by Bret » Tue Jun 01, 2010 12:18 pm
I've been doing some e-mail with Jack over the last couple of weeks, and I've got some bad news.
It turns out that Jack's "external interface" is essentially unusable as it stands now, with the potential to cause serious data corruption and loss. Jack does not appear willing to change this, at least for now, so that is not a viable option.
There's also a possibility for Jack to change in the way his interrupt processing is handled, which could completely eliminate the need for the external interface. Jack is not willing to make those changes at this time, either.
So, it looks like the only way you will be able to cache USBDRIVE's data using UIDE is to wait for the next version of USBDRIVE (which will use INT 13h calls internally), load USBDRIVE first, and then load UIDE (with the help of DEVLOAD or a equivalent) afterwards. The main drawback to this approach is that UIDE is not removable. Because UIDE is installed after USBDRIVE and is using some of the same interrupts, that will also make USBDRIVE unremovable, and consequently will make the USB host controller driver (USBUHCIL) unremovable. So, if you can live with everything being "permanent" (needing to edit CONFIG.SYS and reboot in order to "uninstall" everything), there will be a solution (after the next version of USBDRIVE comes out).