HELP - need dos drivers for external DVD

[DoDo_Bird]

Hi guys,
Could anyone help me please either here or direct me to the correct place.

I have a IBM ThinkPad i Series 172x 2627-78M, on which the DVD doesn't work.
I have an external Lite-on DVD LSC-24081MX connected via USB.

I have the W98se bootup floppy but it doesn't have the DOS 'drivers?' for the USB or the lite-On, as Lite-on made after w98se.

I need to be able to do a clean install and then somehow be able to load the DOS drivers so I can use the external DVD rom to install the IBM recovery CD.

Have been going around in cirles and not getting very far.
There are DOS drivers on the the CD which came with the DVD-RW but I am doing something wrong as it is not working.
Could someone please help me to get the IBM working again.

Thanking you very much.
Janina from Australia

[mjc]

I haven't tried this, but...

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/

[Sylvander]

You need to use DOS USB Drivers (http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm) [MJC beat me to it] to access the USB drive using a bootable floppy that loads DOS.

It's quite difficult to do, and I tried but failed to do it.
I think Paul Komski managed it, and there was a past thread that both he and I contributed to where a third person new to these forums explained how to do it based upon the instructions in the above link.

[Paul Komski]

I'm not sure where I got the files but the Panasonic reference is relevant if
memory serves. I dug out the floppy and deleted some extraneous ghost files on it and then booted it up. It worked straight away.

For what its worth the floppy now held:-

Directory of A:\
23/04/1999 22:22 COMMAND.COM (93,890)
23/06/2005 18:40 CONFIG.SYS (111)
16/08/2001 02:00 di1000dd.sys (16,368)
23/04/1999 22:22 HIMEM.SYS (33,191)
26/11/2002 18:06 USBASPI.106 (37,903)
11/11/2002 17:00 USBCD.SYS (5,509)
25/05/2001 01:00 RAMFD.SYS (22,012)
07/11/2004 18:20 Usbaspi.sys (39,179)

with CONFIG.SYS reading:-
=========================
DOS=HIGH,UMB
lastdrive=Z
device=himem.sys
rem device=RAMFD.SYS
device=USBASPI.SYS /W
device=Di1000dd.SYS
=========================

On booting to the floppy it came to the following prompt

ASPI Manager for Mass Storage Device Version 2.28
(c)Copyright Panasonic Communications Co. Ltd. 2000-2004
=================================================
====Connect the target device to the USB port====
====Press Enter to Continue======================
=================================================

You only then attach the USB drive (mine is a 1GB USB2 Kingston Data Traveller that flashes
green when attached to USB1.1 and orange when attached to USB2 - very very useful).

It flashed green when first connected but after Enter was pressed there were prompts about scanning for
drives (at which point the drive started to flash orange) and in less than 30 seconds it reached
the normal A: prompt but with a message just prior to that giving the Data Traveller the letter D: (in that instance).
D: was immediately accesible for any read/write and a dir of D:
showed all the files on the drive that I knew were there.

I remember trying a range of different usbaspi.sys drivers at the time (about a year ago) and got variable
results with a variety of USB devices and often only with USB 1.1 support.

So it can be done but I dont think I can distribute my floppy image with the various copyright issues involved.

PS I see the RAMFD.SYS file was commented out of config.sys (I had been trying to access ghost.exe on a ramdrive
if memory serves) so this can be taken out of this particular equation.

[Sylvander]

I believe that to gain access to your CD-drive when running DOS you'd need to load the CD drivers included in a WIN9x Startup floppy AND also run the USB2 for DOS drivers.

I just tried the DUSE program [placed at C:\duse\duse.exe] which is run using a "usb.sys" file including...
DEVICE=C:\DUSE\DUSE.EXE VERBOSE=2 WAIT=3 DRIVES=3 INT DMA EMU
that I added to a Startup disk made using Bob Cerelli's Win98SE Boot Floppy Image (http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm#boot_floppy).
This is better than the ordinary Startup floppy.
To run Duse I entered the command...
a:\>usb
I managed to gain access to all my partitions and [non-USB] CD-drives, but so far not to any USB devices [not so far as I'm aware].
I think it was Duse that displayed ALL of the partitions found [rather useful].
The CD-drives were named X & Y [a feature of Bob's floppy] and listed.

I see that the DuseUsersGuide.pdf says "USB CD-ROM drives require loading the Microsoft CD Extension (MSCDEX) driver".
Bob Cerelli's Win98SE Boot Floppy loads this into RAM during the boot from the floppy I noticed.

Looks like I need to make a ".bat" file to initialise the host controllers and enumerate their attached devices [and more].
But how/when should that bat file be run?

PAUL
If I started a new thread dedicated to making Bob Cerelli's Win98SE Boot Floppy capable of accessing USB2 devices would you help me do that?
That could then be linked to when needed.
Or would you rather do it here?

[Paul Komski]

I and others can input what help we can. However dont think you are suddenly going to create one floppy to access all devices - if one existed it would be in wide use.

The line in autoexec.bat file that you refers to is I think:
LH MSCDEX.EXE /D:mscd001 /L:X
That is not a reference to a D drive. /D is a switch refering to (LH=Loading High) the equivalent switch of a driver indicated in config.sys; in this case its:
device=oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001
So, in English, mscdex loads high the driver called oakcdrom.sys
And the /L:X switch indicates that the first CDROM drive letter should be X
There is no mention of loading any RAM drive.

I'm not sure how the USB drivers assign their own drive letters but it could conflict potentially with the CDROM drive letter assignments - so I woulnt mix them on the same floppy.

Just to indicate how fickle these usb drivers are I tried five different USB drives with the same floppy outlined above. Two small pen drives were "found" but not assigned a drive letter and thus were inaccessible. A 4in1 card with a smart media card in situ similar did not assign any drive letters. A 180gig external HDD with an 80 followed by a 100 gig partition showed both drive letters and a normal directory tree in the larger drive but (go figure) the smaller partition at the start of the HDD was shown incorrectly as having no files in it.

So I think one has to experiment with the various usb drivers and one's own specific usb device on one's own specific BIOS/Mobo. I don't think there's any simple solution.

Such floppies can of course be very useful but it is generally much easier to use a Knoppix (fairly recent distro such as 3.9 which works for me) or a BartPE bootable CDROM to access USB devices.

[Sylvander]

Found...DOS USB Drivers (http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm).

And Yes, there are USB drivers for DOS... (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10215).

[Sylvander]

SUCCESS! :)

1. Made a DOS boot floppy.

2. Used Method 1, example 2 [example 1 failed] at http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

3. Added Duse.exe [Duse 4.9 available from a link further down the page] to the floppy and made config.sys & autoexec.bat files as instructed.

Final result is that I get DOS command access to my external USB connected HDD [I have no USB connected optical drives].

[Sylvander]

Here's the link for the Duse files...
[On the webpage linked above]

[Sylvander]

Here are the files on my floppy.
Duse.exe is the only one that really need be added to the DOS boot floppy files.
Duseldr.com could be useful, and DuseUsersGuide.pdf does no harm.

[Sylvander]

Couldn't get Duse.exe to work when added to Bob Cerelli's Win98SE Startup floppy.
I wonder whether the different version of DOS won't work with Duse.exe?

There's not enough free space on a standard Startup floppy to add Duse.exe to that.

I'd like to add Duse to the EBCD so that File Manager etc can access USB devices.
Any ideas Paul?

[Paul Komski]

I'd like to add Duse to the EBCD so that File Manager etc can access USB devices.It might or might not be possible but it would be more straightforward to add it as a new menu item on the first menu list and I would certainly try this first. You will need to first convert your functioning physical floppy into a floppy image file (http://www.iol.ie/%7Ekrakowangus/flopimgs.htm). After that the very simplest "cheat" would be to replace one of the other apps that uses a floppy image (such as the memtest or disk-checking utilities found on that first menu) and just temporarily replace the existing image file with your own. Thus for memtest you would simply rename your own new floppy image to memtest.img and replace the existing file in the ...CDROM-PRO\04-MemTest\BOOT folder.

Build the iso, burn it and boot to it in the usual way and see if choosing memtest from the first menu gives you a functional "floppy" with which you can still then access your USB drive.

Mimicking and appropriately editing copies of the memtest file and folder but renaming them to say 40-DuseUsb and 40-DuseUsb.xml would be the next move. You could do this first but there is less likelihood of any error if you simply replace one file for starters as suggested.

It's good that you have a floppy that can access your drive on your box but I repeat that this is unlikely to work "accross the board". I tried "your" DUSE floppy on 6 different USB drives; all were recognised but none of them were mounted or accessible.

[mjc]

I sometimes use a 2.88 MB floppy image for building things...since it is going onto a CD, it doesn't really matter that you don't have a 2.88MB floppy drive (really rare/hard to find any way...)

PM me and I can send you a blank, bootable (I think it is based off a flashing disk...so very basic DOS) 2.88 image.

[Paul Komski]

Should one want the larger boot floppy image then, to save getting an image from mjc and since this is likely to be "in possession" anyway for anyone customising an EBCD, it can be noted that the Seagate Utils on the EBCD (Pro) at ...CDROM-PRO\10-SeagateUtil\boot\seagate.VGD is not blank (but it is a bootable) 2.88 image that could be edited appropriately with either WinImage (http://www.winimage.com/download.htm) or (for owners of Drive Image) with the PowerQuest Virtual Floppy Utility.

[Sylvander]

You have me puzzled guys...
Things I don't understand...
Guess I'll begin at the top and work down.

PAUL
Assuming I had successfully done as you suggest...
I'd be at the EBCD 1st menu, and I'd choose my new item, and the virtual floppy would run, and I'd then be at a DOS prompt...
But I'd want to be at the EBCD menu, not at the DOS prompt.

WHAT I REALLY WANT...
1. Is to have Duse load as the EBCD boots.

Or not quite so good...
2. To have Duse load [together with the mouse, CD-ROM, Locale Support etc in the case of File Manager] so that such programs as the following have access to USB devices...
a. ON FIRST MENU
File Manager, Aida, Drive Fitness Test, SBM.
b. ON SECOND MENU
Volkov Commander, DOS commands, MS Scandisk, Un-Format, Un-Erase, fdisk, Diskedit, Image for DOS, Save Partition, Wipe Info, XOSL, Partition Magic.

Too ambitious? :(
I see there are Config.sys & Autoexec.bat settings included within the E:\00tmp\ebcd-0.6.1-pro\settings.xml file.
Could Duse.exe be loaded by these?

"on the EBCD (Pro) at ...CDROM-PRO\10-SeagateUtil\boot\seagate.VGD is not blank (but it is a bootable) 2.88 image that could be edited appropriately with either WinImage"
My EBCD files don't include this; has this been added recently?

MJC
No plans to use a floppy image just yet, but I should learn about it anyway.
At this time I have [free] 3.5Master & RawWriteWin.
Would I be able to add programs to your 2.88MB bootable DOS image?
[I know little to nothing on this topic]
What I want is something more than basic DOS; I already have that working.
To include a USB driver for DOS on Bob Cerelli's Win98SE floppy or the EBCD is what I'd like.

What is a "flashing disk"?
A BIOS flashing bootable floppy [pair]?

[Paul Komski]

When I tried this originally it either froze at the command prompt after selecting USB, or the USB menu didn't appear; maybe they were bad burns or something else. Anyway, for the moment the DUSE drive does work on an EBCD for me (though I've only tried it with the Kingston Pen Drive so far). Frankly I'm amazed, but there you are. I haven't tried adding it to the BOOTRD2 ramdrive so that the LFN and NTFS support would be included with option 2 from the first menu but it shouldn't too hard to add it there but with 06-UsbDriver replacing 03-UsbDriver so that it follows the Network Support.


DUSE.exe was placed as follows
....\BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver\BIN\DRIVERS\DUSE.exe

Its companion .xml file was placed as follows
....\BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver.xml

That xml file read in notepad reads:



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="CP866" ?>

<!--
Emergency Boot CD-ROM (EBCD)
Copyright (C) 2002-2003 Mikhail Kupchik

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.
-->

<EBCDML>
<ConfigSys_Alt Name="Load USB Driver">
<Line>INSTALLHIGH=A:\BIN\DRIVERS\DUSE.EXE
</ConfigSys_Alt>
<ConfigSys_Alt Name="Skip USB Driver" />
</EBCDML>


This added a fourth (USB option) after the CDROM option after selecting 1 on the very first selection display; the one which takes you to the secondary menus.

As long as the USB drive was attached it was added to the command line and to Volkov Commander. It's drive letter actually preceeded the CDROM drive letter - even though the CDROM option was enabled first; (go figure). Unlike when DUSE was run from a boot floppy directly it only appeared to function if the relevant USB drive WAS ATTACHED AT BOOT UP; attaching it afterwards failed getting it recognised with a drive letter.

See how you go.

[Sylvander]

a. Carried out your instructions as exactly as I could.

b. Ran makeebcd.exe and got the following error report:

Step1: Reading primary configuration file...
Step2: Reading user configuration files...
ERROR: Could not parse XML file BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver.xml : error reading element value

c. Here's the actual address copied and pasted from the address line...
E:\00tmp\ebcd-0.6.1-pro\BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver\BIN\Drivers\DUSE.exe
Are the upper/lower case significant in this situation?
The line in my copy of the xml file is...
INSTALLHIGH=A:\BIN\DRIVERS\DUSE.EXE
Note the upper case in BIN & DRIVERS & EXE.
Funny thing is that BIN shows as Bin against the folder as its name.
Drivers is the same in both cases.

[Paul Komski]

Basically I copied the mouse folders and its xml file and renamed and edited them all appropriately. The problem seems to be with the .xml file being parsed and I don't think the case matters.

The attached file just needs the extension changed from txt to xml to replicate a clone of the file I am using.

Such files must be edited only with Notepad or other ANSI text editors.

PS
Its very strange to me that this simple tweak works for a number of USB drives for me from an EBCD - but I cannot get it to work using DUSE.exe on a floppy drive - however I configure things!!

[Sylvander]

SUCCESS! :D

Used your file and makeebcd.exe completed the build of the Ebcd061p.iso file.
I must have done something wrong in making my own copy. :confused:
I was using notepad to edit the file, but I wonder if I made the mistake of making it as a new wri file.

"The problem seems to be with the .xml file being parsed"
Is it worth the effort to explain to me what it means to parse a file?

"Its very strange to me that this simple tweak works for a number of USB drives for me from an EBCD - but I cannot get it to work using DUSE.exe on a floppy drive - however I configure things!!"
Reading the Duse pdf file it seemed that the program was designed to enable functionality for pretty much every kind of USB device; that's why I decided to try it.
As you say, it's strange that it doesn't work for all on a bootable DOS floppy, but I'm sure there will be some [obscure?] reason for this.

Now I must get down to making and testing the new customised EBCD. :D :cool:

[Sylvander]

Made the EBCD ok.
It worked ok as an ordinary EBCD.
When going to the 2nd menu I was asked to ok the loading of the USB driver [Duse.exe], but saw no sign of it actually loading and could get no access to my external USB 2.0 connected IDE HDD [its on a PCI to USB 2.0 card].

Any ideas? :confused:

Should I add some command line parameters?
e.g.
• INT[13], Enables INT13 support for fixed
disks. This adds additional support for
some disk utilities like FDISK.

[Paul Komski]

Parsing is, at its most elementary, the analysis or description of grammar; or the "parts of speech". In programming it is much the same as in human languages, since all programming languages must be "gramatically" or perhaps more exactly "syntactically" correct. Thus lines of code are typically first parsed, then compiled and then executed. If the grammar or syntax is wrong then this should be detected at the parsing stage.

The syntax has only to be one bit out or one letter out for the "grammar" to be bad and the parsing to fail. This could be due to non-printing characters, for example, appearing in the code. These could appear to be white space to a human but as incomprehesible or meaningless characters to the parser.

Webopedia parse (http://www.pcwebopedia.com/TERM/P/parse.htm)


but saw no sign of it actually loading and could get no access to my external USB 2.0 It showed no sign of loading with me as well unlike when attempting to use DUSE from a floppy. But the extraordinary thing was that it worked. I suppose I should check whether I can actually access the same drives without the DUSE drivers being enabled since it's possible that my BIOS are simply recognising the devices - though I doubt it. But funny things computers.

[Paul Komski]

Just to report that IT IS MY BIOS that is recognising some USB drives. I hadn't realised it and I can even access them from an ordinary boot floppy! I had never even thought to try them out since having USB drives connected on my previous PC caused it to fail to boot. Well its good news for me but no help to anyone else, which is sad.

As an aside, the BIOS recognition does however only conncect at USB1.1 speeds whereas the panasonic drivers on a floppy allow for USB2 recognition of the same drives.

[Sylvander]

Tried adding some command line parameters, but it made no difference; I think Duse.exe isn't actually loading.
Why wouldn't an exe file run? Because the version of DOS is incompatible?

Should I try using the Panasonic drivers do you think?
I think the appropriate files are usbaspi.sys & di1000dd.sys; would both of those need to be loaded?

I may as well erase the EBCD CD-RW and the iso files. :(

[Paul Komski]

Should I try using the Panasonic drivers do you think?
By all means try them out; this whole business is very much one of trial and error.

My boot floppy has config.sys showing:
DOS=HIGH,UMB
lastdrive=Z
device=himem.sys
device=USBASPI.SYS /W
device=Di1000dd.SYS
..and autoexec.bat showing two rem'd lines since I dont have a usb cdrom:
REM the following line adds a drive letter to the usb cd(rom/r/rw) mounted
REM LH MSCDEX /d:USBCD001

[Sylvander]

"Should I try using the Panasonic drivers do you think?"
What I meant was...
Should I try the Panasonic drivers on the EBCD instead of the Duse executable?
...To continue the attempt to add USB functionality to the EBCD.

Are you suggesting I put those 2 files mentioned above in the
....\BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver\BIN\DRIVERS\
folder...?
And place alternative lines of code referring to them in the
....\BOOTRD1-PRO\03-UsbDriver.xml
file...?
And add a config.sys file [including the above code] to the DRIVERS folder?
How would the instructions in the config.sys file be run?

[Paul Komski]

Sorry for the delay and I'm not really sure how to answer. I personally might try things on a floppy first and see if you can get a combination of your BIOS, your hardware and your configured floppy to recognise the USB drive in question. If you can do that you might want to try adding it to an EBCD though personally-speaking and as mentioned earlier it is a lot easier to use a live CD such as Knoppix or BartPE for USB-Drive Access. The DOS and special drivers approach is very hit and miss though with a lot of trial and error it can be made to work (mostly). My special floppy did work on my previous PC and I thought it worked on the new one but I was fooled because my new PC's BIOS reports USB drives correctly and so the floppy drivers were redundant.

[Sylvander]

No problem about the delay; I know what it's like. :)
Was out of action yesterday myself because I was running "Partition Magic" from noon until past midnight [worked well, but had to delete the Linux-Xandros partiton; I'll reinstall that sometime].

I have Duse.exe working on an ordinary Windows DOS boot disk, but Duse won't work on the EBCD.

The Panasonic USB for DOS drivers don't work on a DOS boot floppy, but I thought I'd try them on the EBCD; except I don't know how to do it and wondered if you did.
I can access the external USB HDD using Knoppix, but I'd really like to be able to do it with the EBCD, which has "Partition Magic" etc on it.

Don't have Bart PE, because I don't have WinXP.

[Paul Komski]

but I'd really like to be able to do it with the EBCD, which has "Partition Magic"
Have you tried the Knoppix "Run Command" QTparted

[Sylvander]

I was impressed by "Knoppix->Run Command=qtparted".
Would still prefer to use "EBCD->Partition Magic" though; much nicer interface and the EBCD loads much faster.

Tried "Knoppix->Partition Image", but got...
"You are not logged as root. You may have "Access Denied" errors when working."

Any idea how I should log on as root?

[Paul Komski]

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Using_FAQ#Q:_What_is_the_root_password.3F

[Sylvander]

Managed to get the root password changed and confirmed and accepted, but still got the warning when I ran the "Partition Image" program. :confused:

Have you managed to get this to run?
And if so, what exactly did you [or do you] do?

[Paul Komski]

Try entering partimage into START >> Knoppix >> Root Shell

[Sylvander]

Got that to work and partimage ran.
Set all the task parameters at the various steps, but when it finally tried to run I got...
Error : Cannot create temp file
[file:/mnt/hde8/image/c/pi361b6af5.tmp]
Please check there is space enough and you have access rights.

There's plenty of space on that HDD [G: in Windows].
The drives were mounted, but with only read access.
Tried to change to read & write access but failed.

[Jaak]

hi
interesting discussions, I must say... DoDobird must love this.

I just read things about ghost and PQm...
Does this EBCD have a tool what will clone a drive that has an error on it?
I just searched for EBCD and have extracted the pro couple minutes ago.
I might need some tools it offers. I do need to clone a drive maxblast fails to copy over because of the error, and my old versions of ghost don't do NTFS... (forensic mode did copy errors...)

kind regards, Jaak

[Paul Komski]

Jaak - EBCD has a program called Image which should be able to do the task. If you want the latest version of the same utililty get the trial of ImageForDos from www.terabyteunlimited.com (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com) or try using BiNG (in my sig).

Sylvander - I'm by no means an expert with Knoppix but the occasional forays are always interesting. I have no problem outputting an image to a paritition when that partition has been mounted and has full write permissions for all users and I then choose to output the image to say /mnt/hda8/imgfilename

There are likely to be Linux gurus around who can give a more comprehensive heads up. The imaging seems to work fine but a bit slow (about 100MB/sec) and I dont know how to ensure that DMA or any other help with file i/o speed can be maximised.

edit

but with only read access missed that but you must have write permissions

[Sylvander]

"searched for EBCD and have extracted the pro couple minutes ago"
Have you finished making the EBCD I wonder?
Here's a couple of how-to's...

1. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

2. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte] & "File Manager".

I've never used Image to clone one HDD to another; what are the details of how that's done I wonder?

Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) has dedicated cloning programs on it.

[Paul Komski]

I've never used Image to clone one HDD to another; what are the details of how that's done I wonder?The closest approach is to make images of all the partitions in sequence. With IforD this must be done manually but it can be automated if you use BiNG's "Image Sets". Unlike a total drive clone this makes no record of the first track so this should be saved as a separate manouevre.

DriveImage/Ghost do the same things not really very differently other than they will modify the mbr (as they believe correctly) when their images are restored - unlike the terabyteunlimited programs which don't touch the mbr when restored - you must do this manually, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

dd or ddForWindows, the imaging utility inside GetDataBack or of WinHex and the HDD maker's own utilities can all make "literal byte for byte" clones of whole drives; these files contain no header information at all and so are true raw images.

[Jaak]

hi

subsciption to topic one replies to is not ON by default, eh?
I simply missed the replies.
Have changed that in control panel...

thanks for the tips about the tools I should have had last week.
(found back my CD with ghost 2003, but it failed on that drive too..)
a freebee I found would only do drive to drive, but it worked and that drive was copied onto a healthy drive, including the errors.