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USB Overview
USB is the Universal Serial Bus. As its name indicates, it's a serial bus, meant for replacing
RS232? ports (under DOS known as
COM1?: -
COM4?: ) and for connecting all kinds of external user devices (mice, keyboards, joysticks, gamepads, usb flash drives). USB ports are available in 3 variants, supporting up to 3 different speeds\\
- USB 1.x ports and devices often only support low speed (1.5mbit per second)
- USB 1.x ports (and sometimes devices) often also support full speed (12mbit per second)
- USB 2.x ports support both types of USB 1.x, and also the high speed (480mbit per second)
USB is a method of connecting devices to a computer. It is an official standard, with published specifications and testing, etc to help ensure compatibility. It is intended to replace legacy (older) forms of connecting devices and provide enhancements (such as power management, increased # of devices, plug-n-play support, ...). USB devices are "officially" only supported on current generation Windows (NT5+) operating systems. Support is also available on the older Windows 98 and Windows Me operating systems. Support was also available in Windows 95 OSR 2, which was not available as a retail pack.
With a bit of trial and error even DOS supports quite a few devices. Most modern computers even include limited support (support varies from barely functional to quite impressive) within the BIOS for USB mice, keyboards, and drives [may require booting from drive].
There are three major USB controllers, OHCI, UHCI, and EHCI
OHCI (low speed & full speed)
USB 1.x only.
UHCI (low speed & full speed)
USB 1.x only
EHCI (low speed, full speed & high speed supported)
USB 2.x or for backward compatibility supports USB 1.x.
DOS Support
General
Under DOS drivers either provide full support in an all-in-one type driver (ie the driver provides access to a USB hard drive and that is it) or layered approach (ie a generic USB wrapper usually in form of an ASPI driver, and then a DOS driver for each specific type of device to acess, such as a cd-rom driver and a disk driver) similar to SCSI peripherals.
There is also limited support for Human Interface Devices (keyboards and mice) within most modern BIOS implementations.
Vendor compatibility
We can recommend USB interfaces with NEC controllers on them. VIA and OPTI might be more troublesome.
Common drivers
- Panasonic Drivers / Motto Hairu: usbaspi.sys & di1000dd.sys
- Iomega ????
- DOSUSB (was \"DOSUHCI\" in the past)
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