Hi!. Happy new year!
I want to share this information that I hope it'll be useful for you. I wanted
to use my usb flash drive in FreeDOS, however, I didn't found any information
in the FreeDOS wiki, including the links section (I did found some useful
programs and links in this mailing list), thus, I did some research and I found
and classifed various drivers, that I tested as well. So, here is the list
including some feedback on their behavior and also the links where you can find
them.
Also, I want to clarify the terms aspi manager and aspi disk driver. The former
is a program that maps usbs to aspi devices, and the latter is the program that
once it has recognized the aspi manager, assigns letters to the disk partitions.
And finally, some useful information for testing the drivers:
1. You should disable the usb legacy support
2. I read on the mailing lists that some errors appeared with dos protected
mode, so try using different boot options
3. Tinker with the different flags the drivers provide, e.g., in my computer I
have one ehci and two ohci, but the usbaspi driver series only worked for me
when using the /o flag (only ohci)
Useful links:
- https://www.bttr-software.de/links/
- https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/bugs/18/
- https://slomkowski.eu/retrocomputing/usb-mass-storage-on-ms-dos/
- https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=9257
- https://www.stefanthoolen.nl/archive/darkehorse
- https://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
- https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=66403
-
https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2018-02-05-USB-in-MS-DOS-and-Win98.htm
- http://ps-2.kev009.com/basil.holloway/ALL%20TXT/DOSusb.txt
- http://www.pcxt-micro.com/
- https://freedos-user.narkive.com/vagYZYr9/x-windows-server-for-dos
- https://pmwiki.xaver.me/drdoswiki/index.php?n=Main.USB
- https://www.bttr-software.de/forum/mix_entry.php?id=2269
- https://groups.google.com/g/fido7.ru.dos/c/D9--YrvoibQ
- https://msfn.org/board/topic/81926-usb-mass-storage-driver-for-dos/
- https://www.ubcd4win.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t3362.html
- https://fido7.ru.dos.narkive.com/vN2CjWEV/usb-support-for-dos-
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ms-dos7.hit.bg/dosware/usb/*
P.S.It'll be great if we can add this information to a FreeDOS wiki page, so it
can be more accesible.
List:
- DOSUSB20 2.0 demo version for USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 by Georg Potthast
[http://www.dosusb.net/download.htm]
/ Did not work
/ First, I tested usbdisk.sys and then dosusb and viceversa
/ Tested dosusb with /1 and /L (no output)
/ Usbdisk.sys when loaded tells it has assigned a letter, but then a drive not
ready error appears
/ Tested loading usbdisk.sys and then the motto hairu driver
- USBDOS (version 2010-01-30) by Bret Johnson
[[https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distribu](https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distribu\)tions/1.2/repos/pkg-html/usbdos.html]
/ Not tested because it only works for UHCI which I don't have
/ Good documentation, both on how the program works and how usb works in
general / Good program that lists available controllers (USBHOSTS.COM)
- USBASPI aspi manager series
/ An article from The inquirer that gives information on how it works
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20070216201](https://web.archive.org/web/20070216201\)356/https://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=10215]
- ver1.07 by NOVAC Co., Ltd.
[https://www.grc.com/dev/sr6/USB_and_Firewire/Various/]
/ Did not work
/ "OHCI memory mapped I/O not assigned" error
- ver2.01 by MediaLogic Corp
[https://www.grc.com/dev/sr6/USB_and_Firewire/Various/]
/ Did not work
/ Did not found the usb device
- ver2.00 [not found]
- ver2.06 by Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd.
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20030610013759/http://panasonic.co.jp:80/pcc/products/drive/other/driver/f2h_usb.exe](https://web.archive.org/web/20030610013759/http://panasonic.c\)]
/ Works
/ Takes a lot of time to find the usb
- ver2.15 by Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd.
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20040605200642/http://panasonic.co.jp:80/pcc/products/drive/other/driver/f2h_usb.exe](https://web.archive.org/web/20040605200642/http://panasonic.c\)]
/ Works
- ver2.20 by Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd.
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20070102103153/http://panasonic.co.jp:80/pcc/products/drive/other/driver/f2h_usb.exe](https://web.archive.org/web/20070102103153/http://panasonic.c\)]
/ Works - ver2.24 [not found]
- ver2.27 by Panasonic Communications Co., Ltd.
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20130603214121/http://panasonic.](https://web.archive.org/web/20130603214121/http://panasonic.j\)jp/com/support/drive/archive/f2h/f2h_usb.exe]
- ver2.27x modified version by FANJIANYE and revised in 2010/09/16
[[https://web.archive.org/web/2021050612144](https://web.archive.org/web/2021050612144\)2/http://www.mdgx.com/files/USBEXFAT.ZIP]
/ Works
/ Is the fastest version available
- ver2.28 (modified version???)
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121442/http://www.mdgx.com/files/USBEXFAT](https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121442/http://www.mdgx.com/files/USBEXFAT\).ZIP]
/ Works
- DUSE by Cypress Semiconductor
/ No version worked for me
- v4.2
[https://web.archive.org/web/20121128054749/http://www.pocketech.net/downloads/duse_4_2.zip]
- v4.3 (exists?)
- v4.4 [https://www.grc.com/dev/sr6/USB_and_Firewire/Various/]
- v4.9 [https://www.grc.com/dev/sr6/USB_and_Firewire/Various/]
/ Does not work in protected mode
- USBEXFAT aspi disk driver by FANJIANYE
[[https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121442/http://www.mdgx.com/files/U](https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121442/http://www.mdgx.com/files/U\)SBEXFAT.ZIP]
/ Supports FAT16, FAT32 and EXFAT (exfat did not work for me)
- ver1.00
- ver1.0a
- DI1000DD aspi disk driver v2.00 by Novac
[https://www.grc.com/dev/sr6/USB_and_Firewire/Various/]
/ Does not support exfat
/ Also known as motto hairu driver
- UL unload utility for DOS drivers USBASPI.SYS & DI1000DD.SYS by vakobo
[https://github.com/vakobo/Unload]
- UL.exe
- IOMEGA drivers
/ No version worked for me
- aspiohci.sys
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100723191021/http://ms-dos7.hit.bg:80/dosware/usb/aspiohci.sys]
- aspiuhci.sys
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100124232308/http://ms-dos7.hit.bg:80/dosware/usb/aspiuhci.sys]
- aspiehci.sys
[https://web.archive.org/web/20100723191016/http://ms-dos7.hit.bg:80/dosware/usb/aspiehci.sys]
- guest.exe [not found]
- DAT by Datoptic
- DAT.exe
[https://web.archive.org/web/20210417055731/https://www.datoptic.com/Drivers/DAT.zip]
/ Not tested because it cannot run in DOS mode
- NJ32DISK.SYS (the aspi disk driver)
[[https://slomkowski.eu/retrocomputing/usb-mass-storage-on-ms-dos/usbaspi](https://slomkowski.eu/retrocomputing/usb-mass-storage-on-ms-dos/usbaspi\)-dos-drivers.zip]
/ Datoptic seems to recommend [https://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm] the use of the
/r flag
/ May be used with other aspi managers such as the usbaspi series
/ Did not work
- SBP2ASPI.SYS (the aspi manager)
[[https://slomkowski.eu/retrocomputing/usb-mass-storage-on-ms-dos/usbaspi-dos](https://slomkowski.eu/retrocomputing/usb-mass-storage-on-ms-dos/usbaspi-dos\)-drivers.zip]
/ Did not work
- USBMASS by APSoft
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070322171338/http://www.tssc.de:80/download/prods/usbmass.zip\]
- usbmass.exe
/ Evaluation copy that expires on 15 days
/ Enumerates processor, pci and controller information
/ Comes with a flag that unloads the program
/ The usb is recognized and assigned a letter, but it did not displayed my usb
files
- USBDDOS driver stack [https://github.com/crazii/USBDDOS]
/ Crashes with a jemmex exception or does not find the usb disk
- USBLink stack driver by SoftConnex
/ Not tested because it only works for usb1.1 devices
- ohci.exe [https://www.stefanthoolen.nl/archive/darkehorse] - uhci.exe
[https://www.stefanthoolen.nl/archive/darkehorse]
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