Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 14:11:19 -0500 From: "Pres Waterman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] CT 110 Floppy
> > Care to expand on this for us newbies, Pres > > > > > > I would like to know what happened to the Win98 protected mode floppy > > drivers that eliminated the "compatibility mode" Gladly. >From the beginning, the Libretto was "designed" for Win95. Its floppy, while plugging into the PCMCIA socket and looking exactly like a PCMCIA device, is NOT PCMCIA! It is controlled directly by BIOS if and only if, plugged in when booted. Therefore, without any special drivers, DOS or Windows will see the floppy as the a: drive. Because there are no 32-bit protected mode drivers, you will see under "performance" in the system properties tab that "one or more devices are using compatibility mode... this reduces overall performance" or words to that effect. But there's a much worse side effect: without special drivers ( called fdcmon.vxd which is a floppy-disk-not-present indicator ) every time you need to browse for a file, Windows looks for the floppy that you DIDN'T have plugged in from boot, and waits... and waits... and waits to see it. Only after the most part of a minute does it realize there IS no floppy and let you browse into the he c: drive. So, as part of the "accessories" package of programs ( or is it "utilities"- I never can remember ) is the fdc monitor. It allows you to shove in the floppy and have it recognized by PCMCIA, and also remove it gracefully, and most important, not wait and wait for the floppy. But even having the driver, Windows sees the floppy as "compatibility mode" meaning there are older 16-bit drivers. Well, they work fine, it's just a psychological thing. When Win98 first came out, they posted a "32-bit protected mode floppy driver" which worked for Win98 and I believe Win95. But I stopped seeing it on the Toshiba websites. It's just annoying that once there was a better driver and I can't find it. Not to mention that the "hairy light bulb" is a better program, more flexible, that Win98's built-in power management, but I don't know the purpose of the "Win98 Power Management Driver" which adds a .vxd and a profile, but I am not sure if you should use both the hairy light bulb and Win98 or just one. Do any old timers remember the ORIGIN of the phrase "hairy lightbulb"? Thanks Pres Waterman W2PW c/o Patchogue Motors, Inc. Long Island Ford and Kia dealer GO BILLS! ************************************************************** http://libretto.basiclink.com - Libretto mailing list http://libretto.basiclink.com/archive - Archives http://www.picante.com/~gtaylor/portable/faq.html - FAQ -------TO UNSUBSCRIBE------- Reply to any of the list messages. The reply mail should be addressed to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Then replace any text on the message's subject line: cmd:unsubscribe --------TO UNSUBSCRIBE DIGEST------ Do above but with this on subject line: cmd:unsubscribe digest **************************************************************
