Message-Id: <199809231327.JAA03483@indy.delorie.com> Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:27:21 +0200 To: opendos AT delorie DOT com From: Guti Subject: Suggestions for DR-DOS Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Precedence: bulk BUGS þ When reading from one drive, and after some time, writing to another, causes to appear the sector not found error on the first drive. This bug happens only if some time passes between the read in one drive and the write in the other (about 2 seconds are necessary). For example it occurs when compressing from C: to A:, the message 'Sector not found in drive C:' will be displayed. It is because many compressors in my case (RAR, ARJ, UC2, ...) take more than 2 seconds to pack a block of data. þ MEM command shows me a wrong size of extended free memory (here is a redirected output). Ú Memory Type ÄÂ Total Bytes ( Kbytes ) Â Available For Programs ¿ ³ ³ ³ ³ ³ Conventional ³ 655.360 ( 640K ) ³ 600.592 ( 587K ) ³ ³ Extended ³ 0 ( 0K ) ³ 35.651.584 ( 34.816K ) ³ ÃÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÁÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ´ Obviously the size shown is wrong, if I have no extended memory there is nothing available for programs. þ FORMAT command with the /S switch and SYS, when destination disk is not standard causes it to be not bootable, I refer to not standard as with not standard disk capacity. Eg 747K for 720 disks (/T:83 /N:9). þ Interrupt 21h service 30h (Get DOS version number), returns DOS version (AL, AH) 6.00 and must be 7.02; OEM (BH) 0 and 0 is for PC DOS from IBM, so DR DOS must have another OEM identificator number. SUGGESTIONS þ Include in each new release a file called WHATSNEW.TXT with the history of improvements, bugs fixed, ... for every part of DR DOS. þ Implementation of the SERIAL command for allowing the user to change or view the serial number of his disks. þ FASTOPEN and DOSKEY (HISTORY) should be out of the kernel, this way users that do not use it, will not have an overhead in the system. An the one who want to use them, can load them in any moment (like in MS-DOS and PC-DOS). þ Support for Windows 9x VFAT (good work with the betas of long file name, but still not finished) and FAT32. (Also Windows NT HPFS?) þ Rename the programs called in DRDOS 6 as xxxMAX to xxxMgr (Eg: TaskManager, MemoryManager, ViewManager). þ What about ViewMax in DRDOS 7 based in GEM Desktop that was shipped in previous versions? þ Include the 'Starting Caldera DR DOS...' message using color 10 (Caldera Green) like in Mathias Paul IBMBIO.COM; it makes my prefered DOS different compared with the others... and was very nice. þ Have you seen PTS-DOS (www.phystechsoft.com)? It has nice features that could be implemented in DR DOS. For instance, pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, automatically flush all the buffers, and performs a quick reboot (similar to those available in QEMM). It is very useful in most cases. Also the support for the key SysReq included in it is great. þ Try to compress DR DOS files using PKLITE 2.01 (or later) and do not use the old PKLITE 1.50 nor PKLITE 1.15; this will reduce the size of the files and the decompression time. Also there are some files that could be compressed with PKLITE, but there actually uncompressed. þ IBMBIO.COM can be packed using packers like COMPACK 5.1, will be a good idea to distribute it packed (for minimizing disk space). (Also could this solve the problem that Mathias Paul comments about its size?). I have it packed with COMPACK 5.1, and now IBMBIO.COM ocuppies 19K. If you decide to do that the dual decompression routined could be removed. Also if you decide to use it in IBMBIO.COM, what about using it for all the COM/EXE/SYS files? (It has a better ratio that PKLITE, and a fastest decompression speed). Check out COMPACK at ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/msdos/mirrors/stuba/pc/pack. þ Probably you will get more speed if compile your C/C++ source code with a newer Borland C/C++ compiler (Eg. version 4.52) and not with Borland C/C++ 2.0 (althought the file size and the memory requeriments will be increased, this is not important because the resident parts of DR DOS are written in assembly). þ Multiple configuration files (CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT) should be supported with compatibility against MS DOS and PC DOS. þ DISKCOPY, and DISKCOMP may use XMS, EMS, or disk and so avoid changing disks when coping or comparing from/to the same drive (also aplyable to COPY, MOVE, XCOPY). þ HIMEM.SYS ocuppies a lot of memory compared with the version shiped int MS DOS 6.22 and in PC DOS 7.0 (about 4 times more). Try to reduce its size in memory. The easy way is reducing and removing the innecessary text messages (the startup message: 'HIMEM.SYS 2.32' should be removed, so some bytes will be saved, and a prettiest look will be obtained). þ EMM386.EXE is very unstable, and hangs the system frequently. (What about releasing some versions of EMM386 for beta testing?). þ Some processes are still a bit slow (reads from disk, memory alocation) compared with their competitors. Please spend some time optimizing it. þ Improve the method for searching in the help overlay of COMMAND.COM, so this file can be compressed with PKLITE too. þ Support for the european 'Euro' currency, like in PC DOS. Here are their details: PC DOS provides support for the new Eurocurrency symbol defined by the European Community as part of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The symbol is provided in code page 850 at offset 0xD5. You can invoke the symbol through the keyboard by using the same AltGr or AltCar + character key sequence that is used for many other country-specific symbols (the AltGr and AltCar keys are the same as the right-hand Alt key). For additional information, see the "Multiple Characters on a Key" section in the PC DOS 7 Keyboards and Code Pages book which is sold separately. The table below shows the particular key sequence for each country supported. The symbol comes in 8x8, 8x14 and 8x16 pixel resolutions in code page 850 in both the EGA.CPI and EGAX.CPI code page information files, and in 8x16 pixel resolution in code page 850 in the ISO.CPI file. These CPI files are specified in the MODE command that is placed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file by SETUP. þ DIR command should have the "standard" options used by the MS DOS, PC DOS and 4DOS DIR command; specially the /S command for subdirectory search. (here is a redirected output from the 4DOS DIR help). Display information about files and subdirectories. DIR [/1 /2 /4 /A[[:][-]rhsda] /B /C[HP] /D /E /F /H /I"text" /J /K /L /M /O[[:][-]acdeginrsu] /P /R /S /T[:acw] /U /V /W /X /Z] [file...] file: The file, directory, or list of files or directories to display. /1 (one column) /L(ower case) /2 (two columns) /M (suppress footer) /4 (four columns) /N(ormal display) /A(ttribute select) /O(rder) /B(are) /P(ause) /C[HP] (Compression) /R (disable wRap) /D(isable colour) /S(ubdirectories) /E (use upper case) /T (aTtribute) /F(ull path) /U (sUmmary information) /H(ide dots) /V(ertical sort) /I (descriptions) /W(ide) /J(ustify names) /X (display short names) /K (suppress header) /Z (use FAT format) þ Include in DR DOS the great 2M utility (from Ciriaco Garc¡a de Celis -Grupo Universitario de Valladolid-) it will be a good idea; specially if DR DOS FORMAT command could handle 2M disks. þ What about including newer STACKER (Eg. version 4.10) and not STACKER 3.10? þ What about distributing in the same DR DOS package the 4DOS command interpreter from JP Software? þ And finally the magic suggestion more speed, less memory requeriments and more features (impossible?).