Mail Archives: opendos/2004/06/15/17:15:57
On 14 Jun 2004 at 20:44, Paul O. BARTLETT wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
> > This message does not come from DR-DOS itself. It comes either from
> > your boot manager (if it appears before "Starting Caldera
> > DR-DOS...") or from one of the device drivers.
>
> This message appears after "Starting Caldera DR-DOS..." and before
> the first message from EMM386.EXE, which is the first thing that loads
> in CONFIG.SYS.
It may be the first thing *listed* in config.sys. But that doesn't
mean it's the first thing *loaded*.
Try doing the "step by step confirmation" at boot (I can't remember
if it's f5 or f8). You may be surprised at the order statements in
config.sys get processed.
> The common partition gets IMAGEd by the Norton
> Utilities for Windows running when I have booted into Win98. From
> DR-DOS I cannot delete (even after resetting the file attributes)
> IMAGE.DAT and IMAGE.IDX in the root of the D: partition, so I presume
> that Win does some kind of funny stuff that is disliked by something
> on the DR-DOS side of the fence.
If you can't delete them, that means that *something* is using them
or protecting them. If you can boot without running config.sys &
autoexec.bat, try deleting them then.
> The lockups occur entirely randomly, as nearly as I can tell. I
> can be doing just about anything, and when I get back to the command
> prompt, the system locks up tight. I cannot detect any pattern
> whatsoever.
Could be bad RAM.
More likely is bad drivers.
> That may well be the case. I haven't explored the capabilities of
> DR-DOS's COMMAND.COM to its fullest extent. My main interest in using
> an old NDOS was screen color control. (I detest white letters on a
> black screen, and I like a VGA overscan border around the screen.)
> However, someone who uses DOS exclusively in a business context has
> recommended ANSIPLUS for various capabilities. Does anyone else have
> any experience with this?
NDOS is an *old* version of 4dos. Old enough that there may be
problems with some newer software & hardware.
http://www.jpsoft.com will let you grab an evaluation version of
4dos. It'll run with all features for a few weeks.
Try it and see if the problem goes away.
> I have taken COUNTRY.SYS more or less permanently out of the
> picture. I live in the USA, so I suppose the defaults are adequate.
>
> HOWEVER, this afternoon, I took GUEST.EXE, the Iomega ZIPdrive
> driver, out of AUTOEXEC.BAT, and for the length of time I was working
> I had no lockups. Then I started GUEST.EXE (it can load from the
> command line or AUTOEXEC.BAT), and after some time I had another
> lockup. That might tend to point to that driver, although further
> work will be needed to try to point to that conclusively. I must
> confess to a boo-boo. I started including that driver before I had
> read all the documentation that came with it. I know, I know, RTFM,
> and all that. :-/ So as I have time available and feel well enough, I
> will continue working on it.
Actually, you can do without guest.exe. You need to load the right
combo of the drivers it calls, with the right options. As a bonus,
it'll use less memory.
It's been a *long* time, so I don't recall the steps I had to go thru
to get my old Zip drive working without Guest. But it was worth it.
You see, I had to run it on a system with no HD. Getting all the
drivers onto a floppy wasn't easy. :-)
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com
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