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RLoew (1952 - 2019) has passed away.


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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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6 minutes ago, rloew said:

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!

Wow, this is awesome! Thank you very much for this. It's certainly appreciated especially during this hard time for you.

Don't feel obligated to rush things, take all the time you need. We're all just so glad that his "presence" didn't just go cold and nobody knows what happened to him so thank you for continuing to login and update us on things. I'm hoping that you've been able to find some sort of comfort in this difficult time considering tomorrow will be a month since your dad's passing. It's still hard on some of us, myself included, but we're getting through it. I'm just sorry I never got to talk to him and know him on more of a personal level.

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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...

Edited by xrayer
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Hi,

 

thanks for sharing some code with us.

would you also share the source for AHCICD as this might really benefit the DOS community.

I wasn't even aware so far this existed.

Regards

Tom

 

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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.

:)

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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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3 hours ago, rloew said:

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.

Alright, that's cool! I'll also make sure to include a link to rloewelectronics.com when you get that up.
:)

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:angel   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!  :yes:

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On 10/14/2019 at 12:02 AM, rloew said:

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.

Aha, I just found that Borland C supported something called a precompiled headers. This should generate some extra file from *.h files that is then combined with *.c files via specific BCC command line option. It should help to speed up compilation. Maybe he used some historic slow PC for building DOS tools? If you find some free time please upload packed compiler, maybe he had placed headers and compiling batch/makefiles there. I don't hurry with it...

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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:

:angel   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!  :yes:

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!

INT1587.C SCANHDC.C

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4 hours ago, rloew said:

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!

Thanks a lot! :thumbup
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! :yes:

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9 hours ago, rloew said:

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.

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. ;)

Edited by i430VX
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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? :)

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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.

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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? :)

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. :angel

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