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ByteBack D.R.I.S & USB SupportTM
Usually ByteBack D.R.I.S. would not be able to identify and work with disks that are connected through a USB interface, but there are several ways to get ByteBack D.R.I.S. to work with these disks.
1. "Legacy USB devices"
In many PC BIOS's there is an option for enabling "legacy USB". Enabling this option might allow DOS oriented applications (such as ByteBack D.R.I.S.) to access a USB disk without the need for additional drivers. The only way to see if this works is to try: enable BIOS option "legacy USB" and then start the PC from the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk. Open the "select disk" menu and see if the disk shows up.
2. modern day BIOS's
Most modern (say the last year to two) BIOS's are capable of booting from a USB device. If so, it's more than likely that the BIOS can identify a USB device as a disk at boot time, so ByteBack D.R.I.S. should have no trouble accessing this disk; there should be no need for additional drivers or tweaking. It may be necessary to enable "legacy USB" in the BIOS.
3. older BIOS's
If the BIOS does not recognize the USB disk at all from DOS (i.e. ByteBack D.R.I.S. does not see the disk) there's a final option that might work: use DOS USB drivers. Adding these drivers to the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk may enable ByteBack D.R.I.S. to work with the disks. This can be done as follows:
- download the drivers here: http://www.toolsthatwork.com/downloads/usb_dos_drivers.zip (*). Extract the archive to the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk, place the driver files in the root-directory of the floppy.
- download the sample CONFIG.SYS file here: http://www.toolsthatwork.com/downloads/config_autoexec.zip. This config is the original ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk config, but with USB driver statements added. Simply extract the archive to the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk, making sure to overwrite the current files. If at any time you need the original bootdisk again, simply recreate it using the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk builder.
Start the PC from the just modified ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk and select the appropriate option.
Things to keep in mind:
- accessing USB connected devices from DOS is slow
- if the disk that is selected has no MBR, ByteBack D.R.I.S. may ask questions about the disk's geometry (how many heads and sectors/track): some BIOS's assign geometry based on what is in the MBR, so if no MBR is found strange geometry values are assigned. Contact Tech Assist Support when this happens.
- there's a chance that the USB drivers won't work with the Freedos version that is included on the ByteBack D.R.I.S. bootdisk (the PC might lock up after the USB driver messages). If this happens you will need to create your own DOS bootdisk. Details on how to do this can be found here within this ByteBack D.R.I.S. manual. Include the USB drivers as described earlier. Do not include the mentioned sample CONFIG file. Instead you will need to create or adapt the config.sys file on the new bootdisk.
The following example can be used as a DOS config.sys file for a Windows 9x created bootdisk:
Please note that the DOS disk that is created from a running windows XP system takes care of himem etc. itself, all you'll need to do is create a config.sys file that contains at least the following lines:
- if USB support from DOS (using drivers or any other means) works, disks are not the only devices that can be accessed from DOS: anything that presents itself as a disk can be accessed. Think USB sticks, USB connected digital camera's etc. If these devices have partitions that have data on it, you can access them using the described methods.
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