X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mailnull set sender to opendos-bounces using -f Message-ID: <000501c19f8f$4cb11d20$c03dfea9@atlantis> From: "Matthias Paul" To: References: <000c01c199a2$545cbcc0$af32ed18 AT anchorageak DOT net> Subject: Re: PCMCIA drivers for DR-DOS Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 19:59:50 +0100 Organization: University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id g0HJhAW00536 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com On 2002-01-10, John Ross wrote: > [...] I was mildly surprised and pleased to "discover" this firm is > offering CardWare for DOS/Windows version 6.0.012 Unicore lists the > software for US $69.95 plus $9.95 shipping. Shipping to Canada $25, > outside US $35. > [...] > I am not connected in any fashion with Unicore or their affiliates. > The information is offered to DOS users wanting data regarding CardWare. > I presume others will be interested in the same information I sought. I think some users will find this info very useful, indeed. Thanks for taking the time to sum it up for us. Since John didn´t mentioned it in his original post but in private email to me, I take the opportunity here to add the link to an OEM version of SystemSoft´s CardSoft (DOS) for some IBM ThinkPads: (remove the possible line-wrapping) http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/DSHY-3NPU8M.html?lang=en_US&page=brand&brand=IBM+ThinkPad&doctype=Downloadable+files&subtype=Cat&up=unknownuser973053588 According to the PCTPCDOS.TXT (from 1999-12-20) on this page this is the CardSoft OEM version 5.32.23.HS4. IBM PC DOS 7 and 2000, however, ship with Phoenix CardManager Plus 3.01 from Phoenix Technologies, Ltd. as PCMCIA SS & CS driver stack. > Users can obtain a 15 day evaluation version or purchase the software > at http://www.tssc.de/products/cwdos/cardware_dos.htm . What´s most interesting is that this downloadable CardWare 6.00.12 evaluation version was last modified on 2001-11-11, that is, the product is still being (at least partially) maintained by the German company: APSoft Sonnenstrasse 26b D-85622 Feldkirchen Germany FreeCall: 00824672467 Phone: +49(89) 900 479 0 Fax: +49(89) 900 479 11 (Their mantra "We help computers work" reminds me of the old Digital Research phrase "We make computers work", somehow... :-) It seems, Unicore is only the distributor, not the manufacturer, so for European or German users it might be cheaper to directly ask APSoft instead of Unicore. (The TouchStone and Award marks in the outdated docs do no longer apply.) A few more comments on the CardWare 6.00.12 distribution: I find it rather odd that a Win32 pre-installer is used to create the installation floppy disks or the file set for a product which is intended for DOS 3.2+ (DOS 5.0+) and Windows 3.1x (according to the docs CardWare supports the 16-bit part of Windows 95/98 as well). Further, Windows 3.1x+ is required to run the normal installer (SETUP), which ships inside the archive. There´s also a DOS-only installer (INSTALL), but according to the docs this installer is out-dated and no longer being maintained. It is possible to manually install the files; the README.TXT refers to a CARDWARE.WRI file (Windows Write format), which describes how to achieve this. However, the CARDWARE.WRI file is still compressed and must be decompressed with EXPAND CARDWARE.WR_ CARDWARE.WRI first. All the other files with *.??_ extension can be decompressed with EXPAND as well: *.DL_ -> *.DLL *.EX_ -> *.EXE *.HL_ -> *.HLP *.RS_ -> *.RSC *.TX_ -> *.TXT *.WM_ -> *.WMF *.WR_ -> *.WRI Just for the records, the DPMS.EXE driver shipping with 6.00.12 is Novell´s issue of DPMS 1.44 from 1995, so this is almost up to date - a very welcome change compared to older issues of CardWare and to the long outdated DPMS.EXE drivers shipping with some other vendor´s products (like Stacker or PC DOS 2000). IIRC, only very few changes are present in the Caldera DPMS 1.44 issue. I still recommend it, because it´s newer. It is probably interesting to compare the DOS memory footprints of the SystemSoft´s CardSoft, Phoenix´ CardManager, and Award/ TouchStone/Unicore/APSoft´s CardWare driver suites. The old CardWare 2.5 (the first issue which supported DPMS) could be reduced downto a DOS memory footprint of 11 Kb with full Plug & Play enabled. A full installation required ca. 33 Kb. The following comparison is taken from the German book: Bernd Mielke "PC-Card Anwender Lösungen", 1997, Franzis Verlag, ISBN 3-7723-4313-9. The memory gain with DPMS is quite impressive, I think: Award CardWare CW 1.01 CW 2.00 CW 2.50 CW 2.50 CW 5.00 1993-11-16 1994-06-01 1994-12-01 1995-08-01 1996-06-26 ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- DPMS N/A N/A 1632 1808 [1.4] 1600 [1.44] PCSS/SSPCIC 3296 3072 688 1200 5584 PCCS 48656 57520 43552 7872 12272 PCENABLE 41552 19328 19568 2816 3024 PCDISK 20144 22304 22304 22016 11360 PCATA N/A N/A N/A N/A 4592 PCSRAM N/A N/A N/A N/A 4592 =========== ========== ========== ========== ========== ========== Total Bytes 113648 102224 87744 35712 43024 Phoenix CardManager 3.0 SystemSoft CardSoft 4.2.00 (1996-03-14) --------------- ---------------------------- CNFIGNAM/PHOEN 448 SSTPIC95 4688 PCMSS 5920 CS 59200 PCMCS 35600 ATADRV 11120 PCMRMAN 0 MTSRAM 3024 PCMSCD 18080 MTDDRV 10480 CARDID 26304 ============= ================ ======== ========================== Total Bytes 60048 Total 114816 This should give a basic overview... Greetings, Matthias -- ; http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org