storage that you booted from, or which at least was present at boot, that way. On the other hand, those will be presented to DOS as if they were their classic BIOS-supported non-USB counterparts, making it much easier for DOS to use them without having to load DOS USB drivers :-) Regards, Eric PS: Note that DOS wants MBR partitioned drives, not GPT partitioned ones. ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user