rloew
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Posts posted by rloew
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On 10/29/2019 at 1:32 AM, LoneCrusader said:
I noticed those as well... if I were going to guess I would say that those files are Rudy's notes on changes he was making for an updated version. The question is whether or not these changes were pushed into the "current" source code; whether or not these versions were ever actually built; whether or not they exist anywhere stand-alone, or whether they may only exist in use on his testing machine(s).
I have yet to go through stuff on what I think are his testing machines. I have plans for doing that mid next week though.
I can use this info (knowing that there might be an RFDISK 3.1) to help me figure out if I'm looking at something more recent than what I am working off of.
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On 10/23/2019 at 2:21 AM, LoneCrusader said:
Since you mentioned this;
Around that same time (little earlier; May 22) Rudy told me something interesting in an email that I don't think was mentioned publicly or expanded on elsewhere.
So we have yet another interesting bit of work from close to the same period. Hopefully this will turn up as well.
I know he collected a lot of data. Most recently we were both working on backing up the content of Windows Update for XP as there was a rumor that it would shut down. Too many things for the older systems have been lost over the years, and he was well aware of it. I know he also had an archive of HP's entire printer drivers library before they disappeared all of the 9x files. Who would have ever thought a drivers CD would be valuable.. but now in many cases they are for us dinosaurs.
Whatever makes setting up the page and getting everything uploaded easier for you works for us. We're just glad you're doing it. (Although it would be nice to not use anything that doesn't work properly with XP compatible browsers, lol..
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The biggest issue is that he just has so much data and replication of data. It's hard to find things.
I remember the HP drivers. He was a bit of a data hoarder!
Good point about the compatibility issue. It would suit him for everything to be as minimalist as possible. Makes me wonder if the SSL certificate is a problem or not.
On 10/23/2019 at 9:09 AM, CaelThunderwing said:i am ... So sorry for your Loss i just now found out when i recommended your father's Work to a Youtuber i watch trying to build a Windows 98 PC. my one Windows 98 PC (minus its current issues) wouldnt be here if it wasn't for your father's work, i wish i could of supported him more. understand you have a big family on these forums and many others out there, if you feel the need to help i wouldnt doubt that there wouldnt be a person who wouldnt mind helping where they could.
Thank you for this.
6 hours ago, Dibya said:@rloew hi , do you mind if i upload some of your father code which i own ? Like one from his api wrapper generator .
Last time i talked with Rudy , We are talking about some of his cool tools like a patch generator . His knowledge on reverse engineering was awesome . I personally use lot of his tool which are never discussed in public including his amazing disassembler . I guess their are many such never released tools which he never talked in public .
I think LoneCrusader will love to short his code . I will love to have his CPP version of his MAKEWRAP tool whose assembly only version is with me ( Assembly only version was requested personally by me , and he made it just for me ) .
Figuring out coding style of Rudy will be tough since as far as i know he used to use his own debugger so i may guess he might have used his own compiler in some cases . I will love to make and maintain a github repo for his work
Feel free to upload and spread around whatever materials of his you have. It's the only way to keep it alive. I attached makewrap.cpp, is that what you referred to?
He liked very simple tools for things like debugging. I'm honestly surprised I haven't found anything for debugging over serial yet. I found stuff related to two other compilers today. I haven't found out where he actually built his code though.
41 minutes ago, siria said:
Am glad the binaries will still be available, and even as freeware, thank you. That's great and for normal users the only thing that matters. Just for clarifying, do you have a license in mind? Additionally to "freeware" all source codes published and declared as "OpenSource"? Or source code even as "public domain"?I haven't changed anything so my dad's license is still there. But, the intention is that the code is public. I would hope people who build off the code give some credit to my father but that is up to them.
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On 10/20/2019 at 4:53 PM, dencorso said:
Thanks a lot!
BTW, you're right: it's not it. I guess the best way would be to serch by date 1st, starting not earlier than July the 1st... he sure edited that source along the way, so probably the last version was modified and compiled after July the 17th or around it...
I have no hurry at all, do take your time, and thanks for your help! You do rock!
I think I'll have to set up one of his computers to find it. I have a feeling it isn't in the "active" set of stuff I'm looking at.
On 10/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, i430VX said:You're progressing towards covering what i wanted to do, so:
I've set his previous site (rloew1.x10host.com) to redirect to yours.
Hopefully that should catch any stragglers.Thanks again for setting yours up.
Thanks!
On 10/21/2019 at 7:42 AM, MERCURY127 said:Rloew, I think, it will better, if u grab all source folders ur dad's and upload it as one full archive, instead greping file by file... Also, more better if someone with programming knowledge from msfn can go to ur house and make good public repository on github, for example...
Just uploading sources by file is not very good idea, as for compiling needed not only c files, but many other files, and as I know from private, ur dad even use own debugger...
Between, me also want know, who was ur dad in real life, where work... Maybe he work in big hardware company for drivers?
Uploading them without going through them would not be a good idea. Right off the bat, there is customer information scattered in there. I already seen some family photos in the mix and even some code that I know is not relevant. I wouldn't want to just throw it out there. I can hold my own in regards to programming knowledge so that isn't a concern. A repo can be made at any point and anyone here could do it if they felt inclined to do so. I can't offer support for it anyway - I just don't have the time.
My option was to upload source without a build system or to not upload source. I would like to think you can see what the better option is. In any case, the logic in the code is more important for anyone to try to learn or extend his work.
Regarding who my dad was, I'm uploading his resumes so you get an idea of what he felt was appropriate to say he did. He did a bit of consulting work for Aerospace Avionics (I think that is the name, I have a pile of hardware schematics from them but they were absorbed into another company) but pretty much was consulting for the last 30 years and living off investments and tax liens. My dad was phone phreaker in his youth and actually got arrested for it (I'm quite proud of him for that) and was forced to write a public apology to avoid jail time. He was also responsible for this article: http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0431.pdf
On 10/21/2019 at 11:03 AM, siria said:Just my personal opinion, but if anything would happen to myself and then all my private stuff and belongings, incl. all unfinished stuff with scribbled notes inside that regard only myself, would be thrown out there publicly on the street, fully open to every passing id*** to do and abuse whatever he wants with it, I'd absolutely hate that.
Would find it much better if instead just a few selected, trustworthy people would get the unsorted stuff to manage it responsibly.I'm pretty sure that I'm about the only person he would trust with this. Although, he would not be pleased that I'm just giving away his work and that is a point where we differed in opinion, I think it is the best option for me to preserve his legacy.
23 hours ago, LoneCrusader said:I believe we can rest easy. Rudy's son does have plenty of experience of his own in programming and other matters even if they aren't directly related to our beloved older versions of Windows. It's just a major task to organize another person's work who doesn't work the same way you do or work in the same subjects you do.. which of any of us would know where to begin? I've been trying to decide how to handle some of the things I have that we worked on and I'm having trouble figuring that out myself. I'm confident everything will eventually be sorted out.
I've been working on some webpages dedicated to Rudy's work, but it's slow going for this old dinosaur whose HTML knowledge is 20 years old and who writes all of his HTML by hand in Notepad. I would like to eventually have more than just file links and the text of README files.. I've been adding screenshots of Rudy's work in action as I have them but it would be a major time consuming task to stop and create such content for everything. Here's what I have up so far.. some of the pages are just placeholders, and most of the file links go to the archive.org collection for the moment although I do plan to host them myself eventually. I have also added a couple of small projects that we had worked on that were never released. I'm dreading the writeup on WDMEX when the time comes, lol.
I never got into Windows like my dad did but I do take after him quite a bit. I wish my dad followed more modern standards for organization and such but the major issue is that there is just a massive amount of data. I brought about 60TB of stuff back home with me and that might only be half of his recent stuff (last few years). He has tape archives going back at least 20 years but I am pretty confident that stuff isn't related to his Windows endeavors.
HTML by hand fits my dad so well. But I'm thinking about using React for the long-term of the page.
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On 10/13/2019 at 9:15 PM, i430VX said:
Alright, that's cool! I'll also make sure to include a link to rloewelectronics.com when you get that up.
The site is live. I'm going to post some of his packages onto it today. If you'd like me to link to you as a supporter/mirror/whatever, just let me know.
On 10/13/2019 at 11:03 PM, dencorso said: Well, since you kindly located the TRIM sources for @xrayer, I do have a request, too, in case you can find a little time to spare: on July the 17th, RLoew reported he had found out the SCSI commands for changing the apparent sector size of WDC external USB disks (in the thread quoted below, from the quoted post onwards)...
So, whatever source code and compiled programs related to this must be from not more than a couple of days before his initial post about it, and probably were one o the last things he worked on. I'd love to have a look on whatever you can find, either in source form, notes or test executables, in case any can be found. Sorry to bother, but it's a subject we all were just starting to pursue, and his were the 1st applicable results, so it'd be a great help to get them. Thanks in advance!
I found that drive he purchased and I couldn't read it on my own machine, I haven't gotten around to seeing if it would read on one of his own.
I did a quick grep for SCSI and WD in his source folder (at least the one that I think has everything) and attached what I found. I don't think this is the relevant portion though. I'll keep it in mind when I'm looking through things though!
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3 hours ago, i430VX said:
Well after thinking about it, I have come to the conclusion, that (if desired by rloew's family) I have the resources to bring rloew's site back to life.
I can update it to have current links to download his projects and stuff like that, as the web archive "sort by author" leaves a bit to be desired.
I'll only do this if rloew's family is OK with it, it's only an invitation. But with that being said I'd be more than happy to do it if desired.
You are welcome to put something up. I just got the rloewelectronics.com domain that I'll put everything on as I sort it out.
On 10/11/2019 at 10:48 AM, xrayer said:Many thanks for sharing with us. It may look he used some Borland C, I'll try to rebuild. I wonder he used a lot of inline asm code and there's no any include statement, even for <stdio.h>. Maybe he didn't even use stdlib. If I cannot rebuild it will be still usable to study the code how DMA IDE commans calls works.
UPDATE: Well, the code looks a bit cryptic but it compiles with BC++ 4.52, just to ignore tons of warnings about missing prototypes. This can be fixed easily creating a header file...
Reading your post, I think he had given me a copy of Borland's Turbo C compiler at some point. It does seem like he had some sort of custom handling of his includes.
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On 9/30/2019 at 10:20 PM, Tommy said:
Wow, that is quite a timeline you have provided here.
Let me first start out by saying thank you ever so much for posting this and giving those that "knew" him some closure. I know @LoneCrusader will probably appreciate seeing this post as well because he and your dad kept in contact a lot and worked on projects together. I'm glad it also helped to get it off your chest as well, so it benefited all of us in the end.
I still feel very sad over the loss and in time we will all heal but it sounds like he was quite a trooper through the whole thing but unfortunately just wasn't strong enough to come through. But some of us truly liked your father and he was always welcome here. As a small token of our gratitude, we promoted his account that you're using to the patrons group which is reserved for those who have had a special impact here or retired staff members. We know it's not much but it's all we can really offer along with our most sincere condolences.
While you may or may not have much use being here, please be aware that you're certainly most welcome in the community, even if you just want to talk to some of us who were close to your dad. Not a lot of people would have done what you did but I know myself and others will be more at peace with your dad's untimely passing.
Again, thank you ever so much for the update!
Thank you, I've been in touch with @LoneCrusader regarding his cotnact with my father. I appreciate what you've done with my dad's account.
3 hours ago, xrayer said:Thanks for permission of distributing the patches. In a case that even source codes become freely available I would be interested in extending the TRIM tool support also on FAT16 FS. I started to write my own TRIM years ago with partial success but after discarding the first block (I checked that it was really blanked) my IDE controller left in some error state with busy LED on and I didn't manage to solve this problem. Nobody can help me with this because not much people knowledges goes so deep and want to share it. RL made it working...
I have found some source code, lots of it, so I know some of it isn't related to his patches. I'm going to make that stuff available too once I actually have some free time (my life was already busy before all of this). @LoneCrusader mentioned to me that he might have been using a custom compiler which I am unaware of at the moment so it may not just compile nicely. But, I've attached a few of the TRIM named files (and what look like dependencies he had) that I have. I don't know if these are the most recent or even if they are the right ones!
BLK13EX.C TRIMCHK.C TRIMCMD.C DISKPORT.C TRIM.C DRIVE.C IDENTIFY.C GETNUM.C
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On 9/26/2019 at 1:17 AM, Tommy said:
First off, let me thank you ever so much for coming here to post an update, you have no idea how much it is appreciated.
Second, I personally want to extend my sincerest condolences for your loss, to you and the rest of the family. We truly enjoyed having your dad as part of our community. Heh, my heart actually started racing when I saw his username had posted, thinking that somehow we got a bum steer and he was coming to tell us that he was still alive.
But back to seriousness, we understand that it's probably a very busy time for you and the family and we want you to take all the time you need to grieve and take care of important business. But know that even though we didn't get to meet him personally, he was still a friend around here and we treasured the time we had with him. If I may ever be so brazen, was his passing expected or unexpected? You don't have to answer if you don't want to but it may help some of the hurt that some of us feel and give us some closure.
Again, thank you so much for coming and posting this update for us! It really helps to keep up in the loop of things. I'm sure some of our users will greatly appreciate his work not being lost to the world, especially those who are as diehard Win9x users as your dad was.
I am glad that he had found friends here. I never really knew the extent of all of his Win9x work. My current desktop can still boot into Win9x because of him, although, I haven't in a while.
I would like to try to provide some closure for others so I'll give a timeline of what happened. You may or may not have known that my father had heart issues. He had a mild heart attack in his 40s.
August 19th: Goes in for angiogram, gets fast tracked for triple bypass surgery. He left me a message midday about it and I called him that evening. We discussed the options they gave him and he seemed settled on the bypass surgery.
August 21st: Has the surgery. Gets out of surgery, doctor tells me take he handled it well.
August 24th: First time I was able to contact him on the phone after the surgery. He seemed well but certainly worn-down after the surgery.
August 25th: Had a heart attack (cardiac event). Survived, but apparently it was not a good situation. I was able to talk to him that evening (I think, it could have been the next day). Got the impression that his diabetes and insulin resistance played a major role in the incident.
August 28th: Last night I get to talk to him. I made plans to come down to see him on the 30th.
August 29th: Situation escalates, possible infection/sepsis.
August 30th-September 2nd: He is heavily sedated for the pain. But things seem stable. Not good, but stable. I return home and hope for the best.
September 3-7th: Situation goes back and forth, fluid buildup leads to treatment for infection. Ultimately, the infection is treatable but the sepsis is not.
September 9th: Palliative care nurse contacts me and I go back down that afternoon. Situation is getting worse.
September 10th: Responsiveness to questions during sedation vacation is lost except to pain stimulus.
September 11th: Taken off of life support. Passes at 1:28pm.
I hope that helps. I think it has helped me to write it out. I forgot I had the message from him in my voicemail about going to the hospital. My own personal take on it is that complications from diabetes played a major role in his inability to recover but I am not a doctor and it's just my own mind trying to justify the situation.
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I didn't realize that people would find out so soon about my father's passing. I wanted to express my appreciation of the impact he has had for many of you with all his work on Windows. I got to hear about it for years over meals and I never realized how many people found value in his patches.
It is a busy time right now but I did want to clear the air regarding the patches. I would like them to continue to be distributed, for his work to be remembered and to be beneficial to others. So, please, freely distribute what you may have in terms of the work my dad did. When things are more settled, I will see what I can do regarding anything missing he might have had available and whatever relevant material there might be that someone could use to further pursue his work.
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DOS has a simpler implementation of FAT32 than Windows 9x. I was able to Patch it to work up to 32K.
VFAT only supported 2K until I Patched it for 4K. Above 4K I think there are issues with Caching since Caching is done by Memory Pages which are 4K.
I have identified two internal variables that don't have valid values when larger Sectors are used.1 -
7 hours ago, dencorso said:
So it seems, for all practical purposes, 4KiB sectors are the upper limit, right?
Apparently for all versions of Windows. Patched DOS can go to 32KiB Sectors for a maximum of 128TiB per Partition.
Patched 9x can support Drives larger than 16TiB but with a maximum Partition size of 16TiB.
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I decided to take the plunge.
I tried 8K and 16K Sectors.
Neither worked in XP. CHKDSK did seem to understand and repair a NTFS Partition. Formatting failed for either FAT32 or NTFS. WD Formatter could reset and reformat the Drive.
Windows 2000 rebooted when I connected the Drive with 16K Sectors.
Windows 8 doesn't support 16K Sectors.
Windows 98SE did not support 16K Sectors even after further patching of VFAT. Raw access was available, as well as ASPI so I can set or reset the Drive as needed.
My RFDISK and RFORMAT tools can handle 16K Sectors as they were designed to support up to 32K Sectors.
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5 hours ago, Dave-H said:
I had a look at your site, but I couldn't immediately identify the program concerned.
Which one is it?
It is not currently on my website, you can contact me directly.
I will list it if I see more interest. It is called ALIGNDRV.
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On 3/9/2019 at 5:21 AM, jaclaz said:
@dave-h
Look - again - it is not difficult.
For NTFS partition needs to be aligned to a multiple of cluster size and possibly to a multiple of page size, and with that the filesystem data will be already aligned.
For FAT32 what counts is the alignment of the data inside the filesystem, that is outside the scope of Parition Wizard and of any partitioning tool.
NO existing tool AFAIK (exception made for RMPREPUSB and - good to know - RFORMAT by R.Loew) will do that alignment, but it is not particularly difficult to format FAT32 "normally" and then modify a few values on the BPB and copy/paste a couple sectors to make it aligned when the volume is empty.Re-aligning an existing partition is on the other hand "tricky" and unless R.Loew will write a dedicated program for it, it is not possible manually.
jaclaz
On 3/9/2019 at 7:35 AM, Dave-H said:Done.
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It is possible to add AHCI Boot to an Installed IDE system as well as the reverse. The former is documented on the Internet. I plan to add NVME to the options in the future.
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My tools only work in 9x. Only the WD Formatter works in XP and 7+. WD Formatter did recognize the My Passport set to 2K.
Although I had tested DOS up to 32K, I never tested 9x with more than 4K. I'm not sure if VFAT can handle Sectors larger than Physical Page sizes.
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The My Passport accepted the commands for 8K, 16K, 32K, and 64K but I did not commit them.
I am concerned that Windows 98SE would crash before I could reset it back to 4K or less. It crashes with 4K without my Terabyte Plus Package due to buffer overruns.
I haven't tried 520 or 528.
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I purchased and tested a 4TB WD My Passport Drive. The current WD Formatter does work, although not quite as described in the documentation.
I found the SCSI commands needed to set the Sector size between 512 and 4K. Unfortunately, most other Drives do not support them.
It can also be set to 1K and 2K Sector sizes, which are supported by Windows from 2000 to 10 as well as 98SE with my Terabyte Plus Package.
I did not try 8K, 16K, 32K, or 64K Sectors because I wasn't sure if I could regain control.
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Some External Drives work, some don't. Make sure that Windows XP actually recognizes them as 10TB Drives. Use the Disk Management Tool. Otherwise you could be in for an unpleasant surprise.
You can have one FAT32 Partition if you want. You are not limited to 2TB per partition.
Windows 98SE will work but it requires my TBPLUS Package. I include a verified USB Mass Storage Driver.
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Depending upon what they mean by "compatibility" you may still need my SATA Patch.
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You booted in compatibility mode. Windows uses the BIOS to access the Hard Drives in this mode. Hard Disk access speed is severely reduced and some functions may not work.
You will need to switch to Legacy Mode or use my AHCI Driver.
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The design limit of RFDISK is a total of 61 profiles and overlays.
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11 hours ago, RainyShadow said:
Let me guess - you have 60 logical partitions and map the one you boot as primary?
I think the same can be achieved with GRUB4DOS
No. I have about 20 Primary Partitions and 10 Logical Partitions in one chain.
My multi-profile MBR chooses one of a set of conventional MBRs to boot from.
I have not worked with GRUB4DOS, so I am not sure what it can do.
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13 hours ago, Dave-H said:
Now that's just showing off!
Not really. I didn't mention that there are two independent copies of 95, and of 10, and several of 98SE. I also forgot the two copies of XP.
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I have a partitioning tool that can support 60 separate Operating Systems in one Drive. My main system has Windows 95, 98, ME, 7, 8, and 10 in one Drive.
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RLoew (1952 - 2019) has passed away.
in Pinned Topics regarding 9x/ME
Posted
Well, I got most of these. I know I have the rest, I've seen them but they weren't in the stuff I had easily accessible.