Tis sad, but the darkehorse USB DOS forum is going down soon, so I thought I'd post this useful bit of info on results of my research in getting USB 2.0 storage devices recognized in DOS.

The best driver I found is little-known Panasonic ASPI manager for USB mass storage devices v2.06

USBASPI1.SYS is one of the most recent DOS ASPI managers for USB 2.0 and 1.x mass storage devices.

FEATURES:
> Has support for faster USB 2.0 as well as USB 1.1 (unlike more popular USBASPI.SYS and USBASPI2.SYS device drivers which seem to be USB1.x only!)
> Works on most USB chipset implementations, including Intel and NEC (from my tests), as well as VIA, NVidia and SIS (doc'd on other websites)
> Obtains working parameters via PCI BIOS (PnP) to minimize difficulties with I/O, Mem and IRQ mapping (unlike DUSE 4.x which limits range of I/O port address and has no Memory addressing support)
> Combined with the other Motto Hairu drivers (RAMFD.sys and Di1000dd.sys), provides the best solution for bootable USB as well as GHOST floppy support.

Here are valid switches I have identified for the Panasonic USBASPI1.sys driver

device=[{path}]USBASPI.SYS [/e] [/o] [/u] [/w] [/v] [/l[=n]] [/f] /r] [/slow] [/nocbc] [/norst] [/noprt]

The driver scans all 3 USB controller specs by default, but you can limit which controllers are enabled using these switches:
/e EHCI spec (USB 2.0)
/o OHCI spec (newer USB 1.x)
/u UHCI spec (older USB 1.x)

These switches modify the driver actions
/w Wait, displays prompt message for swapping/attaching USB devices
/v Verbose, shows detailed status messages - VERY USEFUL
/l[=n] LUN, specifies the highest LUN # to be attached to device ID (default=0)
/r R?, to access also USB FDD. Note RAMFD.SYS may be needed in some cases.
/slow Slow-mode, {?probably to force slow mode on USB2.0 connections?)

I still have no idea about these switches due to a limited test facility so please fell free to send me results of your experiments. I did put my guesses in {?} here:
/nocbc {no card bus controller?}
/norst {no reset?}
/noprt {not a portable? no printer?}
/f {floppy? fast?}

If only we could link it directly to a manufacturer or technical web site... I had downloaded it (thanks to links provided in posts at darkehorse' mini-BB) from:

http://www.bootdisk.com/donate.htm#lunch

Hope this helps in your quest for DOS-USB bliss!

Hey! Are u saying that this lil .SYS will let DOS recognise USB conns??? Also - is it XP compat???

http://www.bgdf.com/darkehorse/forums

Yes this forum is still up and yes USB in DOS and also NT4 is entirely feasible, I use USB external Compact Flash Read/Writer and a floppy disk to boot, the DOS O/S files along with Nettamer HTTP/FTP browser are on a 32MB Flash Card, upload my web site http://www.mwpms.uklinux.net on this setup with an external Windoze software Serial Modem.

This has nothing to do with XP/W2K/98/ME they all have USB support, this is to do with people like me using DOS and other people using back-up software like Norton Ghost where the Ghost DOS Boot Disk will not recognise USB CD/CDRW drives and hard drives, which are either plugged into a USB port on the Motherboard or to a PCI expansion card, it may also work with PCMCIA USB cards as well.

DOS has limited support for IEE1394 FireWire as well.

So have a read you will be surprised how much DOS support there still is.

btw there is no DOS in XP it is emulated as in NT4/W2K and IBM OS/2

Addendum:

New switch:
/p=xxxx Port, specifies I/O address of USB controller

Corrections:
/e EHCI spec (USB 2.0)
/o OHCI spec (MS/NEC/VIA USB 1.x)
/u UHCI spec (Intel USB 1.x)

If you want a more detailed discussion on the source of thsi driver, go to

http://www.bgdf.com/darkehorse/forums/index.php?action=vthread&forum=1&topic=154

madmaxUSB the darkhorse URL you gave is dead.

Where can one find "USBASPI1.SYS"? I've searched google, dejanews, and filesearch.ru
to no avail.

Thanks.

> Where can one find "USBASPI1.SYS"? I've
> searched google, dejanews, and
> filesearch.ru to no avail.

Try:
http://www.bootdisk.com/donate.htm#lunch
(see original message)

This might be a stupid question, but does it matter how the USB is implemented? In other words, does it matter at all whether the USB card is PCI or CardBus?

Louis LaBash

Yes, darkehorse is already offline as announced, but a mirror site MINUS the forums is available at http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/

USBASPI1.SYS is actually USBASPI.SYS v2.06 from Panasonic. You can get the original package in the F2H subdirectory at this Japanese site
http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/cdrrw/kxlrw40an/download.html

Recommended usage is
device=[D:path/]usbaspi.sys /w /v

Here is a good text reference of driver sources for USB and Firewire support in DOS
http://www.mwpms.uklinux.net/usbfire.txt

> This might be a stupid question, but does it matter how the USB is implemented?
> In other words, does it matter at all whether the USB card is PCI or CardBus?

With reference to the topic of trying to get USB mass storage devices to run in pure DOS, it does.

Case1: If the motherboard BIOS or Plug-n-Play functionis not aware of the existence of the add-on USB ports.
Case2: The system has both onboard USB ports and add-on card(s) so we are not sure which will be properly detected
Case3: Memory or I/O port resource conflicts

This is the reason for the existence of some driver switches. Unfortunately, this driver isn't well documented...

I'll come up with the updated results of my research soon!

In reply to madmaxUSB...

Mucho gracias.
That is an extremely useful posting.
Can we get all the 'USB can't work under DOS' posts removed from this whole site ?
They are misleading and clearly wrong.
Any ideas?

In reply to Phil Calvert....

Host implementation does seem to matter.
The Panasonic is the least 'fussy' driver I have met w.r.t. peripheral chipset.

I have a NEC USB 2.0 chipset on a 'clone' PCI card.
I have the same chipset on a 'clone' Cardbus card.
Both work OK in Win98SE, etc.
I also bought an Adaptec Cardbus card in 'USB 2.0 frustration' (a notifiable disease).
The Adaptec is fine in Windows, no better than the clone in DOS
Like you I also want DOS connectivity.
This is mainly for Ghost.

Note about alternative drivers :-
The Ghost USB (Iomega) drivers are pretty limited (Iomega, try harder!).
DUSE 4.4 was written by Cypress, it objects to peripherals without a Cypress or ISD chipset.

Back to the Panasonic driver....

The desktop PCI card works fine with the Panasonic driver.
This is possible with peripherals having Genesys and Cypress/ISD chipsets.(And others?)
N.B. I have one Genesys chipset that crashes under DOS and one that is fine, unsure why.

My Cardbus cards seems to defeat the Panasonic driver.
I think the Cardbus slot is to blame in my case.
The driver finds the Cardbus card OK but stalls whilst/after scanning the bus.

Looking at the binary, the driver recognises some TI cardbus controllers
I am pretty sure it was written to work with some Cardbus implementations.
I sadly have the TI 1220 cardbus controller.
I don't think my BIOS handles the setup of this very well.
I have tried 'additional' setup utilities to no avail.
If you have a TI 1410 controller I would be very interested to hear about it.

Try the /V switch to see how far you get.
It may stall after finding the peripherals.
That is as far as I can get on my portable.

I am going to try a few things based on madmaxUSB's '/nocbc' posting.

Good luck.
Paddy.

Thanks paddym. Do advise the results of the /nocbc as i don't have a PC Card on hand.

Some updates:

Errata:
1. The previously posted /p option doeen't work - it's only for the v1.xx USBASPI.SYS
2. The format for the LUN option is /l# where # is the highest LUN number to be assigned. Default is /l0
3. /f is definitely not for fast speed USB. Can anyone try it on with a flash memory USB disk or a floppy drive? Meanwhile, if you want to force your high speed USB connections down to fast speed USB rates, try /o (or /u depending on what /v has reported). This will map your USB disk to the OHCI (or UHCI) instead of EHCI controller limiting speeds.
4. /slow seems to affect the scanning of the USB controllers and devices - not the transfer rate - based on my tests.
5. As previously reported, the original source of v2.06 of this driver seems to be the Panasonic Japan site. You can download a Windows self-extracting file from http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/cdrrw/kxlrw40an/driver/kxlrw40an.exe and look at the F2H subdirectory. Everything else is in Japanese.

Found a site that seems to have mirrored (most of)the files on Darkhorse:
http://pesona.upm.edu.my/download/drivers/usb4dos/

Several companies, such as Adaptec, Belkin, IOGear, Orange Micro, etc. sell CardBus USB 2.0 cards. Would I stand a better chance of success if I picked one card over another?

Phil

In practice, yes. I would usually choose based on the ff. criteria:

1. Someone (you know) says it works fine on a similiar setup (PC and USB peripherals) as what you have.
2. Manufacturers states full compatibility with the product you want (PC and USB peripherals).
3. Established brand with good phone or email support, and regular updates on the web.
4. Absence of complaints from others

paddym's experiences on Adaptec Cardbus may be valid given his particular notebook, but you may have a different unit, right?

Other than that, it's a draw of the card.

ee reports getting his notebook to work well on his card bus pcmcia with 2 usb 2.0 ports. He believes it uses an NEC chip set.

See:

http://www.computing.net/dos/wwwboard/forum/13201.html

Addendum:

USBASPI.SYS (Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage) will recognize all USB devices connected to the respective controllers. This is useful for debugging/troubleshooting purposes. However, it will only map mass storage devices like external hard disks and flash memory to ASPI devices.

Then use DI1000DD.SYS Novac v2.00 ASPI Disk Driver to map it to drive letters in DOS

Addendum:

(cont)

And/or use USBCD.SYS Panasonic USB CD-ROM Device Driver Version 1.00 to handle ASPI detected CDs, plus MSCDEX.EXE to map the CD readers to DOS.

Example:

[config.sys]
device=a:\HIMEM.SYS
device=a:\USBASPI.SYS /v /w /e
device=a:\DI1000DD.SYS
device=a:\USBCD.SYS /d:USBCD001
lastdrive=Z
FILES=30
BUFFERS=30
DOS=HIGH,UMB

[autoexec.bat]
@echo off
MSCDEX /d:USBCD001
prompt=$p$g
mouse
ver

If I just want to be able to write to a flash card (Smart Media) via a multicard usb card reader from DOS which of these drivers & switches do I need to put in config.sys (&or autoexec.bat). Win98se crashed and can only boot in dos. Looking for the easiest way to salvage some digital photos & transfer to other machine before reinstalling windows. I only have one of those stupid oem recovery cd's that will destroy all my data when I try to reinstall, so I need to find some way to save the files before I can recover windows. Can't physically move the hard drive to my working computer because it is a laptop - nowhere to install the drive. Can't seem to find what I need to write cd's in dos, or too complicated for me - too much about copying audio cd's and I only want to make a data cd. Tried some of the transfer options like interlnk/intersvr but it won't run on XP (laptop is XP). Just one photo would pobably take over 20+ diskettes (if I could even find a reliable file splitter/combiner that would work in both DOS & XP). When I say this, I had a glimmer of hope that I could use one of my smart media cards from my camera and the usb card reader to copy the files and then download from smart media onto XP laptop. Nothing so complicated as accessing usb cd drives or large-capacity hard drives. Can this be done? How would I assign a drive letter in this instance? The examble above is for a cd-rom.

Sheariah,

I can't help you with your specific question, but I'm sure there's a way to save your files. First, though, are you positive that Windows can't be at least partly fixed? If you haven't done this already, boot into DOS and type "scanreg" (no quotes). That will check your registry. It might find that the registry is bad. Chances are it won't find any problems. Either way, what you want to do is restore a previous copy of the registry. Typically, you want to restore the most recent copy that successfully booted your computer. After doing that, reboot your computer. There's a good chance that it will boot into Windows successfully.

-Phil