Re: [Freedos-user] CD driver

[Eric A. <e....@jp...>]

Hi!

> I just installed Freedos 1.3 via USB.  It works OK, but will not load the
> UDVD2 driver (it gets a #255 error).  Will UIDE work instead?  Or is the
> problem a bad HDD sector?

The problem probably is not a bad sector in your harddisk.

If you want to access a CD/DVD after booting from that same
boot CD/DVD, then you could also use the ELTORITO driver.

For most other cases, you can use drivers like UDVD2. It
might also make a difference whether you boot from USB or
from harddisk (or SSD) as well.

UIDE is newer than UDVD2. The newest versions of the drivers
available with source are probably here:

http://mercurycoding.com/downloads.html

http://mercurycoding.com/downloads/DOS/drivers/2021-10-30/2021-10-30.zip

This contains a 2015 rdisk (with rdiskon) and UDVD2,
2020 UIDE and xmgr (himem alternative), 2021 UHDD
and a 2022 readme text file.

UIDE supports both optical and non-optical drives as
well as a cache. UHDD only does non-optical disks.
UHDD contains a cache, too. UDVD2 only supports
optical drives. UDVD2 can share the cache of UHDD
if you load UDVD2 after UHDD.

Note the readme regarding which drivers are best in
which situation. Also note that depending on where
you got that 255 error, it may mean XMS memory error!

If that is what happened for you, then you may want
to try different combinations of memory drivers such
as JEMMEX, JEMM386, HIMEMX, XMGR etc. By default,
your FreeDOS installation will already offer a few
combinations in your boot menu. Try those :-)

If your mainboard supports AHCI, it may belp to
disable AHCI mode in your BIOS / CMOS settings.

Alternatively, you can use AHCICD by the late R. Loew:
https://rloewelectronics.com/distribute/AHCICD/1.1/
You can ignore the warning about the expired HTTPS.

Japheth has created an unreal mode variant of it, too:
https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/AHCICDU

You can also find updates for JEMM and HIMEMX on
Japheth's GitHub "Baron von Riedesel", even his
HIMEMSX to use more than 4 GB RAM :-)

Regards, Eric