Mail Archives: opendos/1998/09/23/09:31:11
BUGS
ž When reading from one drive, and after some time, writing
to another, causes to appear the sector not found error on
the first drive.
This bug happens only if some time passes between the read
in one drive and the write in the other (about 2 seconds are
necessary).
For example it occurs when compressing from C: to A:, the
message 'Sector not found in drive C:' will be displayed.
It is because many compressors in my case (RAR, ARJ, UC2, ...)
take more than 2 seconds to pack a block of data.
ž MEM command shows me a wrong size of extended free memory
(here is a redirected output).
Ś Memory Type ÄĀ Total Bytes ( Kbytes ) Ā Available For Programs æ
³ ³ ³ ³
³ Conventional ³ 655.360 ( 640K ) ³ 600.592 ( 587K ) ³
³ Extended ³ 0 ( 0K ) ³ 35.651.584 ( 34.816K ) ³
ĆÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄĮÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄĮÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ“
Obviously the size shown is wrong, if I have no extended
memory there is nothing available for programs.
ž FORMAT command with the /S switch and SYS, when destination
disk is not standard causes it to be not bootable, I refer
to not standard as with not standard disk capacity. Eg
747K for 720 disks (/T:83 /N:9).
ž Interrupt 21h service 30h (Get DOS version number), returns
DOS version (AL, AH) 6.00 and must be 7.02; OEM (BH) 0 and
0 is for PC DOS from IBM, so DR DOS must have another OEM
identificator number.
SUGGESTIONS
ž Include in each new release a file called WHATSNEW.TXT with
the history of improvements, bugs fixed, ... for every part
of DR DOS.
ž Implementation of the SERIAL command for allowing the user
to change or view the serial number of his disks.
ž FASTOPEN and DOSKEY (HISTORY) should be out of the kernel,
this way users that do not use it, will not have an
overhead in the system. An the one who want to use them,
can load them in any moment (like in MS-DOS and PC-DOS).
ž Support for Windows 9x VFAT (good work with the betas of
long file name, but still not finished) and FAT32. (Also
Windows NT HPFS?)
ž Rename the programs called in DRDOS 6 as xxxMAX to xxxMgr
(Eg: TaskManager, MemoryManager, ViewManager).
ž What about ViewMax in DRDOS 7 based in GEM Desktop
that was shipped in previous versions?
ž Include the 'Starting Caldera DR DOS...' message using
color 10 (Caldera Green) like in Mathias Paul IBMBIO.COM;
it makes my prefered DOS different compared with the
others... and was very nice.
ž Have you seen PTS-DOS (www.phystechsoft.com)? It has nice features
that
could be implemented in DR DOS. For instance, pressing
Ctrl-Alt-Del, automatically flush all the buffers, and performs
a quick reboot (similar to those available in QEMM). It is very
useful in most cases. Also the support for the key SysReq
included in it is great.
ž Try to compress DR DOS files using PKLITE 2.01 (or later)
and do not use the old PKLITE 1.50 nor PKLITE 1.15; this will
reduce the size of the files and the decompression time. Also
there are some files that could be compressed with PKLITE,
but there actually uncompressed.
ž IBMBIO.COM can be packed using packers like COMPACK 5.1,
will be a good idea to distribute it packed (for minimizing
disk space). (Also could this solve the problem that Mathias
Paul comments about its size?). I have it packed with COMPACK
5.1, and now IBMBIO.COM ocuppies 19K. If you decide to do that
the dual decompression routined could be removed. Also if you
decide to use it in IBMBIO.COM, what about using it for all
the COM/EXE/SYS files? (It has a better ratio that PKLITE,
and a fastest decompression speed). Check out COMPACK at
ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/msdos/mirrors/stuba/pc/pack.
ž Probably you will get more speed if compile your C/C++
source code with a newer Borland C/C++ compiler (Eg. version
4.52) and not with Borland C/C++ 2.0 (althought the file size
and the memory requeriments will be increased, this is not
important because the resident parts of DR DOS are written in
assembly).
ž Multiple configuration files (CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT)
should be supported with compatibility against MS DOS and
PC DOS.
ž DISKCOPY, and DISKCOMP may use XMS, EMS, or disk and
so avoid changing disks when coping or comparing from/to the
same drive (also aplyable to COPY, MOVE, XCOPY).
ž HIMEM.SYS ocuppies a lot of memory compared with the
version shiped int MS DOS 6.22 and in PC DOS 7.0 (about 4
times more). Try to reduce its size in memory. The easy way
is reducing and removing the innecessary text messages
(the startup message: 'HIMEM.SYS 2.32' should be removed,
so some bytes will be saved, and a prettiest look will be
obtained).
ž EMM386.EXE is very unstable, and hangs the system
frequently. (What about releasing some versions of EMM386
for beta testing?).
ž Some processes are still a bit slow (reads from disk, memory
alocation) compared with their competitors. Please spend some
time optimizing it.
ž Improve the method for searching in the help overlay of
COMMAND.COM, so this file can be compressed with PKLITE too.
ž Support for the european 'Euro' currency, like in PC DOS.
Here are their details:
PC DOS provides support for the new Eurocurrency symbol defined by
the European Community as part of the European Monetary Union (EMU).
The symbol is provided in code page 850 at offset 0xD5. You can
invoke the symbol through the keyboard by using the same AltGr or
AltCar + character key sequence that is used for many other
country-specific symbols (the AltGr and AltCar keys are the same as
the right-hand Alt key). For additional information, see the
"Multiple Characters on a Key" section in the PC DOS 7 Keyboards and
Code Pages book which is sold separately. The table below shows the
particular key sequence for each country supported.
The symbol comes in 8x8, 8x14 and 8x16 pixel resolutions in code page
850 in both the EGA.CPI and EGAX.CPI code page information files, and
in 8x16 pixel resolution in code page 850 in the ISO.CPI file. These
CPI files are specified in the MODE command that is placed in the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file by SETUP.
ž DIR command should have the "standard" options used by the
MS DOS, PC DOS and 4DOS DIR command; specially the /S
command for subdirectory search.
(here is a redirected output from the 4DOS DIR help).
Display information about files and subdirectories.
DIR [/1 /2 /4 /A[[:][-]rhsda] /B /C[HP] /D /E /F /H /I"text"
/J /K /L /M /O[[:][-]acdeginrsu] /P /R /S /T[:acw] /U /V /W
/X /Z] [file...]
file: The file, directory, or list of files or directories
to display.
/1 (one column) /L(ower case)
/2 (two columns) /M (suppress footer)
/4 (four columns) /N(ormal display)
/A(ttribute select) /O(rder)
/B(are) /P(ause)
/C[HP] (Compression) /R (disable wRap)
/D(isable colour) /S(ubdirectories)
/E (use upper case) /T (aTtribute)
/F(ull path) /U (sUmmary information)
/H(ide dots) /V(ertical sort)
/I (descriptions) /W(ide)
/J(ustify names) /X (display short names)
/K (suppress header) /Z (use FAT format)
ž Include in DR DOS the great 2M utility (from Ciriaco
Garc”a de Celis -Grupo Universitario de Valladolid-) it will
be a good idea; specially if DR DOS FORMAT command could
handle 2M disks.
ž What about including newer STACKER (Eg. version 4.10) and
not STACKER 3.10?
ž What about distributing in the same DR DOS package the 4DOS
command interpreter from JP Software?
ž And finally the magic suggestion more speed, less memory
requeriments and more features (impossible?).
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