Re: Rugxulo's FreeDOS front-page comment about "Another week, another UIDE update", I want to assure people that, despite now being age 68, I am NOT "losing my mind"!
The 20-Aug-13 update was to provide "CD/DVD kiosk" users in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) a way to cache CD/DVD data without loading the entire 4.5K UIDE driver. My "partner" Johnson Lam asked for this, so I did it. But, I was UNHAPPY with the size of UCACHE2, and so -- The 26-Aug-13 update makes UHDD able to run "private caches", with NO separate caching driver required. UHDD still has its "common" cache for old drivers, and it may now be called by the updated UDVD2 and by other updated "user" drivers (if any!) that desire "private caching". The 2-Sep-13 update fixed a "possible" media-change problem in UDVD2. I say "possible" because UDVD2 ran fine, but its logic did not appear correct. So I upgraded it, to stay "safe". Safety MATTERS, to me! The 9-Sep-13 update fixed more "possible but unlikely" errors in UHDD re: resetting its user parameter-table pointer. The reset cannot be done if UHDD rejects an I-O request because another is still running. If the running request LOSES its cache parameters, a CRASH may occur! Also, the reset should not be done for BIOS requests that UHDD is not going to handle. I am unsure all old DOS versions have media-change logic for a HARD-disk flagged as "removable", i.e. a USB disk. So, UHDD/UIDE are written to stay "safe" and IGNORE any such disks! I have never heard of any cases where multiple I-O requests have been issued to UHDD/UIDE. DOS uses a "one at a time" I-O scheme, as most developers know. Nor have I heard of many cases where an "odd" BIOS disk gets ignored by my drivers. But to remain "safe", I fixed both cases in UHDD, and I apologize for not having realized all this while adding UHDD's "private cache" capability. I get "bugs", too. Finally, though we are years away from a "Super Blu-Ray" CD/DVD drive requiring 32 LBA bits (8 Terabytes), UDVD2/UIDE using only 30 bits in caching was "a problem waiting to happen"! The problem has now been corrected in both drivers. Those are my REASONS behind the 4 recent UHDD/UDVD2/UIDE updates, and everyone can rest assured that I am NOT "losing my mind"! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn the latest--Visual Studio 2012, SharePoint 2013, SQL 2012, more! Discover the easy way to master current and previous Microsoft technologies and advance your career. Get an incredible 1,500+ hours of step-by-step tutorial videos with LearnDevNow. Subscribe today and save! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=58041391&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
