rloew

A Track is one ring of data on one side of a Floppy. A Head can access an entire side, or platter in an old Hard Drive. The same names are used for Floppies and Hard Disks. Yes. No. This is the size of a Cylinder. Number_of_Tracks would not be the same. It would equal the Number of Cylinders multiplied by the Number of Heads. The confusion occurs because of the mixture of data descriptions on the Disk with the hardware access control nomenclature. A pure data based definition would be as follows: Sectors per Track Tracks per Cylinder Cylinders per Disk (Total Cylinders)

"Sectors per Head" would not make much sense since that would be half of a entire Floppy Disk. The concept of Cylinders and Heads, sometimes even Sectors, is meaningless on Hard Disks as they use Zone Recording. Even though Floppies have "Tracks", you do not address them as such in the controller. You select a Head that can access the desired Range of Tracks. This is why you have CHS not CTS. Typically the Volume Serial number is generated from the Current Date/Time. @all As far as the problem with Formatting LS-120 Disks, there are at least Four different situations, listed here in increasing severity: 1. Disk accessible and Mounts. Access: Interrupts 0x13, 0x21, 0x25, 0x26 Format: Nearly any Formatter will do. 2. Disk accessible but does not Mount. Access: Interrupt 0x13 Format: Track 0 Writer, my RFDISK. 3. Disk low level Formatted, not accessible by BIOS or Windows. Access: Direct Port I/O Format: Low level Disk Utilities, SCSI Tools, My RFDISK (raw mode maybe). For SCSI devices, use Command 4 (Format). 4. Disk blank, bulk-erased, or headers corrupted. Access: Direct Port I/O maybe or Manufacturer only Connector or Rig. Format: Depends (see below) Same as #3 if SCSI Command 4 works (A). Possible Solutions for SCSI: A: SCSI Format Command (4). B: Undocumented SCSI Formatting Command (?). Manufacturer's tool may work. C: Manufacturer's Formatting Rig. D: Neighborhood Recycling Center. I do not have a LS-120 so I don't know what is required but the previous Posts are not encouraging. Maybe a SCSI Mode Select Command followed by a SCSI Format Command would help. A Track Zero Writer is not going to work on a bulk-erased Disk. Even if it could low level Format the Track you would still not be able to write anything to the rest of the Disk. Low Level Formatting capability is built into the Floppy Controller so FORMAT can do the Low Level Formatting on the entire Disk before writing Track Zero. This is not generally the case with other magnetic media.

I added the link to my Post to point out a possible issue for open-source users and developers that hasn't gotten much notice, namely the risk of lawsuits from Patent holders. You may be safe where you are, but not where I am.

It never occurred to me to think that the survival of Windows 9x was so dependent upon me alone. It must be time to raise my prices to monopolistic levels. Incidentally, Windows 9x is neither free nor open-source so you should have avoided it like the Plague. Say hello to the Penguin for me. I just found an interesting little tidbit about open-source that may be of interest: http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/business/231001194?cid=nl_IW_btl_2011-07-12_text

Getting a bit off-topic. These posts belong in the Superfloppy and/or LS-120 threads.

True. I define Floppy-Like and HD-like based on the way they are handled by DOS and possibly by Windows 9X. At the Media end, Floppy = Soft, Flexible Media, Hard = Rigid, Non-Flexible Media. As for Drives and Controllers, I leave it up to the rest of you to fight over definitions. Official El-Torito Floppy Emulation Images top out at 2.88MB. Extending the Cylinder Count (unofficial, but common in BIOSes) gets you to 36MB. I called these "Extended" Floppy Images. So called SuperFloppy Drives typically use IDE or SCSI Interfaces and more resemble Hard Drives. Only by explicit inclusion in a BIOS's or Option ROMS's design can they be Booted as A: Drives. USB Drives are a similar story.

That usage does not conflict with my interpretation of Floppy-Like. There will still be limitations on usage such as CHS only access. Unmodified DOS will not support LBA on an A: or B: Drive. I will withdraw the following comment as you have disproven it. Your example makes the presence or absence of the MBR even less important.

I wanted the CD Floppy Emulation thread to be distinct from the SuperFloppy thread because it is about El-Torito Floppy Emulation on Optical Media. There are different considerations for these than there are for other Floppy-Like Devices such as the LS-120, LS-240, Clik etc. It was not about size. I pushed the El-Torito limit in Post #1. Now I have determined that there is no real limit. That is not what I said. I said Devices that Mount as A: or B: are Floppy-Like. Devices that Mount as C: or above are HD-Like. USB Drives generally Mount as C: or above, so are HD-Like, but they can use a MBR or not use a MBR. I will agree that a Drive that uses a MBR is HD-Like because it cannot be Mounted as A: or B:, but the Converse is not necessarily true.

There never was a "2.88 MB" drive for the Amiga, but the principles used can be applied to the PC. I'm not sure that you can put three 8KiB Sectors in a single track but I think you probably can put one 16KiB Sector and one 8KiB Sector on a track. It is possible to put one 24KiB Sector on a track but you would need to do Error Detection in software. Even putting 11 1KiB Sectors per track would achieve 3.52MB. I never thought about the distinction between floppies and superfloppies. I always treated standard floppy formats as "floppies", anything else as "superfloppies", or I suppose possibly "subfloppies". I have never used a superfloppy. I called the up to 36MB El-Torito Images "extended floppies" as they use the standard floppy Geometry except for the number of Cylinders. Only the A:/B: vs. C: distinction is really important.

Guess again. Amigas Format 1802240 Bytes on a HD (1.44MB) Floppy using their standard Format. Non-Standard formats can easily reach 1966080 Bytes or more. USB Drives can be used with or without a MBR. They still use 0xF8. I think that 0xF0 is needed for Floppy-like Drives (Drives that mount as A: or B:). Otherwise use 0xF8. DOS 7 handles A: and B: Drives differently than C: or higher.

Close. My entire DDO is in the El-Torito loader. I will probably switch to Floppy Emulation so the Real Floppy Drive will appear as B:. Unfortunately El-Torito emulation is Read-Only, even on BD-RE so you would have to customize your Win 98SE to the target machine on another medium, transfer it to a CD/DVD/BD, boot it and load it into a RAMDisk to run. A much more complex DDO, similar to my BOOTMAN series, would be needed to Write to the CD/DVD/BD, and it would wear out much faster than Flash Drives. There is also no need to use extended Floppy emulations as you can load a minimal system out of a standard Floppy Image and load your RAMDisk from an ISO-9660 FS. @drugwash: There is probably only limited need for these extended emulations. It would be needed for transparency when working with Computers already having 24 Hard Drive Partitions defined. For me, the exercise gave me the information I needed to add an additional 256TiB to the data handling capacity of DOS.

With a new DDO and a few Patches, I have created a Blu-Ray Disk that boots a 23GB A: Drive. I have solved the LBA issue so it should also work with the 50GB Blu-Ray Disks.

@RLoew: Preventing the installation of the USB stack altogether I know how, but how can you prevent the instalation of the USB drivers for just a single port? I never experimented with selective USB blocking on my USB based Systems. I did some experimenting to block USB Keyboard drivers. I don't think you can block a single port. i think you may have to block at least two, maybe four. I had to block two Root Hubs to stop Windows from taking over my Keyboard. If you want to experiment, install Windows to a USB Drive (a USB hard drive would be faster) until it crashes, reboot in Safe Mode and disable all USB Drivers, reboot and repeat the procedure until all USB Drivers have been loaded and disabled. You can then try turning them back on one at a time and rebooting. Use Safe Mode to recover when it fails.

I would agree. At least in the example you gave. It may depend on the GRUB4DOS options used. A chainloader does not HAVE to use a DDO if it doesn't need to alter the layout or behavior of the Drives. I have an experimental GPT booter that could be considered a chainloader but is not a DDO.

Which sizes had the images? I did not use Images. I was using a real 1.44MB Floppy which cannot hold an entire FAT16 or FAT32 Partition. I Quick Formatted it with my RFORMAT Program knowing that not all of the Space actually existed. I was more interested in seeing if DOS or Windows would access the portion I used correctly. I used 8192 Sectors and 70000 Sectors as the defined sizes. By DDO here you mean reanimatolog's BCDW 1.50Z, right? I was being more general, but yes. I don't consider chainloading to be a DDO as long as the chainloader does not hook Interrupt 13. I interpret a DDO to be software, excluding firmware, that Hooks the Interrupt 13 Call before the OS is Booted. You already have a solution for 700MB (not 700GB). I was also thinking of DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Bad example. That one is running with no driver for Windows 9x. I listed them under AGP aperture. Neither is large enough to be significant. Making a Demo Version of the SATA Patch is a problem as a significant part of it is the INF which is plain text. Running in Compatability mode will provide reduced performance but will support SATA and drives larger than 137GB. Renaming ESDI_506.PDR in the Windows\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS folder after the first reboot during installation will insure this. Using the MaxPhysPage and MaxFileCache settings will allow him to Setup Windows and install the Video Driver. Once this is done, he can Install the Demo RAM Limitation Patch, with the /M option, from DOS, edit out the MaxPhysPage and MaxFileCache settings and boot to Windows. 10 Minutes is more than enough to verify proper operation.

Seems I was right, after all: I converted the inner megafloppy (690 MiB !) image to MS-DOS 7.1, and it booted all right, just as before. reanimatolog rocks! Since your success is inconsistent with the results of my earlier experiments. I did a new set. I created Floppy disks with FAT16 and FAT32 formatting. FAT16 is bootable and works fine with no obvious issues under DOS 7 or Windows 9x. FAT32 is bootable and works with DOS 7 but crashed Windows 9x when accessed. The 36MiB El Torito limit remains, but the DDO approach can get you to 2GiB, or more with Patches. I am formally amending the FAT12 restriction I posted earlier to include FAT16. FAT32 does appear to have problems if Windows 9x is loaded but may be useable otherwise. Without analysis, I do not know if reanimatolog's DDO supports LBA. I did not retest some of the other limitations that may apply to non-standard FAT12 and FAT16 Partitions, such as reserving more than 1 Sector.

The 512MB GPU is often not the problem. I have used a 512MB Nvidia 6200 Card. Many of the 512MB GPU Cards don't work because they are not properly supported at any size. Non-Nvidia Cards may be another story.

Windows 98 creates Recycle bins on EVERY Drive present, except A: and B:, when you do certain operations. I'm not sure which ones. You probably never had the second Flash Drive connected when this happened. The first one had more exposure. I do not know if there is a way of stopping Windows from creating them. It has caused me enough aggravation when it wrote to a drive I didn't want written to.

Three ways: 1. Extract the original version from the Windows installation CD. 2. Download and extract a Microsoft Hotfix. 3. Buy my 1TB Patch package which has a built in extractor, or TBPLUS Package with all mods included. Yes. Any standalone VXD will override it's corresponding component within VMM32.VXD.

VFAT.VXD

Nice piece of work. But it still uses a DDO. They may not have called them DDOs back then. The difference is he used No-Emulation Mode to load the DDO and referenced the CDFS for the entire Image. I was suggesting using a DDO to take over and extend access to the El-Torito Image. Either way works. Presumably FREEDOS does not have the FAT12 restriction. He used FAT16. There is nothing wrong with DDOs as long you don't have someone stupid design them as some of the Hard Drive Manufacturers did. Note: The 36MiB El-Torito limitation has nothing to do with No-Emulation Mode. It is a simple Memory loader.

Yes. It is a setting in the Folder Options. It is called "Allow all uppercase names". The default is mixed case. Using mixed case can cause an undesired side effect. I use all uppercase names for many files on my Website. When uploading updates to files on the website from a new Computer, the Upload Dialog Box changed the names, seen by the Uploading Software, to mixed case. Many Web Hosts use Case Sensitive Operating Systems so my uploads ended up as separate files leaving the unupdated files for my website users.

This is why I said this approach is not simple. Unfortunately, the BIOS controls the CD's Floppy Emulation. The BIOSes I have tested, do not support LBA Mode and force the Geometry to 2x36 at best. With 1024 Cylinders, this sets the limit to 36MiB. You can define a larger Partition, but it will simply wrap back to zero when you pass 36MiB. You would need your own Code (DDO) to access the rest of the Image. You can do larger Images but only as Hard Disk Emulations (C:). Usually people just create a small Bootable Image and add the rest to the body of the CD.

Well, no. That's called "I have something that is not currently available, for free or for $. Additionally, WHEN and IF it will be available, it will be "Closed-Source"." Corollary: "I won't also not reveal that I have this thing ready in the closet, unless someone will torture me" It already exists, so it is available. If someone bought it right this minute, I would write some instructions for it and E-Mail it. It does not have to be advertised to be available. I have already sold products to MSFN forum members that were never advertised on my Website. No one asked the price or even if it was available. Everyone knows it exists. It is not torture to ask. The Forum does have a PM option, and my E-Mail Address is published. Sure, it is something that is done once one has decided to market something, in order to forecast revenues, if they are calculated to be too low, the item is not marketed after all. Of course you are perfectly free to release (or NOT release) anything as well as market (or avoid marketing) any of your tools, that's the very good thing about freedom . But you have to see it from a purely pragmatical viewpoint. Real, physical things produced have usually 5 main source for costs: development costs marketing/advertising costs production costs distribution costs product support costs #2 is the key here. Even at minimum wage, I would have to sell several to cover my time, or charge an unacceptable price. #4 is not really anywhere near zero. Just the mechanics of making a Paypal payment takes up a lot of E-Mail to-and-fro. Even worse when it is not an option. #5 isn't that small, no matter how good the product is. They want to use it for purposes it was not intended for, they keep asking about my upgrade policy, even after I said "free upgrades", etc. Add them together, and consider what I just said above. I think I will wait until the Workaround discussion runs it's course and see who has, what dencorso described as "lots of patience", such as you I'm sure, and who would rather not.