Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]

2024-09-29 Thread G.W. Haywood via Freedos-user

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.


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Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]

2024-09-29 Thread G.W. Haywood via Freedos-user

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.


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Re: [Freedos-user] USB keyboards [was Re: DOS Actively Used Scenarios]

2024-09-08 Thread Karen Lewellen via Freedos-user

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]

2024-09-08 Thread Daniel Essin via Freedos-user
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]

2024-09-08 Thread Eric Auer via Freedos-user



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.




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