[Coco] Seeking: ECB ROM chip

[Tony Cappellini]

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 13:06:58 -0500
From: Rob Rosenbrock <rob.coco at zaphod.tzo.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] Seeking: ECB ROM chip
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Message-ID: <3898D07B-0377-45BF-82EC-BC9063191778 at zaphod.tzo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

>>That is not the same thing...
>>USB came out much later than MSDOS, and MSDOS does not have the drivers to support it.

You don't need USB drivers (in the sense of drivers *formally* loaded
from config.sys) for DOS if USB support is built into the bios.

Most if not all *modem* bios support booting from USB drives. There is
usually a setting you need to change to make the bios think the USB
drive is a floppy, but that limits you
to 1.4MB of space, even on a GB usb drive. We have our USB drives
formatted much larger than that, I don't know what the upper limit is,
but I would suspect 2Gb.

Many bioss also have built in graphical menuing and mouse support as
well. All of this is (and the USB support) is available before the
first boot sector is read from the USB drive.

It just works, without any special editing, drivers, or headaches,
provided your bios s new enough.