Mail Archives: opendos/1997/05/26/12:25:03
On Sun, 25 May 1997, Pavel Ozerski wrote:
> 2. I found a serios conflict between NWCache (all updates of
> NW7 and OD7.01) and Norton Commander 4.0. If DPMS not loaded and
> NWcache loaded then a trying to set at one panel of NC a floppy
> disk and at the another Info (^L) causes non-normal NC behavior
> and system crash. I found this interacton between NC 4.0 and
> all these NWcache also under MS-DOS 6.22 but never under DRDOS
> 6.0. I think, this "compability with MS-DOS" is not useful!!!
You got that point with MS-DOS compatibility, didn't you? ;-)
However, it appears to be a bug in NC 4, then. What's about NC 5.01?
> 3. QEMM cannot optimize OD 7.01 (release conv. memory) equal
> good as NW7. CONFIG.SYS created with QDK OPTIMIZE under NW7 may
> work under OD7.01 but free memory is less. Therefore a best
> solution for today is Novell update 15 on OpenDOS and copying
> OPENDOS.INI to NWDOS.INI. But why?
Possibly because NWDOS update 15 supports UMB memory regions, and
COD currently does not. However, I hope this is just a matter of
time, since my rewrote of COD IBMBIO.COM to match update 15/2
level etc. will come soon. But for a while, we may still need
IBMDOS.COM, COMMAND.COM and EMM386.EXE from Novell DOS to use
with that file, I have not yet tested this.
> 4. Some full-screen DOS utilities work not normally without /N
> switch. E.G. I cannot use mouse with UNDELETE (mouse cursor
> moving area is invalid). My be, it is a bug of the mouse driver
> (LCS/Telegraphics IMOUSE.COM 8.20h) or video card
> (CL-GD54M30/5440)?
Since you use a Cirrus Logic VGA card, I think this might be the
cause for your problem. Some of these Cirrus cards caused various
problems with the NewUI of COD/NWDOS tools. Switch the NewUI off
e.g. in OPENDOS.INI.
However, some mouse drivers might also cause such problems. I made
best experiences with Logitech mouse drivers 6.50+ or Genius mouse
drivers 9.06+ (though the install program of 10.20 crashes when
reading DR DOS style boot menus, just install it manually).
> 5. DRDOS6/NWDOS7/OpenDOS do not support MS-DOS multi-config
> syntax. Yes, all these OSs have another features instead ("?",
> SWITCH, GOTO, GOSUB/RETURN...) but all these features are
> unknown for QEMM OPTIMIZE (and GOSUB and CHAIN not only not
> responsible but cause errors while optimizing). That may also
> make some problem if everybody installs OpenDOS over MS-DOS and
> wishs use old system configuration.
While the DR DOS style menus are much more flexible than MS-DOS',
I still see the point. Maybe, we can add a MS-DOS menu style as
macro layer to IBMBIO.COM (I have already started investigations
for this), but it will ever behave somewhat different, since MS-DOS
pre-compiles the CONFIG.SYS file, while COD is using a true
interpreter. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages.
Personally, I prefer the DR DOS style...
BTW, in 1995 Bert Schoenwaelder wrote an extension or even alternative
for the Novell DOS 7 boot menus with Checkboxes and Radiobuttons.
I have included a link to Bert's Boot Box (BBB) on my web page.
He said to me, he was also willing to donate the source code for
a non-commercial OpenDOS distribution. Currently, I'm thinking about
adding some of BBB's features in a more compatible and convenient way
directly into IBMBIO.COM...
> 6 LOADHIGH not supports MS-DOS switches (/R etc). But these are
> essential for using MS-DOS .BAT files (even though as
> non-functional "dummies").
You meant /S and /L:..., didn't you? However, this typo might
be the cause, why these appear not to be supported on your system? ;-)
As far as I remember, Novell DOS just ignores these switches prior
to update 15. Note, that 4DOS discards these switches on
NWDOS/COD systems since it does not expect UMB region support to
work. See above.
(For details I refer to one of my former mails and NWDOSTIP.TXT).
> 8. TIMEOUT statement in CONFIG.SYS works also with all (not
> only "?") next CONFIG.SYS commands if F8 boot trapping and
> "automatically" sets "N". That is not any serios problem, but
> not always convenient.
IMHO, this is no problem, but a feature. If you want to reset
a TIMEOUT, you can by giving another TIMEOUT option again.
(Note that CONFIG.SYS is interpreted, not compiled...)
BTW, TIMEOUT has some nice, though undocumented extensions, and
not only accepts the timeout value, but also optional default
answer chars for the Y/N questions and the SWITCH case decision.
For now I refer to my NWDOSTIP.TXT for details...
> 9. What and why is a MS-Windows driver, NW/OPENDOS.386?
Though this was stated wrong in some other places, this driver
is *only* a replacement for MS-DOS' WINA20.386. The sole purpose
of the VxD is the A20-address line control when running Windows 3.0.
You do not need it for Windows 3.1+ any more.
Bye,
Matthias
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Snail mail: Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
New eMail : <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
Web : URL: http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------
- Raw text -