Uhci is another fancy way to say USB controller
On Wednesday, May 8, 2013, Pierre LaMontagne wrote:
>
> From: rugx...@gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'rugx...@gmail.com');>
>
> > Since you already mentioned "very old floppies", does this mean some
> > of your machines don't have (the appropriately-sized) floppy drives?
>
> Yes, exactly. I didn't elaborate earlier, but that is the case. By
> floppies, I'm referring to the 3.5" 1.44mb ones although, I even have a
> few of the 5.25" variety. Some of the 5.25" are 360k, but most of them are
> 1.2mb. At least I don't have any 160k or 80k types. When the 80k & 160k
> were being used, I was probably using cassette tapes. I can say one good
> thing about the old data cassette tapes: they made floppy drives seem
> really fast! :) I was so glad to finally be able use floppies vs tapes!
> After I eventually got one, I thought HDs were so much superior than
> floppies, speed-wise. (oops! I was daydreaming of the'old' days again)
>
> You're right though, I have 3 modern PCs with Win 7 on them, none of which
> have a floppy drive controller. So, I resurrected an older PC that does
> have a floppy controller. It's a P-III 733mhz that used to run Win 98 back
> in he late 90s. I must say, running old DOS software on the 733 is so much
> faster than what I used to run DOS in! I think the latter DOS days were on
> a 486-66 or maybe it was the 386-40(not sure), though early on I started on
> an 8088, 2 360k floppies, no HD, monochrome (my first 'clone' PC).
>
> > Usually you can insert a USB jump drive before turning on (booting)
> > and the BIOS should emulate it as a DOS drive for you, assuming it's
> > formatted as (some variant of) FAT (-16, -32).
> >
>
> OK, thanks! I didn't think of that. I'm not 100% sure, but I bet I
> plugged in the flash drive _after_ booting as per Win!
>
> > If not, you have to try something like Bret's USB drivers (and your
> > machine must support UHCI)
>
> Sorry, what's UHCI?
>
> > or (from modern Windows) try the RUFUS
> > (bootable DOS USB) installer.
> >
> > http://www.bretjohnson.us/
> > http://rufus.akeo.ie/
> >
>
> thanx
>
> > So from old machine to new machine? Old machine has floppy but new
> > doesn't? I assume you don't (or can't or won't) have networking on the
> > old machine (understandable! frustrating!). If you did (maybe even
> > with mTCP + packet driver), that'd be one way.
>
> You're right on all counts. I thought about using an ethernet network
> since the Win 7 PCs have it but wanted to avoid that headache if
> possible... :)
>
> >
> > Otherwise, you have to have some drive (hard? floppy?) to install /
> > use with the other machine.
>
> I do have a USB floppy drive that _could_ work. Using a flash drive
> would be a lot easier though.
>
> > In fact, if you can get USB drive working,
> > you can copy files to and from that with ease. This is probably easier
> > than constantly burning a CD-RW or whatever.
>
> I was thinking by using CDs, though, I would benefit by having a good
> back-up and storage would be much more compact, (650mb vs 1.44mb). Storage
> space is now a consideration for me especially since floppies are now
> obsolete?
>
> >
> > There might be unofficial (buggy?) builds of cdrkit for DOS. I can't
> > remember the name or version of that alleged DOS (freeware?) CD
> > burning program, and I'm not sure how well it worked. IIRC, the main
> > problem was lacking an ASPI.SYS driver, which is proprietary (closed
> > source, not free nor libre). Hence I don't think FreeDOS proper ships
> > with such a thing (maybe they had an optional .BAT to use wget to grab
> > it back in the day, dunnno ...).
> >
>
> Thanx, for the tips! At least I have some direction to go in now! :)
>
> >
> > A lot of peripherals depends on decent drivers. I think this is the
> > main problem (or advantage) with any OS these days. This is one big
> > reason why people stick to Linux or Windows. Unfortunately, DOS isn't
> > always supported (well, if at all) by hardware companies. Not trying
> > to be overly pessimistic, but it's the cold hard truth.
> >
> I agree.
>
>
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