USB Drivers for DOS - USBASPI.SYS

If your system BIOS does not support booting from USB Disks, or you are using an old PC and willing to access some information from MS-DOS (If you are still using it) then there are few options that came to my notice that can be helpful to you.

The USBASPI.SYS is driver file you need to do this. This file is also known as "Panasonic v2.06 ASPI Manager for USB mass storage".

This driver is capable of mapping only map mass storage devices like external hard disks, cd- roms, cd-rw, dvd-rom, zip, jaz, ls-120, and flash memory to ASPI devices.

The driver switches you can use are: device=(path)USBASPI.SYS [/e] [/o] [/u] [/w] [/v] [/l[=n]] [/f] /r] [/slow] [/nocbc] [/norst] [/noprt]

You should be editing your config.sys and autoexec.bat files and add required changes to start using this driver.

[config.sys]

DOS=HIGH,UMB 
lastdrive=Z 
device=HIMEM.SYS 
rem The following line loads Panasonic's universal USB- controller driver 
devicehigh=USBASPI.SYS /v /w /e 
rem the following is an aspi mass storage driver for usb- connected HDs and compactflash memory cards 
devicehigh=DI1000DD.SYS 
rem The following one loads CD-ROM driver 
devicehigh=USBCD.SYS /d:USBCD001

[autoexec.bat] 
@echo off 
REM the following line adds a drive letter to the usb cd(rom/r/rw) mounted 
LH MSCDEX /d:USBCD001

A very detailed explanation on how to use this driver and various options available with driver are nicely explained at http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/069/1046069/yes-there-are-usb-drivers-for-dos.

There is another interesting document explaining the USB Driver for DOS at FreeDOS Documentation. The details on how to are provided here.  

usbaspi.sys and usbcd.sys available at:http://panasonic.co.jp/pcc/products/drive/cdrrw/kxlrw40an/driver/kxlrw40an.exe

di1000dd.sys available at: http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/mhairu.zip

If the pages don't open correctly better do a google search.

Alternatively, There is one more USB DOS Driver from Cypress. The link for Cypress USB Stack driver for DOS is here.(http://www.pocketec.net/downloads/duse_4_4.zip) 

How to Use the NTFS File System With USB Drives

Why you want to use the NTFS File System with USB Drives?

For users of computers that run Windows 2000, XP or Vista though, the preferred file system is often NTFS. The advantages over FAT32 include the ability to:

1. Create files larger than 4 GB in size

2. Encrypt documents for better security

3. Deny or limit permissions to individual files or folders

Read more about how to create an NTFS File System with USB Drives at the following link.

http://computer-drives-storage.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_use_the_ntfs_file_system_on_a_usb_drive

However there is one thing that one should take care of when changing to NTFS file system:

Backup your files from your USB Drive before staring to CONVERT and FORMAT.

XEM3050 - Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA Integration Module

The XEM3050 FPGA Module promises to help in cutting design times and verification times of heavy electronic engineering projects.

In addition to a high gate-count FPGA, the XEM3050 utilizes the high transfer rate of USB 2.0 for configuration downloads, enabling an almost instant reprogramming of the FPGA.

Opal Kelly's FrontPanel software handles all the interaction between your software and the FPGA internals, dramatically reducing the time and effort required to interface to a design.

The XEM3050 is ideally suited for product prototyping and integration into OEM devices where a USB interface, flexible hardware solution, or PC software interface would be useful. The XEM3050 can easily be added to a new board design to provide turnkey USB integration with the convenience of Opal Kelly's software programmer's interface and existing USB drivers.

Download Portable Office Suite (Openoffice 3.0) to your USB Thumb Drive/ USB Flash Disk

Openoffice 3.0 is a an open source Office software and with version 3.0 it is very much like Microsoft Office. The two interesting things about it is it supports both Microsoft Office file formats as well as Google Docs file formats and it is free.

It is developed in Java and supported be Sun Microsystems.

It is a complete office suite that is free. Now you can now carry it on your thumb drive too. 

File size of Portable Openoffice 3.0 is about 86.4 MB.

Download Portable Openoffice.org 3.0 for your USB Flash Drive.