X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to opendos-bounces using -f Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 01:35:14 +0200 From: Matthias Paul Subject: Re: confirm before over-write To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Message-id: <03a801c38ebf$315d4640$c03dfea9@atlantis> Organization: Aachen University of Technology (RWTH), Germany MIME-version: 1.0 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1158 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-priority: Normal References: <1A3IOX-1hMTqK0 AT fwd03 DOT sul DOT t-online DOT com> Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com [I hope this comes through the v*r*s-f*lter now...] On 2003-09-28, Peter Lindner wrote: > Sorry |-( *my fault*! My (German) version of MS-DOS is 6.22, > not 4.22. Typing VER on my system returns "4DOS 5.50 DOS 6,22". > As far as I know vs 6.22 is the last vs of MS-DOS, at least in > Germany. Yes and no. MS-DOS 6.22 (1993) was the last stand-alone version of MS-DOS, although a stand-alone version of MS-DOS 7.0 was developed by Microsoft, but not released as a separate product any more. MS-DOS 7.0, however, is the DOS found in the original Windows 95 (1995) product bundle of MS-DOS 7.0 and Windows 4.00 and the Windows 95 OSR 1 release. The FAT32/LBA-enabled Windows 95 OSR 2, OSR 2.5 and OPK 3 releases already included MS-DOS 7.10, which can also be found in Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE (sometimes known as Windows 98 ZA in Germany). Both, MS-DOS 7.0 and 7.10 can be easily extracted from the Windows 9x software bundle and used as stand-alone DOS products (ignoring some of the "odd" system file names when comparing them with the traditional DOS file naming conventions). The last version of MS-DOS was MS-DOS 8.0 (in 1999) - this is the (hidden) DOS incorporated in the Windows ME bundle of MS-DOS 8.0 and Windows 4.99. Any of these versions were available in a multitude of languages, including German versions. However, even if you would not want to go for MS-DOS 7.0, you could still upgrade your MS-DOS 6.22 to IBM's PC DOS: Originally, PC DOS was an OEM version of MS-DOS, but starting with MS-DOS 6.0 and PC DOS 6.1, the two products diverted as the companies stopped their joined development of DOS, although, judging from some fixes in some API functions I have observed, the core of the files must have been partially synchronized between both companies at least up to PC DOS 7.0 - I assume some maintenance fix cross license agreements were still in place there. PC DOS 6.3 was released shortly after MS-DOS 6.22 in 1993, and later was superseeded by PC DOS 7.0 (revision 0) in 1994. A minor revision of PC DOS 7.0 reporting itself as PC DOS 7.0 revision 1 (not 7.01 as seen all too often) was marketted as PC DOS 2000. This last version can be seen as a much fine-tuned version of MS-DOS 6.22, much more stable, with several useful extensions including Stacker 4, updated ant*-v*r*s software, improved memory management (even including an early version of DRDOS' DPMS , a PCMCIA stack, IBM's REXX improved batch language, Y2K fixes, and limited euro currency support. PC DOS 2000 still does not support FAT32 and LBA, as the kernel is still basically a DOS 6.xx level kernel (somewhat comparable with DR-DOS 7.xx, which by default even reports being a "DOS 6.0"). PC DOS is still commercially available directly from IBM, even a localized German version exists. There has also been an OEM version PC DOS 7.1 which did support FAT32/LBA, but was apparently not based on the FAT32/LBA code in MS-DOS 7.10. However, this rare OEM version was never made available to end-users other than as part of boot OS of some disk maintenance tools of 3rd parties. So much for the original MS-DOS/PC DOS family. A great alternative to this MS-DOS/PC DOS line is DR-DOS, which, as you know, is an independently developed product not based on the MS-DOS/PC DOS source code in any way. Since, as you say, you stopped to keep track of new DOS versions at MS-DOS 6.22 times, I might like to list the DR-DOS versions since then here. In late 1993, early 1994, there was Novell DOS 7, the famous DR DOS 6.0 successor with pre-emptive multitasking with virtual DOS machines and built-in peer-to-peer networking capabilities. It also had a more advanced Backup software and came with an ant*-v*r*s package. Novell DOS 7 saw 16 updates up to update 15.2 in 1996-01. Then, in fall 1996, Caldera took over the product and released OpenDOS 7.01 in 1997 (after which *this* mailing list is named). Caldera OpenDOS 7.01 was updated to OpenDOS 7.02 Betas in late 1997 and released as Caldera DR-DOS 7.02 in early 1998. After several minor updates, the final version of DR-DOS 7.03 was released in 1998-01 almost immediately before the Caldera UK development center, where DR-DOS has been developed, was closed. Besides several unreleased internal versions such as DR-DOS "WinGlue" and "WinBolt", which played an important role in the court case Caldera vs. Microsoft between 1997 and 2000, as they were able to run the Windows 4.xx GUI on top of DR-DOS, there have been various OEM versions including DR-DOS 7.04, 7.05, and a considerably different DR-DOS 7.06 issue. Neither of them was released or even targetted at end-users, but at least DR-DOS 7.04/7.05 is unoffically available on various websites now. 7.04 and higher all support FAT32/LBA to a varying extent, but, to be honest, neither of them was "end-user- ready" as they all have had several limitations (hm, in this respect quite similar to IBM's OEM PC DOS 7.1 - after all that's the matter with OEM versions, which often have to fulfill other requirements than those important for desktop users...) When the US-based Caldera Thin Clients subsidiary renamed itself into Lineo and switched to Linux based embedded systems (Embedix), unfortunately they basically "trashed" DR-DOS, although it remained commercially available up to 2001, at least if you begged enough to buy it... ;-> Very unfortunate story... Well, meanwhile Caldera, Caldera Systems (the OpenLinux subsidiary which fusioned with SCO, which in turn now has much bad publicity for their rather odd claims that Linux would infringe some of their copyrights.), Caldera Thin Clients, and (AFAIK) Lineo do no longer exist. But in 2002 a new startup named DeviceLogics has taken over DR-DOS from Ray Noorda's Canopy Group. And DeviceLogics is currently working on the next DR-DOS issue... > I am a blind DOS user still working with the ancient MS-DOS 6.22, > German version. (Reason: I was 58 when I got blind, use speech > output; Jaws for Windows is too expensive for me). My suggestion is to update to either PC DOS 2000 or DR-DOS 7.03. Technically, DR-DOS 7.03 is way more interesting and powerful, but may also be a bit more difficult to set up if you don't have someone at hands to ask - but you can always ask here in this forum (I guess most of the DOS "die-hards" are still on board, although most remain silent most of the time...) However, using DR-DOS' multi-OS loader LOADER you could install both MS-DOS 6.22 and DR-DOS 7.03, or PC DOS 2000 and DR-DOS 7.03 onto the same system if you install DR-DOS after one of the other systems (some tricks are necessary to combine DR-DOS with PC DOS due to the naming conflict of the system files (in both OS they are named IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM), but using SYS /DR:703 you will be able to work around this problem), so you can switch back and forth between them as you see fit. I'm pretty sure, the forthcoming DR-DOS will also be interesting for you, but it is not yet available, so the best desktop DR-DOS you can get at the moment is 7.03. In regard to the command processor (you use JP Software's 4DOS 5.50 instead of COMMAND.COM), I suggest to update 4DOS to the current version to get the most out of your system: 4DOS 7.50 build 115 as of 2003-09. Compared to 5.50 it has hundreds of small feature enhancements and a few dozen major new features. 4DOS 7.50 runs fine under any DOS, including PC DOS 2000 and DR-DOS 7.03. In fact, some new 4DOS 7.xx features were developed in particular with DR-DOS in mind. See http://www.jpsoft.com for 4DOS details and downloads or mail to for any further information in regard to 4DOS in case you cannot navigate their web-site. IMHO, upgrading 4DOS is money well spent as your issue of 4DOS is /really/ old. > Reading all the mail traffic to above subject, I wonder if > perhaps the German version 6.22 really could be different > from the English vs, especially concerning COPY, MOVE or > XCOPY commands??? In fact, some MS-DOS OEM versions had some of the option letters localized as well, but fortunately, these versions remained very rare. I'm not aware of a German DOS version of this kind. In general, the option letters are the same no matter which localization you use. > Q 1: Is there no environment variable named COPYCMD in other 6.22-vs? Yes. The %DIRCMD% variable was introduced in MS-DOS/PC DOS 5.0 COMMAND.COM, and %COPYCMD% was introduced with MS-DOS 6.20 and PC DOS 6.3 COMMAND.COM and XCOPY.COM. It exists in all later versions of MS-DOS and PC DOS, but not in DR-DOS. DR-DOS COMMAND.COM traditionally used the DIR /C and /R options in order to change the DIR defaults. This feature existed even in the DR DOS 3.xx series and can be used to "emulate" the %DIRCMD% functionality for COMMAND.COM - not for DR-DOS XDIR, though. A future issue of DR-DOS COMMAND.COM will most probably be much enhanced in regard to this. %DIRCMD% and %COPYCMD% can also be emulated by other means when you use 4DOS instead of COMMAND.COM. The 4DOS 7.50 online help system (press F1 when you are at the 4DOS prompt) has all the details. In either case, "confirm before over-write" is in no way a feature of the operating system, but simply a design decision in the implementation of the DOS applications involved, in your case, COMMAND.COM (COPY) or an external DOS application like XCOPY.COM or XCOPY.EXE. If you prefer the MS XCOPY style under DR-DOS you could rename the DR XCOPY to DRXCOPY, put the MX XCOPY in your path, and set up SETVER to contain a version entry for the MS XCOPY. Example in case you use the MS-DOS 6.22 XCOPY under DR-DOS: c:\drdos.703\setver.exe c:\msdos.622\xcopy.exe 6.22 You cannot disable the internal COPY other than by replacing COMMAND.COM (for example by 4DOS), however, depending on what you want to do, you may succeed in using DOSKEY to define an alias for COPY which would use an external copy utility with similar command line switches and the desired confirm before overwrite functionality instead of the internal COPY. Example: DOSKEY copy=c:\utl\copytool\mycopy.exe $* (DOSKEY does not work under 4DOS unless you would set SETDOS /L0 at the 4DOS prompt, but for one 4DOS has more powerful aliasing using the ALIAS command, and then the original overwrite problem does not exist using 4DOS instead of COMMAND.COM, anyway. > Q 2: How differs the command line syntax of XCOPY in other than > German vs? It does not differ between localized versions, but between different DOS implementations. Greetings, Matthias -- ; http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org "Programs are poems for computers."