devload.txt

    DEVLOAD 3.25 USER GUIDE
    -----------------------

    DEVLOAD is an utility for loading device drivers from command line.
    It supports FAT16 and FAT32 block device drivers (e.g. DI1000DD.SYS
    and ASPIDISK.SYS), COM and EXE - style DOS device drivers and has a
    very compact binary file (less than 3KiB).

    Licence
    -------

     Devload - a tool to load DOS device drivers from the command line
       Copyright (c) 1992-1998 David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
          Copyright (c) 2004-2008 Eric Auer <eric@coli.uni-sb.de>
		  Copyright (c) 2011 

    This program is free software  you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation  either version 2 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY  without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
    with this program  if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
    51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

    Usage
    -----

    Usage:    DEVLOAD [switches] filename [params]
    Emulates: DEVICE=filename [params] in CONFIG.SYS

    Switches:

      /? - display help message.
      /H - try to load driver to UMB.
           (equivalent of DEVICEHIGH=filename [params] in CONFIG.SYS)
      /Q - quiet mode.
      /V - verbose mode.
      /A - auto-mode (force to stay loaded).
      /D - drive letter, eg. /DS installs to S: or later.

    Explanations:

      If no filename is given or if the /? option is given, DEVLOAD
      shows a help message. The /Q mode makes DEVLOAD show fewer
      messages than usual (only warnings) while /V makes it show
      more messages, including technical and memory usage details.

      The /A option bypasses the "driver wants to stay in RAM but
      hooks no interrupts and provides no block nor char devices,
      keep it in RAM anyway?" question by always assuming that the
      answer is yes. Only very few drivers are affected by this.

      With the /H option, DEVLOAD will try to behave like DEVICEHIGH
      and load your driver into UMB. If you have no UMB of sufficient
      size (at least file size or, if exe header present, load size
      plus minimum heap according to the exe header), the driver will
      be loaded into low RAM as if you had not used the /H option.

      Note that your driver may say that your UMB is too small even
      if DEVLOAD thinks it is sufficient. Then your driver will not
      load and you will have to load without the /H option instead.
      
      The /D option is used to indicate the drive letter to use.
      If the requested drive is in use then subsequent drive letters
      until LASTDRIVE is reached are tried.  The default value is 
      equivalent to /DC, i.e. C: or later - the first available 
      drive letter.

      On successful loading the exit code (ERRORLEVEL) will be set
      to a value between 0 and 26, where 0 is returned for character
      devices and for block devices the first assigned drive is
      returned (where 1=A:, 2=B:, 3=C:, ... 26=Z:).  On any error
      or if device is not loaded then 255 is returned.  [Future
      versions may provide unique values depending on the error.]

    Examples:

      1) USBASPI from command line
         DEVLOAD /H USBASPI.SYS /V /W
         DEVLOAD /H DI1000DD.SYS

      2) ASPI driver for IDE (e.g. for CDRTOOLS)
         DEVLOAD ASPI.SYS

    System requirements
    -------------------

    * DOS 3.00 and higher
    * Intel 8086 CPU, 640KiB of RAM
    * MS-DOS 7.1/8.0, PC-DOS 7.1, LZ-DOS 7.1, 
      FreeDOS 1.0 or EDR-DOS WIP 17.6.2007+
      for FAT32 block device drivers support
    
    WARNING: DEVLOAD cannot load FAT32 block device drivers under PTS-DOS 32!   

    Files
    -----

    DEVLOAD.COM  Binary file. You only need this file to run DEVLOAD
    DEVLOAD.ASM  Source code for NASM, version history information
    MAKEDEVL.BAT "Make" script for NASM and UPX (see URLs below)
    README.TXT   The file you are reading right now :-)
	READ.ME      Note about origin of DEVLOAD with FreeDOS (TM)
    LICENCE.TXT  GNU GPL v2, DEVLOAD is free open source software

    Compilation
    -----------

    Install NASM and UPX and run MAKEDEVL.BAT

    UPX:      http://upx.sourceforge.net/
    NASM:     http://nasm.sourceforge.net/