Message-ID:	<000001c15e24$f5b814c0$027efea9@atlantis>
From:	"Matthias Paul" <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To:	<opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Subject:	Fixing DOS Navigator 1.5x startup crashes under DR-DOS
Date:	Fri, 26 Oct 2001 14:39:52 +0200
Organization:	University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany
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Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

Hi folks.

Hereīs a tips for those of you trying to run the
open sourced DOS Navigator 1.5x (DN) under DR-DOS and
always receive a solid crash (sometimes with EMM386
fault) immediately at startup just after the DN startup
line is displayed and before the user interface comes up.

It appears as if DNīs code has an unusual huge stack
utilization and since the default for the hardware
stacks under DR-DOS 7.xx is 0,0 (in contrast to
varying non-zero values like 9,128 or 9,256 under
MS-DOS) a stack overflow occurs.

Setting STACKS=9,128 in [D]CONFIG.SYS fixed all the
problems for me. (I still have problems with the
DPMI version of DN, though, at least when EMM386īs
DPMI support is actived.)

Similar, Axel and I encountered a sporadically problem
in conjunction with our FreeKEYB:

Sometimes, when pressing F3 ESC F3 ESC ... keys in
rapid succession to launch the WPVIEW viewer under the
Norton Commander (5.0x) we got (normally non-fatal)
EMM386 protection faults.

So far, this was seen only under DR-DOS (7.0x) *and*
when a mouse driver was loaded *and* FreeKEYB was
loaded with full mouse support *and* the DOS stacks
where at 0,0 (implicitly or explicitly). On most
systems it even works fine with 0,0, but it appears
as if 9,128 is required sometimes.

So, if you encounter strange crashes under DR-DOS give
STACKS=9,128 or STACKS=9,256 a try. And please let us
know about any case where this fixed the problem, so
we can find better trigger conditions (and maybe even
a better remedy).

Greetings,

 Matthias

-- 

Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany
<mailto:Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>; <mailto:mpaul AT drdos DOT org>
http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org

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