Device Side Data develops and sells innovative computing accessories.
- Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver
- Rs-cv0c Data Device Drivers
- Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver Device
- Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver Updater
- When you plug the device into your USB, Windows will look for the associated driver, if it cannot find this driver then you will be prompted to insert the driver disc that came with your device. Common USB Device errors are ‘ usb port not working ‘, ‘device descriptor request failed error’ or ‘bugcodeusbdriver’ issues.
- Select Tape drivers and software for the Tape systems menu. Select Tape device drivers for the Tape drivers and software menu. Select your operating system for the Platform menu. It is recommended that you install the most current driver available.
Before you install the tape device driver, ensure that the following tasks are completed: The host bus adapter (HBA) and its device driver were installed automatically. The tape drive and HBA are connected. The tape drive is powered on. The tape drives in the library are powered on. The server is powered on. Device driver for all The Imaging Source USB cameras except the 33U, 37U, 38U and AFU auto focus series. January 25, 2019.
Device Side Data's flagship product is the FC5025 USB 5.25' floppy controller. The FC5025 plugs into any computer's USB port and enables you to attach a 5.25' floppy drive. Even if your computer has no built-in floppy controller, the FC5025 lets you read those old disks. And it's not just for IBM PC disks – it also understands formats used by Apple, Atari, Commodore and TI, among others.
Customers in the United States may order online with a credit card. Those in other countries or wishing to use other payment methods, please contact us by email.
September 18th, 2020: We are currently performing maintenance on our online ordering system. There may be an outage for up to an hour. We are sorry for any inconvenience.
March, 2020: Orders may be delayed due to the COVID-19 situation. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
September 7th, 2017: The existing drivers have been tested on MacOS Sierra 10.12.6. No update is necessary.
May 18th, 2015: Today is the 5.25th anniversary of our product launch! Thanks to all our customers for continuing to make Device Side Data a success.
March 19th, 2013: Updated drivers are available for download. The new drivers add support for Windows 8 64-bit. Older operating systems are also still supported. The new drivers have several other improvements, including support for Motorola VersaDOS disks and improved support for North Star MDS disks.
December 19th, 2012: Enclosures are out of stock again. It will be several months before we have more. We still have plenty of controllers and power supplies available.
Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver
October 22nd, 2012: Enclosures are back in stock.
December 22nd, 2011: Updated drivers are available for download. The new drivers run natively on Windows 7 64-bit and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Older operating systems are also still supported. The new drivers have several other improvements, including support for PMC MicroMate and Tandy Color Computer disks.
April 4th, 2011: Updated drivers are available for download. The new drivers have several improvements, including support for Kaypro 2 and Calcomp Vistagraphics 4500 disks.
November 18th, 2010: In addition to the controller, we are now also selling an external drive enclosure and a tabletop power supply.
July 2nd, 2010: Updated drivers are available for download. The new drivers fix a problem with copying files from MS-DOS disks in the GUI, add support for Kaypro 4 CP/M 2.2 disks, and improve the speed of some disk image operations.
February 18th, 2010: The FC5025 is now shipping! Also, the specifications are now more detailed.
December 2009: More information on the FC5025 is now available, including hardware photos and software screenshots.
- W6TRW swap meet, January 27th, 2007
- Attendees to this electronics and ham radio swap meet were invited to bring disks and have image copies made (read the announcement).
- Vintage Computer Festival, November 4th and 5th, 2006
- At the Vintage Computer Festival, a prototype of the floppy controller was shown reading Apple 5.25' disks on a PC.
Comments, questions and suggestions are welcome at
- Operating System Tutorial
- OS - Exams Questions with Answers
- Operating System Useful Resources
- Selected Reading
One of the important jobs of an Operating System is to manage various I/O devices including mouse, keyboards, touch pad, disk drives, display adapters, USB devices, Bit-mapped screen, LED, Analog-to-digital converter, On/off switch, network connections, audio I/O, printers etc.
An I/O system is required to take an application I/O request and send it to the physical device, then take whatever response comes back from the device and send it to the application. I/O devices can be divided into two categories −
Block devices − A block device is one with which the driver communicates by sending entire blocks of data. For example, Hard disks, USB cameras, Disk-On-Key etc.
Character devices − A character device is one with which the driver communicates by sending and receiving single characters (bytes, octets). For example, serial ports, parallel ports, sounds cards etc
Device Controllers
Device drivers are software modules that can be plugged into an OS to handle a particular device. Operating System takes help from device drivers to handle all I/O devices.
The Device Controller works like an interface between a device and a device driver. I/O units (Keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.) typically consist of a mechanical component and an electronic component where electronic component is called the device controller.
There is always a device controller and a device driver for each device to communicate with the Operating Systems. A device controller may be able to handle multiple devices. As an interface its main task is to convert serial bit stream to block of bytes, perform error correction as necessary.
Any device connected to the computer is connected by a plug and socket, and the socket is connected to a device controller. Following is a model for connecting the CPU, memory, controllers, and I/O devices where CPU and device controllers all use a common bus for communication.
Synchronous vs asynchronous I/O
Synchronous I/O − In this scheme CPU execution waits while I/O proceeds
Asynchronous I/O − I/O proceeds concurrently with CPU execution
Communication to I/O Devices
The CPU must have a way to pass information to and from an I/O device. There are three approaches available to communicate with the CPU and Device.
- Special Instruction I/O
- Memory-mapped I/O
- Direct memory access (DMA)
Special Instruction I/O
This uses CPU instructions that are specifically made for controlling I/O devices. These instructions typically allow data to be sent to an I/O device or read from an I/O device.
Memory-mapped I/O
When using memory-mapped I/O, the same address space is shared by memory and I/O devices. The device is connected directly to certain main memory locations so that I/O device can transfer block of data to/from memory without going through CPU.
While using memory mapped IO, OS allocates buffer in memory and informs I/O device to use that buffer to send data to the CPU. I/O device operates asynchronously with CPU, interrupts CPU when finished.
The advantage to this method is that every instruction which can access memory can be used to manipulate an I/O device. Memory mapped IO is used for most high-speed I/O devices like disks, communication interfaces.
Direct Memory Access (DMA)
Slow devices like keyboards will generate an interrupt to the main CPU after each byte is transferred. If a fast device such as a disk generated an interrupt for each byte, the operating system would spend most of its time handling these interrupts. So a typical computer uses direct memory access (DMA) hardware to reduce this overhead.
Direct Memory Access (DMA) means CPU grants I/O module authority to read from or write to memory without involvement. DMA module itself controls exchange of data between main memory and the I/O device. CPU is only involved at the beginning and end of the transfer and interrupted only after entire block has been transferred.
Direct Memory Access needs a special hardware called DMA controller (DMAC) that manages the data transfers and arbitrates access to the system bus. The controllers are programmed with source and destination pointers (where to read/write the data), counters to track the number of transferred bytes, and settings, which includes I/O and memory types, interrupts and states for the CPU cycles.
The operating system uses the DMA hardware as follows −
| Step | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Device driver is instructed to transfer disk data to a buffer address X. |
| 2 | Device driver then instruct disk controller to transfer data to buffer. |
| 3 | Disk controller starts DMA transfer. |
| 4 | Disk controller sends each byte to DMA controller. |
| 5 | DMA controller transfers bytes to buffer, increases the memory address, decreases the counter C until C becomes zero. |
| 6 | When C becomes zero, DMA interrupts CPU to signal transfer completion. |
Polling vs Interrupts I/O
A computer must have a way of detecting the arrival of any type of input. There are two ways that this can happen, known as polling and interrupts. Both of these techniques allow the processor to deal with events that can happen at any time and that are not related to the process it is currently running.
Polling I/O
Polling is the simplest way for an I/O device to communicate with the processor. The process of periodically checking status of the device to see if it is time for the next I/O operation, is called polling. The I/O device simply puts the information in a Status register, and the processor must come and get the information.
Most of the time, devices will not require attention and when one does it will have to wait until it is next interrogated by the polling program. This is an inefficient method and much of the processors time is wasted on unnecessary polls.
Rs-cv0c Data Device Drivers
Compare this method to a teacher continually asking every student in a class, one after another, if they need help. Obviously the more efficient method would be for a student to inform the teacher whenever they require assistance.
Interrupts I/O
Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver Device
An alternative scheme for dealing with I/O is the interrupt-driven method. An interrupt is a signal to the microprocessor from a device that requires attention.
Rs-cv0c Data Device Driver Updater
A device controller puts an interrupt signal on the bus when it needs CPU’s attention when CPU receives an interrupt, It saves its current state and invokes the appropriate interrupt handler using the interrupt vector (addresses of OS routines to handle various events). When the interrupting device has been dealt with, the CPU continues with its original task as if it had never been interrupted.