Mail Archives: opendos/2004/06/08/17:45:14
Please excuse the length of this post. Most of the material down
below is documentation of the problem.
Several years ago I downloaded the DR-DOS 7.03 installation when it
still belonged to Lineo, although I didn't do much with it at the time.
Now I am trying to work with it and have run into a severe problem. Any
assistance or observations will be much appreciated.
Hardware: Pentium Pro / 200MHz / 64MB RAM.
Hard disk partitioned as follows:
127KB FAT bootable partition at the beginning of the disk
511KB FAT logical partition visible to both bootable partitions
1.75GB FAT32 bootable partition.
BootMagic 5.0 is the boot manager and is giving no problems.
Windows 98 SP1 is on the FAT32 bootable partition and is working
about as well as one would expect for Windows. It boots as C:.
On the bootable FAT partition I installed DR-DOS 7.03. This boots
as C:, and the "common" partition is visible as D: to both DR-DOS and
Win98. When I boot into DR-DOS the first message that comes up is "Hard
disk 2 configuration error," but I presume this is an artefact of Win98
mucking around with things. The D: partition seems to be fully usable
from DR-DOS.
Long ago when I used MS-DOS 5.0 exclusively, I had the Northon
Utilities version 8, so I installed them on the DR-DOS C: partition and
decided to use NDOS as the command shell and some of the utilities such
as Norton Control Center (NCC.EXE) to set some of the display
parameters.
So far so good. However...... When I am working in DR-DOS, I get
completely unpredictable lockups when I return to the command prompt.
Locked up tight. Ctr-Alt-Del does not work. I have to press the reset
button. These lockups are completely unpredictable, and I cannot detect
any pattern to them at all. None.
I am including below my software configuration. In AUTOEXEC.BAT,
GUEST.EXE is a driver from Iomega for the ZIPdrive. LOADRAMD.BAT merely
uses XCOPY to load a lot of files to the RAMdisk (E:). ALISTSET.BAT
creates a set of NDOS aliases (listed below) similar to DOSKEY macros.
NCC.EXE and M.BAT set the screen using a saved configuration from the
Norton Control Center.
Once I booted into DR-DOS on one occasion, the very first thing I
did was capture the output from 'mem /debug' (below). Several times I
did the same when I got back to the back at the command prompt, and the
results were always the same, so there doesn't seem to be any obvious
memory leakage.
Things get even more interesting. I wondered if somehow NDOS might
be a problem, considering that the lockups are random. So I changed
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to comment out everything related to NDOS
and went back to the native DR-DOS COMMAND.COM. Boom! At bootup I
single stepped through the process. Everything normal until at the very
end when AUTOEXEC.BAT completes, the command prompt comes up, and then
the system explodes. I get a "black screen of death" :-) from
EMM386.EXE, which starts off "The system memory manager (EMM386.EXE) has
detected an error caused by a fault in one of the device drivers or
programs loaded in the system" followed by a lot of supposedly (but to
me not really) diagnostics. (If there is a way to capture this, I
haven't figured out how.) The screen says that the system is in an
unstable state and should be rebooted. Again, Ctl-Alt-Del is dead, and
I have to press the button. When I boot from a floppy so I can restore
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to their states below, everything is fine.
I am stumped. I don't want to use DR-DOS as my personal primary working
OS if it is unstable with random lockups. Any ideas? Thanks very much.
==========
CONFIG.SYS
==========
REM DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\EMM386.EXE DPMI=ON FRAME=NONE MULTI=OFF ROM=AUTO
DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\DPMS.EXE
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICEHIGH C:\DRDOS\VDISK.SYS 20480 256 /E:8
DEVICEHIGH SIZE=D70 C:\UTILS\NANSI.SYS /S
DEVICEHIGH C:\DRDOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,437,2)
BREAK=OFF
BUFFERS=10
FILES=20
FCBS=4,4
LASTDRIVE=G
HISTORY=ON,512,ON
COUNTRY=1,,C:\DRDOS\COUNTRY.SYS
STACKS=9,256
REM SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /E:1024 /P
SHELL=C:\NDOS.COM @C:\NU\NDOS.INI /P
============
AUTOEXEC.BAT
============
@ECHO OFF
REM RAMdisk assumed to be at E:
E:
CD \
MKDIR TEMP
MKDIR BAT
MKDIR UTILS
MKDIR DOWNLOAD
MKDIR CACHE
C:
CD \
SET SYMANTEC=C:\SYMANTEC
SET NU=C:\NU
SET TEMP=E:\TEMP
SET TMP=E:\TEMP
SET DRDOSCFG=C:\DRDOS
SET PCPLUS=C:\PCPLUS
SET SWDISK=C:;D:;E:
SET AWDISK=C:;D:;E:
SET DIRCMD=/P/OGE
SET KEDIT=UMB NOEMS WIDTH 1024
VERIFY OFF
LOADHIGH C:\UTILS\IOMDOS\GUEST.EXE
C:\DRDOS\NWCACHE.EXE E:- F: 7670 1024 /LEND=ON /DELAY=100
LOADHIGH C:\DRDOS\DRMOUSE.COM
C:\NLOFF.COM
CALL C:\BAT\LOADRAMD.BAT
CALL C:\BAT\ALISTSET.BAT
PATH E:\;E:\BAT;E:\UTILS;C:\BAT;C:\UTILS;C:\;C:\DRDOS;C:\NU;C:\UTILS\ARACHNE;C:\PKWARE;C:\WINDOWS
PROMPT $P$G
E:\UTILS\NCC.EXE /CO80
E:\BAT\M.BAT
==========
MEM /DEBUG
==========
+- Address --- Name ----- Size ------------- Type ----------------------------+
| 0:0000 | -------- | 400h, 1,024 | Interrupt vectors |
| 40:0000 | -------- | 100h, 256 | ROM BIOS data area |
| 50:0000 | DOS | 200h, 512 | DOS data area |
| 70:0000 | BIOS | 900h, 2,304 | Device drivers |
| 70:0023 | CON | | System device driver |
| 70:0035 | AUX | | System device driver |
| 70:0047 | PRN | | System device driver |
| 70:0059 | CLOCK$ | | System device driver |
| 70:006B | COM1 | | System device driver |
| 70:007D | COM2 | | System device driver |
| 70:008F | COM3 | | System device driver |
| 70:00A1 | COM4 | | System device driver |
| 70:00C7 | LPT1 | | System device driver |
| 70:00D9 | LPT2 | | System device driver |
| 70:00EB | LPT3 | | System device driver |
| 70:016E | A:-D: | | System device driver |
| 100:0000 | DOS | 13C0h, 5,056 | System |
| 100:0048 | NUL | | System device driver |
| 100:00CC | DOS | 10Fh, 271 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 5 total blocks |
| 23C:0000 | DOS | 10B0h, 4,272 | System |
| 23E:0000 | DOS | A5h, 165 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 3 total blocks |
| 24B:0000 | VCPIXXX0 | 420h, 1,056 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| 265:0000 | EMMQXXX0 | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| 279:0000 | DPMIXXX0 | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| 28E:0000 | DPMSXXX0 | 3B0h, 944 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| 2CA:0000 | SETVERXX | 1F0h, 496 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| 2EA:0000 | DOS | 356h, 854 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 16 total blocks |
| 347:0000 | NDOS | 110h, 272 | Program |
| 358:0000 | MEM | 160h, 352 | Environment |
| 36E:0000 | MEM | 15C20h, 89,120 | Program |
| 1930:0000 | -------- | 868F0h, 551,152 | FREE |
| 9FBF:0000 | DOS | 28410h, 164,880 | System |
| 9FC0:0000 | -------- | 400h, 1,024 | Extended ROM BIOS data area |
+-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+
| C800:0000 | EMM386 | 1A0h, 416 | XMS Upper Memory Block |
| C81A:0000 | DOS | 1A0h, 416 | XMS Upper Memory Block |
| C834:0000 | DOS | 410h, 1,040 | XMS Upper Memory Block |
| C875:0000 | DOS | 75D0h, 30,160 | System |
| C877:0000 | E: | 880h, 2,176 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| C900:0000 | CON | C60h, 3,168 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| C9C7:0000 | CON | 5630h, 22,064 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| CFD2:0000 | NDOS | C30h, 3,120 | Data |
| D095:0000 | NDOS | 410h, 1,040 | Environment |
| D0D6:0000 | GUEST | 110h, 272 | Environment |
| D0E7:0000 | GUEST | 4C10h, 19,472 | Program |
| D0F8:33E8 | F: | | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| D5A8:0000 | NWCACHE | 15C0h, 5,568 | XMS Upper Memory Block |
| D704:0000 | NWCACHE | 4010h, 16,400 | XMS Upper Memory Block |
| DB05:0000 | -------- | 2210h, 8,720 | FREE |
| DD26:0000 | DRMOUSE | 1990h, 6,544 | Program |
| DEBF:0000 | -------- | 2390h, 9,104 | FREE |
| E0F8:0000 | E0F80 | 26D0h, 9,936 | Data |
| E0FA:0000 | SCSIMGR$ | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver |
| E365:0000 | -------- | B9B0h, 47,536 | FREE |
+-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+
| FFFF:00E0 | -------- | 2160h, 8,544 | FREE |
| FFFF:2240 | DOS | F70h, 3,952 | DOS BIOS code |
| FFFF:31B0 | DOS | 7280h, 29,312 | DOS kernel code |
| FFFF:A430 | DOS | 14C8h, 5,320 | BUFFERS= 10 disk buffers |
| FFFF:B8F8 | -------- | 4708h, 18,184 | FREE |
+-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+
+ Memory Type --------- Total Bytes ( Kbytes ) ----- Available For Programs -+
| | | |
| Conventional | 654,336 ( 639K ) | 640,624 ( 626K ) |
| Upper | 159,744 ( 156K ) | 65,360 ( 64K ) |
| High | 65,520 ( 64K ) | 26,728 ( 26K ) |
| Extended | 66,060,288 ( 64,512K ) | 0 ( 0K ) |
| Extended via XMS | -------- | 36,233,216 ( 35,384K ) |
| Extended via DPMI | 36,233,216 ( 35,384K ) | 36,224,768 ( 35,376K ) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Largest executable program: 640,608 ( 626K ) |
| Total Free DOS memory: 705,984 ( 689K ) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
============
NDOS aliases
============
2e=xcopy %& e:\ /v
@F10=color bla on gre bor yel ^ cls
@F11=color bla on gre bor yelr
@F12=color bla on gre bor magr
aw=e:\utils\anywhere.exe %&
b=cdd c:\ ^ exit
bb=cdd c:\ ^ keystack "7" ^ exit
c=cdd c:\
calc=echo %@eval[%&]
dirx=dir %& /o:e /j | list /s
e=cdd e:\
lister=%& | list /s
m2e=move %& e:\
p=e:\utils\p.com %& ^ cls
pasx=pascii -c x.cfg %&
r=e:\utils\r.com %& ^ cls
rm=del %&
ro=attrib +r %&
rw=attrib -r %&
x=exit
=====
M.BAT
=====
@ECHO OFF
E:\UTILS\NCC.EXE E:\UTILS\MYSCREEN.CFG /SET
CLS
--
Paul Bartlett
bartlett "at" smart "dot" net
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