Win98se forcing switch on port in pure DOS mode.

[Nisse]

Man first I wanted to say that your USB drivers for DOS is pure love, and I love them especially he usbmouse one, to me your a hero in the retro community and I wanted to say thank you =)
To my problem I have been having, when I first start DOS 6.22 I get my USB mouse activated by your drivers, but when I load win 98 se then after the restart have to switch the mouse from the current port to the other in DOS 6.22.
It doesnt help when I switch the computer off, so every instance after win 98 I have to swith the mouse from port 1 to 2 and vise versa in DOS 6.22. It's like win 98 does something to the bios.. I have no clue

[Bret]

Sorry it took so long to respond to this. I'm glad you find the USB programs useful.

I really have no idea what's going on here, but can maybe suggest a few things to experiment with. This actually reminds of a somewhat similar issue I went through a long time ago. I had a real PS2 mouse and was dual-booting one of my computers with DOS and OS/2 Warp. OS/2 would do something to the mouse configuration when it ran that it didn't "undo" when it shutdown and the mouse wouldn't work in DOS. It was so long ago that I don't exactly remember the fix, but I think it had something to do with shutting down OS/2 in a special way so that it reset the mouse completely instead of just partially on shutdown. Again, I don't remember the details, but I do remember it was a recognized problem and there was a "patch" to fix it.

I think you may be able to try something similar. I don't remember if Windows 98se has the "Safely Remove Hardware" thing in it or not, but if it does I would do that (tell Windows to "disconnect" the mouse before rebooting). I have no idea if that will fix the problem or not, but it might. I also don't know if that's easier than moving cables around or not.

The other thing I can think of to maybe try would be to toggle the USB settings in the BIOS. That is, if USB Legacy Support is currently enabled in the BIOS, then disable it (or vice versa). It may not actually be called "USB Legacy Support" in your BIOS, but there should be some kind of setting(s) in your BIOS for USB mice, keyboards, and/or disk drives.

Again, you can experiment with those things and see if they help.

[Nisse]

Hey man! thanks for answering
Well actually I noticed that Windows xp does the same as Windows 98.
I have Legacy support Disabled even though Bios has Mouse Legacy support that works quite fine, the only problem then is that EMM386 doesnt find its page frame area when Mouse legacy support is enabled
so your driver is much much better and supports new mice. But It gave me a theory that perhaps your driver is giving me some kind of conflict or something, also MSD in dos crashes when I use your driver..
So finally I turned the mouse upside down and noticed that the mouse was shining at post until USBUHCIL was loaded, and in some cases the mouse was not shining and started to blink randomly after driver install..
Windows does something to the BIOS, so even if the computer is shutdown completely after Windows the switch of port is still necessary when I get back into DOS 6.22.
Thanks for helping! if I get this fixed then my legacy system will be complete, it's a i815 with two USB ports and ISA support.

[Bret]

Very weird.

I sure wouldn't think turning on legacy mouse support would affect your EMS Page Frame. It sounds like there's some sort of memory conflict going on with your upper memory (where the EMS page frame is). You may need to add some options to EMM386 to tell it to use (or not use) a particular range of addresses with some of its options. You can also try different versions of EMM386 (such as the EMM386 from FreeDOS or JEMM, which is the one I use most of the time). Also, do you actually need an EMS Page Frame for any of your programs? Modern program almost never require EMS, and not even very many games use EMS. EMS is actually really nice for some things, but not very commonly used -- best not to install it if you don't need to. It's actually possible you have a memory conflict without the legacy USB mouse turned on but for some reason you don't notice the problem until you mess with the mouse.

[Nisse]

Very weird indeed.
I normally run emm386 with ram(ems) active and always manage to get free umb with different tricks, so I dont have to have a multiboot option.
But I believe I tried without EMS and still had the same problem and so the only thing I could think off was that Bios followed the windows resource setup configuring its own way of resource handling and then bios would use that setup,
so I went into bios and disabled all OS access to bios resources settings, but still no difference..My second option is a PCI NEC usb 2.0 controller that works in windows 98 se without any dedicated drivers and is very compatible
(Phils computer lab had a video on this I believe) I am pretty sure you wrote in the readme that your driver only work with VIA and INTEL, but I dont remember if they work with a PCI controller in DOS ?
Anyways the motherboard is a Radisys one and its almost impossible to find a newer BIOS for it, at least for me and it's a damn shame beacuse I know there are proably at least 5 more updates to this board.
- Help me ObiWan your my only hope

[Nisse]

Oh and just now I disabled the PS2 mouse support in BIOS and that for some reason disabled my PS2 keyboard, so then I loaded your USBKEYB and then unistalled it with the /U switch
and that made the PS2 keyboard active again. Sadly nothing affected the grunt work of a long body builder going down on his knees to switch the port

[Bret]

I just thought of another thing you might try. Instead of plugging the mouse directly into the computer, plug a USB hub into the computer and plug the mouse into the hub. In my programs that will mean you need to install USBHUB in addition to USBMOUSE. I have no idea if that will fix the problem or not, but it might. Of course, that will require you to spend a little money to buy a hub. Also, try to find the oldest you can. I doubt that USBHUB will work with newer hubs, though I haven't tried.

[Nisse]

Thanks man, I wish I had one of thoose hubs but It seems like I have to buy one.
I also had an idea recently, I will try to check what resources the USBUHCIL is using when it works and see if it changes resources after I reboot after windows.
See if USBUHCIL uses the same adresses change and IRQ or if it changes.. What is the best way to make your program show that, what adresses it uses etc ?
It feels almost like hardware has captured the mouse and refuses to let go, so weird
Thanks for helping out man

[Bret]

There are three different kinds of resources that USBUHCIL uses: an IRQ, an I/O range, and memory. The first two you can see with USBHOSTS and you don't even need USBUHCIL to be installed to look at those (just run USBHOSTS). USBUHCIL has options to let you change the IRQ and I/O range, but those are there for troublesome hardware that doesn't fully comply with the standards -- it's normally not a good idea to mess with those. in your case, though, that may be something you can try if you're feeling highly adventurous.

As far as memory goes, the program I normally use is called MAPMEM (it's part of a very old package called TSRCOM35 which you can download from http://www.lanet.lv/simtel.net/msdos/tsrutil-pre.html). It shows you all of the programs currently installed in memory, and has options to let you see Upper, EMS, and XMS memory also. It's similar to DOS's MEM but I find the format and information MAPMEM provides to be much more useful than MEM. I doubt that you'll be able to find anything funky with the resources, but you never know for sure until you try (and I have been wrong about lots of things in my life).

Also, since I doubt that you'll be able to find a USB 1 hub, you will probably need to buy a USB 2 hub. I'm not sure if the version of USBHUB I have on the website will work with USB 2 hubs or not, Try it and see. If it doesn't, I can send you the updated version I have in progress right now that includes "real" USB 2 support, but it's still got some problems and is not yet ready for an official release. If the version of USBHUB on the website doesn't work with your hub, I can send you the new version I'm working on as long as you know it still has some issues. Try the old version first, though.

[Nisse]

Allright I will try these options and see if they work =)
Oh when you say Hub are you also then referring to the PCI Nec controller I was talking about ?
I will put it into the computer tomorrow (tomorrow that just became today) and see if your old drivers work with it.
It's also great news to hear that your still programming this stuff as your are more or less the only one taking your time to do these kind of drivers these days,
no need to buy a special LEGACY MOUSE SUPPORT motherboard all thanks to you.

[Bret]

No, a hub is not a controller and has nothing to do with PCI. A NEC controller would be a USB host controller and would use the OHCI protocol instead of UHCI. USBUHCIL only works with UHCI host controller which are only made by Intel and Via Technologies. The newer host controllers use different protocols (USB 2 uses EHCI and USB 3 uses XHCI).

]Here's a link to a 4-port USB 2 Hub on Amazon, but you can probably find something similar at some local computer/electronics store:

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Port-I ... 075&sr=8-4

That one has power switches for each port, which the older hubs never used to have. There are lots of options -- I've also seen 2-port hubs. Also, some hubs (especially those with a lot of ports) require you to plug the hub into a wall outlet for extra power, but you probably don't need one of those. I know at some trade shows I've gone to some vendors give away USB hubs at their booths for advertising.

[Nisse]

I see, well I suspected that and just tried the PCI controller and it obviously worked PERFECT... No it didnt =)
Thanks for the link, I will buy one of thoose and see if it works. Is there anybody else that this method has worked for ?

[Nisse]

We have a few flee markets around here so I will check with them as well

[Bret]

I don't know of anybody it has worked for specifically with my programs, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. I do know that, especially in the early days of USB, one of the troubleshooting tools various USB device manufacturers would tell people to try was to insert or remove hubs (usually it was to remove a hub and plug the device directly into the host controller). In your particular case, though, I think inserting a hub may help.

If every USB device is 100% compliant with the specifications, at least theoretically the hubs shouldn't make any difference. But, nothing is really ever 100% compliant (and sometimes there is confusion or ambiguity in the USB specifications so "compliance" is a matter of opinion rather than fact). That's one of the reasons it's so hard to write USB drivers -- you have to account for the myriad of creative ways the manufacturers can mess things up. In fact, in the early days of USB when IBM was adding support to OS/2 they wrote the first versions of the drivers according the USB specifications and hardly anything worked at all. They had to write them again assuming the specifications were more like "recommended guidelines" than specifications.

[Nisse]

I see, well it's interesting that you mentioned IBM cause I am thinking of selling my "old" IBM personal computer Pl300,
and that one had two brilliant features Legacy support for usb mice and a Crystal soundcard with almost 100 procent compatible sounblaster support integrated.
But now thanks to you It doesnt make much sense for me to keep it beacuse of your brilliant driver =) So your working on making a USB 2.0 driver now ? if you make it possible to use add in USB cards as well it would be awesome.
I would be more than happy to test your drivers when ever you need help with testing..
By the way if I am not mistaken I saw in some readme file that you tried to make your drivers use EMS, also a great feature that would be nice in the future

[Bret]

I'm working on USB 2 support and even sort of have it working, but it still has some issues. I am also changing the drivers to support both EMS and DPMS (a little known but very useful technology that is in many ways even better than EMS). I've got lots of ideas rolling around in my head but just don't have time to work on them all.

[Nisse]

Thats awesome news man! Really nice to hear, keep at it
I am thinking that this bios for the Radisys 815 is weird, if it's a bios issue.
There is some BAM PCI BUS thingy in the Device manager in win 98 that perhaps memory adress conflicts with the graphics card and harddrive controller (UDMA ATA)
The strange thing is that windows 98 doesnt show any conflicts until you dig deep into the specific driver and remove the auto setting..
So I guess it's perhaps a software bug or something similair. Anyways I choose to ignore it until yesterday night when I ran some old videos from the win 98 cdsample folder really quck,
and suddenly it froze for like 20 seconds before loading the next video.. Anyways I started to wonder if all these weird conflicting issues is due to a buggy bios, like the mouse switching port etc..
I have never experienced a conflict that doesnt exist and exist at the same time, perhaps it's windows 98 that is to old to handle the memory adresses correcty.
The weird thing with Radisys is that they only give drivers to corporations registered with their prioducts. Been searching all over for BIOS uppdates for a Radisys Endura Gl815e.
So if anybody can see this please post a link to the Bios updates, cause I have the first version of their horrible Bios.

[Nisse]

I can report that the issue on the switching was bios related. When I used another 815 and restarted the mouse was till working.. Strange indeed

[Bret]

Very strange indeed, but glad you got it working. At least you found out a few things that you didn't know before, I'm sure.

[Nisse]

Yea it's great but I still noticed that I am unable to use the Dos program MSD, it just locks up.. Only when I use your driver, does the Bret master perhaps know what the reason of this is ?

[Bret]

MSD is a really old program, and it's hard to say why it doesn't work. I just tried MSD inside a VMWare Virtual Machine and it locks up on me too, even though my USB programs aren't even loaded. I've had all kinds of programs lock up or not work in certain situations, and most of the time I try some other roughly equivalent program (there are plenty of "competitors" to MSD). Usually, I only concern myself with some serious troubleshooting if there's some reason I NEED the particular program and there is no alternative. I don't normally use system detection programs like MSD nowadays, but I used to like one called NSSI. I think the FreeDOS site has some similar programs also.

Sorry I can't help more than that.

[Nisse]

It's not really important that MSD work, but I noticed it works when I dont use the mouse driver.
So I tought it may be a sign of some other problem that may rise in other programs as well.
Anyways thanks for all the help! =) Where can I find your beta drivers for the USB 2 driver etc ?

[Bret]

They're not even at an alpha stage yet. Still working on them as I find time, but that's pretty rare these days. I'll post announcements on the FreeDOS and DOS Ain't Dead websites when things are ready to go.

[Nisse]

Your work is treasure man, godspeed.

[Nisse]

Hi man, I just bought an old Logitech G5 USB Laser Gaming Mouse from ebay but this one did not work in Dos.
Any recommendations for a relative new mouse that works with you driver that I can buy cheap on ebay and such ?
With best regards John