Message-ID: <000901c08fbd$3c3b8b20$f808e289@mpaul> From: "Matthias Paul" To: References: <01FD6EC775C6D4119CDF0090273F74A4021F15 AT emwatent02 DOT meters DOT com DOT au> <007b01c08c51$98c71f40$0508e289 AT mpaul> <3A7AF172 DOT 59B22507 AT cornell DOT edu> <03e501c08deb$f4734580$b608e289 AT mpaul> <3A7C7CED DOT 6870D47A AT cornell DOT edu> Subject: Re: using DRDOS7.05 COMMAND.COM with WinMe Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 22:46:50 +0100 Organization: Rechenzentrum RWTH Aachen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id QAA17151 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com On 2001-02-03, Alan S. wrote: > I can launch [both directly and via WinMe shortcut] a .BAT containing > the text C:\DRDOS7\COMMAND.COM !!! Hm. It´s good to know it works, but AFAI see it, starting DR-DOS COMMAND.COM from a MS-DOS COMMAND.COM .BAT file is the same as opening a MS-DOS COMMAND.COM and then typeing the name of the DR-DOS COMMAND.COM. This will cause both command processors to be active in memory and you will loose about 5-8 Kb of precious DOS memory. Mind, that the %COMSPEC% environment variable must point to the *correct* command processor, otherwise the DOS box may hang when the shell needs to reload its transient portion after executing external commands. Please try to load DR-DOS COMMAND.COM directly, but specify the reload path as parameter, e.g. "c:\drdos\command.com c:\drdos\ /P:". Otherwise DR-DOS COMMAND.COM may try to reload its transient portion from the root of the drive and will possibly pick up the MS-DOS COMMAND.COM there and crash... BTW. I purposefully suggested to run a number of special tests by giving some specific command line options when starting COMMAND.COM, and the like. Have you looked into them? Even if you´ve already found a partial solution, I would still be interested in the results of each of these tests, as this may help me to get a clear picture of what is actually going on, even though I don´t use Me myself - but I do know how COMMAND.COM works. > Without executing a CONFIG.SYS, is it possible to execute command > switches like HISTORY=ON,512,ON for the DOS box? [There are mechanisms > for getting device drivers and environment variables processed, but I > don't know of anything I can do with the HISTORY command switch...?] Unfortunately, you cannot (with publically available releases of DR-DOS). The HISTORY functionality is not part of a device driver or the like. It is build into the console driver in the BDOS kernel. Under DR-DOS you can change the settings at runtime via API functions, but since your underlaying OS is MS-DOS (8), you cannot. The MS-DOS kernel neither provides the HISTORY functionality nor supports it the corresponding API. Under MS-DOS, a similar feature is build into the DOSKEY driver, and if you load the DOSKEY TSR in your DOS box, command line history is available (although not as powerful as under DR-DOS)... I don´t know if DOSKEY is still distributed with Me, but if not, you can use the DOSKEY of a previous issue and use SETVER to fake the DOS version (SETVER must be loaded via a utility like DEVICE.COM if you cannot load it in CONFIG.SYS). (You cannot use the DR-DOS DOSKEY, because this implementation only contains the macro portion of the MS-DOS DOSKEY functionality, and a frontend to the command line history portion, which is part of the kernel under DR-DOS. So loading the DR-DOS DOSKEY under MS-DOS does not give you the functionality you need.) Hope it helps, Matthias ------------------------------------------------------------ Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany http://www.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html ------------------------------------------------------------