Mail Archives: opendos/1997/04/16/13:06:49
On Wed, 16 Apr 1997 Takashi Toyooka replied to Mark Habersack:
> >In case you haven't noticed it so far, 4DOS (any version AFAIK,
> >but 5.52A for sure) is not compatible with the TaskSwitcher OD
> >software.
> > ...
> >When you try to add a new task, taskmgr will GPF and fail
> >to create it.
>
> Really? I haven't had any such problem. The Task Manager ran fine
> for me in both switching mode and multitasking mode.
In fact TASKMGR does some odd things with COMMAND.COM, which caused
some problems with 4DOS (I tested 5.0-5.52a). Solutions:
- Set TASKMGR.INI Exec=TRUE:
On creating tasks this will cause TASKMGR to spawn new shells,
rather than 'instancing' a master shell.
It works nice, but costs more memory. Also, one cannot start TASKMGR
from CONFIG.SYS starting some background tasks, because AUTOEXEC.BAT
will be suspended. (This problem should be solveable.)
- Other problems are 4DOS.INI UMBxxxx directives. While they work
fine on my systems, other people reported to me, they had to
disable 4DOS' usage of UMBs. On the other hand, they did not
need to set Exec=TRUE...
- If in a given configuration TASKMGR crashes on creating new tasks
from its menu, one can try to create new tasks from the command
line (/C c:\opendos\command.com). This will help.
- Some of the Novell DOS updates may help. I was able to run Update
13 with Exec=FALSE and 4DOS 5.50c using UMBs, both as a taskswitcher
and as a multitasker. While 4DOS 5.52a is better, I was not able to
run 4DOS without Exec=TRUE with Update 15/2.
- I'm not sure, but maybe the undocumented COMMAND.COM /T option
has something to do with these oddities of TASKMGR and
COMMAND.COM.
When giving "/T /C cmd", COMMAND.COM will spawn a new shell, but
won't execute cmd. After the new shell returns to the old shell,
cmd will be executed. The system crashes, if the current command
processor is not COMMAND.COM, so it appears to me, that this
undocumented interaction between the current and the new shell
might cause TASKMGR refuse to run 4DOS successfully.
- (More details on several combinations of configuration options,
and on /T can be found in NWDOSTIP.TXT from MPDOSTIP.ZIP...)
Ciao,
Matthias
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