Message-ID:	<000601c25d71$8baaa820$c03dfea9@atlantis>
From:	"Matthias Paul" <Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de>
To:	<opendos AT delorie DOT com>
References:	<20020914 DOT 135820 DOT 1K6 DOT rnr DOT w165w AT krypton DOT rain DOT com> <2 DOT 7 DOT 9 DOT DNQB DOT H2G6OM AT belous DOT munic DOT msk DOT su>
Subject:	Re: HIMEM.SYS and DOS 8
Date:	Sun, 15 Sep 2002 21:51:53 +0200
Organization:	Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany
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Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

On 2002-09-14, Arkady V.Belousov wrote:

> AFAIK, DR-DOS 7.03 also doesn't support FAT32 - FAT32 supported
> only in DR-DOS 7.05 with extra driver DRFAT32.SYS. I don't know
> how DR-DOS works with disk space above 8Gb, also.

Any MS-DOS/PC DOS 3.3+ or DR DOS 5.0+ does support LBA/FAT32
when the DRFAT32.SYS+DRFAT32.EXE drivers are used. The backdraw
is that DRFAT32.EXE is a redirector driver, and DPMS and EMS
support are disabled in the public issue, so it consumes much
memory - way too much for a long-term solution. It was designed
for special OEM requirements (disk maintenance, virus scanning
etc.), not for normal use on desktop systems...

If you use OEM DR-DOS 7.04/7.05, you do not need the DRFAT32
drivers, because this issue of DR-DOS has native support for
FAT32 and LBA built-in. The extra memory footprint compared
to DR-DOS 7.03 is unavoidable but within reasonable limits,
IIRC something like 3 - 4 Kb. Unfortunately, this issue has
a bug in the rename function.

A solution to let DR DOS 6.0 - DR-DOS 7.03 coexist with
a modern LBA enabled operating system (like MS-DOS 7.10+)
without loosing the disk space above 8 Gb is to use DR-DOS
unique extended partition type C5h instead of the old 05h
type. This does not give DR-DOS LBA capabilities, but it
allows to use up to 8 Gb of the disk space (per harddisk)
under DR-DOS while the remainder remains available for the
LBA-enabled systems. Without the C5h partition you would
either loose all the space above 8 Gb for use by any operating
system, or you can use only up to 2 Gb per harddisk under
DOS, which id probably too less for a fully featured
working environment unless you have many harddisks.

A forth solution is to combine the DR-DOS 7.05 IBMBIO.COM
with the DR-DOS 7.03 IBMDOS.COM. This will give the OS full
native LBA capabilities (at a minimal extra memory footprint),
but no FAT32 support. Since the 7.05 BIOS would try to log
in FAT32 partitions, which the 7.03 BDOS could not handle,
it is important that you do *not* have any FAT32 partitions,
in case you want to give this unofficial solution a try.
In case there would be strong interest in this solution,
I might (no promise!) come up with a binary patch to keep
the 7.05 BIOS from logging in FAT32 partitions, so that
it can be used a bit more savely.

In regard to MS-DOS 8.0 and Windows ME, I would suggest to
simply forget about it and *upgrade* to MS-DOS 7.10 and
Windows 98 SE. Mind that higher version numbers do not
necessarily mean "better", in particularly not with Microsoft.

Greetings,

 Matthias

-- 
<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
"Programs are poems for computers."

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