(New as of July 1, 2009 -- Last Update January 25, 2010)

[DOS386]

Hi

DOS USB Drivers (New as of July 1, 2009 -- Last Update January 25, 2010)
THIS downloads a zip file containing the complete set of DOS USB drivers (545 kB, UPDATED January 25, 2010 ).

seems USBDOS got updated

This is a single file that contains all of the source code for the DOS USB drivers, current as of August 20, 2009.

also the source got updated (just USBUHCI.A36 and USBUHCIV.A06) ... although the page didn't

But the changes seem to be minor, while the big things (memory mapping, INT $13 uninstall, INT $13 sector limit) are postponed ?

[Bret]

Forgot to change the date on the Source Code Page -- sorry about that. It's fixed now.

The changes made to the host driver were actually pretty substantial, though they really didn't change the functionality -- just fixed a couple of bugs that I recently discovered (thanks to some users). The changes were more at an "infrastructure" level, getting ready to change the host driver architecture to be more modular and hopefully substantially decrease memory requirements in future versions. The new version actually uses less memory than the previous version (by a very small amount).

No release-worthy changes have yet been made to the individual device drivers, including USBDRIVE.

[DOS386]

Forgot to change the date on the Source Code Page -- sorry about that. It's fixed now.

Also updated to 2009-01-27

No release-worthy changes have yet been made to the individual device drivers, including USBDRIVE.

OK ... what are the future plans ? Fixing "my" bugs, OHCI / EHCI, ... ?

[Bret]

Those are all still in process. The releases the last couple of days were mostly to address some specific bugs that were found in the host drivers. Unless more bugs like those are discovered between now and then, the next set of updates will include major architectural changes, minor changes to the API, an OHCI driver, and hopefully will fix all of the existing shortcomings.

[DOS386]

I did a minimal test and it works, as before, and the performance is (1-sector default) not that great, as it was before, and the "LBA-max-off-by-1-BUG" is unsurprisingly also still in.

Those are all still in process. The releases the last couple of days were mostly to address some specific bugs that were found in the host drivers.

And the expected end-user benefit is ? Better compatibility with more (UHCI-compatible) controllers and more (UHCI-compatible) USB devices ?

an OHCI driver, and hopefully will fix all of the existing shortcomings.

[Bret]

I did a minimal test and it works, as before, and the performance is (1-sector default) not that great, as it was before, and the "LBA-max-off-by-1-BUG" is unsurprisingly also still in.

USBDRIVE has not been updated yet. There are some major changes going on with it, to increase performance among other things.

The architectural changes are mainly designed to decrease overall memory requirements, especially with multiple host controllers.

[DOS386]

The architectural changes are mainly designed to decrease overall memory requirements, especially with multiple host controllers.

* Removed new memory allocation strategy for TSR. It was still having
problems with multiple host controllers and certain combinations
of DOS versions and memory managers that could not be resolved.
* Fixed bug in original memory allocation strategy for TSR that did
not close file handles on program termination.

Bad luck Is the "memory management" issue now "resolved" or do you intend to continue fighting in this area in future ?

[Bret]

I never could get the new memory allocation strategy to work reliably, so have abandoned it for now. If I ever get some spare time (not very likely), I may go back and try to figure out what's going on with it. If it ends up working, it will save memory in certain situations. I think the experience from it was good, though, since it gave me some more insight and ideas on how to save memory in other, indirect ways.