Using a PCMCIA CardBus USB 2.0 adapter with MS-DOS 7.1 on a DELL Inspiron 2650

I am posting this research for anyone else that may be trying to find a
similar solution. I did not try this on a virtual machine, so I'm not entirely
sure it would work.

Hardware:
512MB RAM
2.4 Ghz Intel Pentium(M) Processor
Embedded Intel 82801CA/CAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2482/2484 (USB 1.1)
Toshiba MK1032GAX 100 GB EIDE Hard Drive
O2MICRO OZ6912 PCMCIA Controller (single slot)
IOgear USB 2.0 GPU202 Cardbus adapter (NEC chipset)
SanDisk Cruiser Glide 32 GB (FAT32)

Software:
MS Windows XP Professional (with service packs)
MS Visual Studio 6 Professional (with service packs)
GHOST 2003 (only using MS-DOS)

Situation:
I am tasked with maintaining a Windows XP application until it finally sunsets.
Using the embedded Intel USB 1.1 controller on my machine, it took over 6
hours to backup/restore a 12.2 GB image using MS-DOS 7.X (Win95/Win98) with
GHOST 2003 (I have been using GHOST for years). GHOST always provides a
very effective means of disaster recovery for hard drive failures.

A NetGear WN511B Cardbus wireless card always worked on this machine, but I
could never get any Cardbus USB 2.0 adapters to function - until I found out
that there was a WinXP O2MICRO OZ6912 PCMCIA Controller update for this system
from DELL (DELL-2650-PMCMIA-R56900.EXE). Once installed (PCMCIA.SYS), the
CardBus cards functioned at USB 2.0 speeds on Windows XP. This system is
my test box / debugger, which crashes frequently.

Remediation:
Researching how to get CardBus USB 2.0 support to run with MS-DOS 7.1 proved to
be a complicated mess. Because there are so many PCMCIA adapters / CardBus
cards and DOS drivers, there were many perceived solutions. Rather than list
out ALL of the variants I tried, here is the actual solution that works:

USBASPI1.SYS - provides both a PCMCIA and Cardbus Card OS driver
- to avoid any confusion: U S B A S P I 1(one).S Y S
DI1000DD.SYS - maps a drive letter for DOS access
- to avoid any confusion: D I(i) 1(one) 0000 D D.S Y S

https://archive.org/details/dosdrivers "DOS Drivers.zip" (USBASPI1.SYS / DI1000DD.SYS)

[CONFIG.SYS]
break on
buffers=60
device=himem.sys /testmem=off
dos=high,umb
devicehigh=usbaspi1.sys /v /slow /e
devicehigh=di1000dd.sys
LASTDRIVE = Z

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]
@echo off
PATH=c:\
lh MOUSE.COM
rem pause
GHOST.EXE

Notes:
1. The configuration above will not fit onto a single 3.5" floppy, I wrote it
onto a CD once it all worked - repeatedly.
2 USBASPI1.SYS is not the same driver as USBASPI.SYS (magic Pannasonic driver).
3. MS-DOS 7.1 provides FAT32 drive access.
4. NJ3DISK.SYS (drive map) does not work with this driver.
5. HIMEM.SYS / DOS=HIGH,UMB are required to free up as much conventional memory
as possible. Simple DOS commands (dir, drive change, etc.) would cause
"Insufficient Memory" / "Write Access" drive failures.
6. The PCMCIA hardware (32 bit) uses DMA to directly access memory above 1 MB.
EMM386.EXE causes USBASPI1.SYS to fail during load.
7. Known USBASPI1.SYS switches are a follows:
/e enable EHCI controllers only
/o enable OHCI controllers only
/u enable UHCI controllers only
(default is /e /o /u)
/slow use slow initialization mode
/v use verbose mode
/w pause *after* controller initialization
/nocbc no cardbus controller -- no detection of cardbus controllers
/noprt no protected mode -- use BIOS (int15 ah=0x87) for transfers
/norst no controller reset
/r use controller reset (default)
8. Using "Slow Mode" (/slow switch) resolved a timing issue causing USBASPI1.SYS
(PCMCIA driver) to fail frequently on load.
9. There do not appear to be any driver switches for DI1000DD.SYS.
10. My DELL Inspiron 2650 does not have BIOS support to boot from USB. There was
no case where USBASPI1.SYS would provide access to the embedded USB 1.1
Host Controller on my machine (allowing access to BOTH the USB 2.0 and
USB 1.1 controllers simultaneously). Further - DI1000DD.sys could not
see the USB 1.1 controller (driver) to map a DOS drive.
11. I used "HPUSBDisk.exe" (on Win10) to format my SanDisk Cruiser Glide USB
Thumbdrives (16/32/64 GB) to FAT32; the 64 GB drive never worked, 16/32 GB
ALWAYS worked, as did the 160 GB external USB hard drive (FAT32).

12. With this configuration, it takes 59 minutes to backup/restore my DELL
Inspiron 2650 laptop !
13. This same configuration ALSO ran flawlessly on my DELL Inspiron 5100 (WinXP)
development machine ! (TI PCMCIA PCI-510 CardBus Controller)

Tim Reamer