64 replies to this topic

[Wonko the Sane]

However I am still baffled at ASPIEHCI.SYS not working for you, there are so many reports of it working.

Check this thread also:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=8605


Wonko

[Technotika]

'Tis rather annoying,...

Tried it on 2 models of HP laptops and no joy on either, it maybe so that it would be fine on other brands (and will keep a ASPIEHCI.SYS ready .vfd in archive for use on such).

However for this project I'm stuck with HP's so must try with the most "compatible solution".

Will try the latest MAPPING tests from earlier and keep you posted, thanks!

[Technotika]

Hi

RESULTS

PART 1

1.What happens now in DOS?

All commands up to the above question ran smoothly.

After "boot".....

Arrived @ A:\>

from which "DIR" listed the contents of the super floppy

Then C:

Arrived @ C:\>

from which "DIR" listed the contents of the USB

Which drive letter gets the USB stick?

Judging from the Above C: is "still" going to the USB stick

PART 2

What happens with:

CTLOAD USBASPI.SYS /V

CTLOAD DI1000DD.SYS

I think we already from the outcome of part 1, however (in the interest of leaving nothing undone)
USBASPI.SYS /V loads fine
CTLOAD DI1000DD.SYS assigns D: to USB but again, strange.........

1. D: drops to "D"
2. D:\DIR

Volume in drive D has no label
Volume Serial Number is 84E3-51FA
Directory of D:\

File not found
256.00MB Free (<errr )

3. D:\ C:
4. C:\Dir

general failure reading drive C

PART 3.

So far the only command.com I can get working is this one "18 ‎July ‎1999, ‏‎21:04:44"
If I use newer I get unknown version of DOS error executing CTLOAD.COM

What happens (re-booting) if you try using a new instance of command.com? In DOS:

copy /b command.com Q:

copy /b ctload.com Q:

copy /b usbaspy.sys Q:

copy /b di1000dd.sys Q:

Q:

command.com

CTLOAD USBASPI.SYS /V

CTLOAD DI1000DD.SYS

this produces same results
as in part 2?

Is time to pack up and go to sleep do you think, you must have had enough?

[Wonko the Sane]

Hmm .
The problem is that I have no handy way to reproduce your setup.
It is possible that UNLIKE the ASPIEHCI.SYS, the USBASPI.SYS conflicts with the BIOS mapped USB stick.
Now would that be on a "partition" or on a "hard disk" level?
I mean, if you format the stick with NTFS (or a hidden FAT), the BIOS will be able to detect it as 0x80, grub4dos will have no problems in booting the floppy image (and if needed, swapping the drives).
DOS will NOT assign a letter to it.
Then you run the driver, since NO volume is mounted in DOS under any letter, not that on the stick and not the one on the hard disk, the driver should have no conflicts.
But is this what is needed, how fast is the driver? Or it would be better/faster to introduce PLoP in the equation and get rid of the panasonic driver?




Wonko

[Technotika]

But is this what is needed, how fast is the driver? Or it would be better/faster to introduce PLoP in the equation and get rid of the panasonic driver?

I'd love that, I really would, I even used it to speed up a winbuild ram loading problem (livexp) on the stick but alas, when comes to the family from hell, Mr 3.2 CDDEPLOY.BAT and his the freaking ghost friend then doesn't work, the EHCI that plop kicks in then throws out the destination drive in terms of laying the image down on the HDD of the intended build machine. Been down that road pretty hard and met a smack against a brick wall.

I had a few stabs at it here....

HISTORY (lol in fact its in the first post ever in this record breaking thread)

I have tried PLOP. Plop is ace! Where I have needed to speed up the loading of a RAM image or the loading of a VISTA PE. Plop just handles that nicely...really speeds things up, even on the older systems. However when it comes to ghost images, ghost no longer see's the USB stick for some reason (due to the plop controller) and just cannot load an image. I have posted in plop forum and the guy who wrote plop wasnt too sure about this and also I posted in symantec aswell about this and no body has answered yet.
So is the mission to get some kind of USB driver built into the dos start up disk for the ghost images.

And here
http://forum.plop.at...10.html#msg2110
I managed to annoy that fella aswell with my haphazard in take of information. I 'am trying to be better though, you 'll agree.

Which led me to trying this USB driver situation.
I dont know about speeds, however when it worked, in the sense it ghosted a machine BEFORE failing at omnifs, it actually was ALOT slower, but I put that down to the fact it was a machine being tested on that was ok in terms of speeds so it wouldn't behave right. But thinking about it surely that driver had kicked in and should work as fast as it was going to on one of the machines that needed faster USB transfers.

If you can work a way to get plop working I 'll re write my last will and testament.

I even thought we could do the build in PE but straight away failed as those pesky 16-bit files wouldn't play balls.

The problem is that I have no handy way to reproduce your setup

True. What about sending a laptop and some sticks?

[Wonko the Sane]

Well, I guess you tried to boot with PLoP, maybe it would be possible to use it as driver:
http://www.plop.at/e...anager.html#drv

True. What about sending a laptop and some sticks?

Naah, I'm pretty sure you would want them back.



Wonko

[Technotika]

9. Using the Boot Manager as USB harddisk driver for DOS

I know this is very special. Maybe it's useful for some people. You have to configure the plpbt.bin with plpcfgbt to use int19h instead of booting the operating system.

plpcfgbt int19h=on plpbt.bin

Now you have to start plpbt.bin with a boot manager like grub, syslinux or what ever during boot time (supported boot managers see here). Choose USB and the boot manager will install the usb driver and go back to your boot manager. If you start DOS you will have access to your usb drive as last harddisk. But remember, the usbdrive is only as "read only" device available.

If it works for you then use plpcfgbt int19h=on stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin

Ok I think I got this........

1.) Downloaded PLOP.
2.) Extracted to DESKTOP
3.) Inside PLOP there are all the files needed and a subdir called CFG
3.) Inside CFG we have "plpcfgbt", required to changed the "plpbt.bin" files to set up DOS-USB.
4.) Copied "plpbt.bin" from root of PLOP dir (I expect you can just point it to an instance of it already sat on a USB stick, if required) to CFG & ran this in CMD as admin



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

5.) Which appears to have done "something" to PLOP.

So from here, boot to G4D, then select, PLOP, then USB, should then fire back to G4D where I can try the build again, this time with PLOP-DOS-USB running the show instead of USBASPI.SYS etc.

Am I right? Gotta check

[Wonko the Sane]

Am I right? Gotta check

Yep, that's the general idea, since it seems like (but you will have to test and confirm) the problem is not in GHOST, but rather in OMNIFS, you can uninstall the PLoP driver before calling OMNIFS (when it locks).


Wonko

[Technotika]

Arh man, so typical of my luck right now

1. Tested on my desktop @ home. NOT the ghost part just the menu flipping correctly back to G4D after selecting the USB-DOS-PLOP (jesus!) option in the menu. Seemed to workfine.

2. Happy in that respect, powered up the test laptop, either hangs on white cursor in the top right corner, or after ammending boot order in various ways, will try and boot something else e.g PXE or HDD. Anything but flipping back to the USB_DOS_PLOP


3. Tested Girlfriends laptop (what? am I mad) it's a (puh ) HP and...... BOOM, same as part 2. I'm sure I plopped right (hah) so need to test more work machines but already doesnt seem want to play ball.

Posted in plop too

[Wonko the Sane]

Just for the record, this:

9. Using the Boot Manager as USB harddisk driver for DOS

I know this is very special. Maybe it's useful for some people. You have to configure the plpbt.bin with plpcfgbt to use int19h instead of booting the operating system.

plpcfgbt int19h=on plpbt.bin

Now you have to start plpbt.bin with a boot manager like grub, syslinux or what ever during boot time (supported boot managers see here). Choose USB and the boot manager will install the usb driver and go back to your boot manager. If you start DOS you will have access to your usb drive as last harddisk. But remember, the usbdrive is only as "read only" device available.

If it works for you then use plpcfgbt int19h=on stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin

Is a form of CONDITIONAL set of instructions:

• You have to configure the plpbt.bin with plpcfgbt to use int19h instead of booting the operating system : plpcfgbt int19h=on plpbt.bin
• Now you have to start plpbt.bin with a boot manager like grub, syslinux or what ever during boot time.
• If it works for you then use plpcfgbt int19h=on stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin

What you did:

• Skipped
• Skipped
• plpcfgbt int19h=on stm=hidden cnt=on cntval=1 dbt=usb plpbt.bin

In other words you wisely decided to lock yourself off any possible informative message a PLoP configured ONLY with int19h=on may have given you.

Anyway, I would have expected the opposite, AFAIK PLoP has been tested expecially on Laptops.

Now everything is in Elmar's (very capable ) hands, let's see if he can find a workaround/fix.


Wonko

[Technotika]

message from Elmar

the int19 is used to continue or restart the bios boot sequence. the behavior is bios depending. normally, it restarts the bios boot sequence but there is no definition that it must do that.

regards
elmar

Which makes sense in the desktop as that was manually i.e pressing (f12) to launch off USB.

Test laptop USB is first thing to boot??? But like Elmar says depends on BIOS.

I'll re test tonight as I am getting scatty again with my posts.

[Technotika]

Seems some fresh developments coming in PLOP might save the day

but its possible to create a sys fie that detects the plop usb driver, or have i done this already? i don't know. i have to look

Elmar

As it turns out it didnt get made yet......but keeping eye out

[Technotika]

I thought I'd better lay this puppy to rest,........ PROPERLY in the interest that one day, sometime after the next ice age (won't be long folks), aliens land on planet earth and want to find out how "on Earth" (sorry) they could speed up ghost imaging in a dos environment. They'd better be patient!

Well any bleary eyed reader my be wondering what happened to this situation? At one turn it was very positive, the next, doomed!? And in extremis, the potential suicide of the poster! Ding Dong!

Well let me first wet your appetites with the fruits of this thread.....

1. How have things improved?
DOS NOUSB. Ghosting (Version 8.2) off usb. On most systems. 30/40 mb/min ghosting time = 1hr 45mins. It was hoping to replace crappy DVD's that forever got scratched, no one could read the writing on, needed rubbing on T-shirt's to clear eroneous ghost error messages, but still compared to the first run of the USB project, manged about 350/400 mb/min = 20/30 mins ghosting time. Give or take a bit less depending on newness of the dvd player in the machines. So first off it was pretty much a disaster even against the DVD it was trying to replace.
Let me tell you. Today, I managed to test nearly ALL of the slow USB machines, with my new USBASPI & APIEHCI loaded dos SUPERFLOPPY, and the results just blow me away!
DOS "WITH" USB. Re read above before this. The lowest transfer speed was........850 mb/min. Ghosting time max 3.50 mins.In the corperate world can you just sniff that productivity increase? On some machines I got 1200 mb/min and "took a photo of" the 1 min 57 sec completion time. Unbelievable. AND..as posted many times throughout the thread, ASPIEHCI.SYS, was no good for me. However last night my work 8gb pen drive broke. Long story. BUT, I had to buy a new one. I got a sandisk cruizer 8gb and on the last machine I tested today...it worked ALSO. And I nearly shlelved that option. USBASPI wasn't to hot on our HP DC7600's (300 mb's min) so I thought ooh new stick, I wonder if the other driver works. It did. From 300 mb/min to 1200 mb/min. Machine ghosted before i could even get back to my desk before it joined the domain and started being spanked by updates!

2. So what's the downside.
This process, as you will read, both here and elsewhere on the web, is completely "experimental". Only by chance of my project USB breaking did I find that a different USB stick would work with ASPIEHCI.SYS. So YOU reader may have great luck, or also have a USB pen that might not be so lucky with the driver. I think in essence, it's very worth it, the effort, and worthwhile.
Our oldest laptop had a very weird reaction to the DOS-USB driver. Loaded ok but borked at ghost where it claimed "destination drive too small". We hardly ever build those so it's a moot point but worth bearing in mind. Also ghost, by default, checks the integrity of the drive it's recieving an image from and reports any bad sectors. On a few older machines i got "bad blocks detected conitnue YES/NO" but still built fine. I think with it being an old version of ghost and the USB so new it didnt like it. In the sense that partition magic 8.5 cannot deal (or corrupts) vista created partitions; old v.s new type thing. I even cleared the message with -FRO that stops ghost moaing about bad blocks.


3. Techno.

You know what?.... this is all you have to do to get USB support in your DOS.
Create the hot damn ms-dos floppy.
Edit with winimage or ultraiso.
and add these files to it DI1000DD.sys 16/08/2001 & USBASPI.SYS 11/07/2004
and then load them in your config.sys i.e

DEVICE=himem.sys /testmem:off /v
DEVICE=USBASPI.SYS /V
DEVICE=DI1000DD.SYS
LASTDRIVE = Z

That's it.

DEVICE=USBASPI.SYS /V will SCAN usb hosts and devices, and with a bit of luck FIND your device. The /V creates verbose out on the screen from the searching process.
Perhaps good for troubleshooting?

DEVICE=DI1000DD.SYS will be called upon to assign a drive letter to the "found" USB device.
I.E Laptop with "1" HDD, dos see's the HDD already as C: so when the driver loads, you're USB will get the next avialable Driver letter D:

So If you have a script that calls ghost images then bear that in mind.
I.E
ghost.exe -nousb -fni -clone,mode=load,src=C:\IMAGES\L%Image%.gho,dst=2 -sure
will be
ghost.exe -nousb -fni -clone,mode=load,src=D:\IMAGES\L%Image%.gho,dst=2 -sure

Anybody want more info just PM and remember USB 2.0 in dos "IS" possible LOL

and finally...

OK big guy over to you (you know who you are), much respect and thanks for all the work and help you provided so far. It's a shame you can't see some of the buzz this is going to create but I guess you have an idea an probably created more.

I'll give you sneak preview of the next project..."REMOTELY REBOOT A PC, THEN WHEN IT STARTS BACK UP, IT BOOT OFF AN ISO OR PXE, SOMEHOW" Excited ?

[Stewberg]

3. Techno.

You know what?.... this is all you have to do to get USB support in your DOS.
Create the hot damn ms-dos floppy.
Edit with winimage or ultraiso.
and add these files to it DI1000DD.sys 16/08/2001 & USBASPI.SYS 11/07/2004
and then load them in your config.sys i.e

DEVICE=himem.sys /testmem:off /v
DEVICE=USBASPI.SYS /V
DEVICE=DI1000DD.SYS
LASTDRIVE = Z

That's it.

Technotika,

I've read all of th comments on this thread and believe that I was following it closely, but after trying the above steps, I'm still not able to boot from my USB (1TB) drive and get transfer speeds above 40MB. It seems I am still getting the errors you got early on (The following file is missing for corrupted: DI1000DD.SYS. There is an error in your config.sys file on line 3, The following file....) after the DEVICE=USBASPI.SYS /V loads.... So I have to remove that line and when I do that, I get slow speeds.

Did you ever determine that you could load from the same USB HDD and get decent transfer speeds? Have I missed some tools that you use or other programs to get the process working? Interested in writing a detailed tutorial?

I know there are a lot of variables that you don't know about in my situation, but just wasn't sure if you had had success with the above questions I had. Let me know and I'd love to pick you brain if you did get great transfer speeds in DOS booting from the same USB drive!

[ericgl]

I have a different solution for getting USB2.0 speeds in a MS-DOS environment.
Much like Technotika, I tried many solutions offered on the web, but none worked...Until I found this one:


PCI USB 2.0 Enabler for DOS v4.05

The actual file is called usbmass.exe


The bad news: The registered version costs money!
The good news: it does work, and it's simple to implement.

Here's my Autoexec.bat:

@ECHO OFF

CTMOUSE.EXE

PATH=A:;R:

GOTO %CONFIG%



:ghost20

REM echo Loading USB2 Driver:

USBMASS.EXE /E

REM echo Loading long Filename support:

LH C:COMMANDDOSLFN.COM

ghost115.bat



goto finish

:finish