From: "Matthias Paul" Organization: IBH, RWTH-Aachen To: opendos-developer AT delorie DOT com Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 19:01:34 GMT+0100 Subject: Re: FYI: 4DOS and TaskSwitch Reply-to: Matthias DOT Paul AT post DOT rwth-aachen DOT de Message-ID: <126FC765ABD@ibh.rwth-aachen.de> Precedence: bulk On Wed, 16 Apr 1997 Takashi Toyooka replied to Mark Habersack: > >In case you haven't noticed it so far, 4DOS (any version AFAIK, > >but 5.52A for sure) is not compatible with the TaskSwitcher OD > >software. > > ... > >When you try to add a new task, taskmgr will GPF and fail > >to create it. > > Really? I haven't had any such problem. The Task Manager ran fine > for me in both switching mode and multitasking mode. In fact TASKMGR does some odd things with COMMAND.COM, which caused some problems with 4DOS (I tested 5.0-5.52a). Solutions: - Set TASKMGR.INI Exec=TRUE: On creating tasks this will cause TASKMGR to spawn new shells, rather than 'instancing' a master shell. It works nice, but costs more memory. Also, one cannot start TASKMGR from CONFIG.SYS starting some background tasks, because AUTOEXEC.BAT will be suspended. (This problem should be solveable.) - Other problems are 4DOS.INI UMBxxxx directives. While they work fine on my systems, other people reported to me, they had to disable 4DOS' usage of UMBs. On the other hand, they did not need to set Exec=TRUE... - If in a given configuration TASKMGR crashes on creating new tasks from its menu, one can try to create new tasks from the command line (/C c:\opendos\command.com). This will help. - Some of the Novell DOS updates may help. I was able to run Update 13 with Exec=FALSE and 4DOS 5.50c using UMBs, both as a taskswitcher and as a multitasker. While 4DOS 5.52a is better, I was not able to run 4DOS without Exec=TRUE with Update 15/2. - I'm not sure, but maybe the undocumented COMMAND.COM /T option has something to do with these oddities of TASKMGR and COMMAND.COM. When giving "/T /C cmd", COMMAND.COM will spawn a new shell, but won't execute cmd. After the new shell returns to the old shell, cmd will be executed. The system crashes, if the current command processor is not COMMAND.COM, so it appears to me, that this undocumented interaction between the current and the new shell might cause TASKMGR refuse to run 4DOS successfully. - (More details on several combinations of configuration options, and on /T can be found in NWDOSTIP.TXT from MPDOSTIP.ZIP...) Ciao, Matthias ------------------------------------------------------------------ Matthias Paul ! My eMail address has changed. For some time ! Ubierstrasse 28 ! mails to former ! D-50321 BRUEHL ! will be forwarded to the new address. ! eMail: WWW : URL: http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html ------------------------------------------------------------------