X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to opendos-bounces using -f Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 17:29:24 -0400 (EDT) From: "Paul O. BARTLETT" To: OpenDOS List Subject: Random Lockups with DR-DOS 7.03 Message-ID: X-PGP-key: ftp://ftp.smart.net/pub/bartlett/pgpkey X-PGP-keyid: 0xF383C8F9 X-PGP-key-fingerprint: E62D 2E2C 7BCD 08CB B742 A937 26A9 1532 Organization: SmartNet Private Account MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com Please excuse the length of this post. Most of the material down below is documentation of the problem. Several years ago I downloaded the DR-DOS 7.03 installation when it still belonged to Lineo, although I didn't do much with it at the time. Now I am trying to work with it and have run into a severe problem. Any assistance or observations will be much appreciated. Hardware: Pentium Pro / 200MHz / 64MB RAM. Hard disk partitioned as follows: 127KB FAT bootable partition at the beginning of the disk 511KB FAT logical partition visible to both bootable partitions 1.75GB FAT32 bootable partition. BootMagic 5.0 is the boot manager and is giving no problems. Windows 98 SP1 is on the FAT32 bootable partition and is working about as well as one would expect for Windows. It boots as C:. 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. Long ago when I used MS-DOS 5.0 exclusively, I had the Northon Utilities version 8, so I installed them on the DR-DOS C: partition and decided to use NDOS as the command shell and some of the utilities such as Norton Control Center (NCC.EXE) to set some of the display parameters. So far so good. However...... When I am working in DR-DOS, I get completely unpredictable lockups when I return to the command prompt. Locked up tight. Ctr-Alt-Del does not work. I have to press the reset button. These lockups are completely unpredictable, and I cannot detect any pattern to them at all. None. I am including below my software configuration. In AUTOEXEC.BAT, GUEST.EXE is a driver from Iomega for the ZIPdrive. LOADRAMD.BAT merely uses XCOPY to load a lot of files to the RAMdisk (E:). ALISTSET.BAT creates a set of NDOS aliases (listed below) similar to DOSKEY macros. NCC.EXE and M.BAT set the screen using a saved configuration from the Norton Control Center. Once I booted into DR-DOS on one occasion, the very first thing I did was capture the output from 'mem /debug' (below). Several times I did the same when I got back to the back at the command prompt, and the results were always the same, so there doesn't seem to be any obvious memory leakage. Things get even more interesting. I wondered if somehow NDOS might be a problem, considering that the lockups are random. So I changed CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to comment out everything related to NDOS and went back to the native DR-DOS COMMAND.COM. Boom! At bootup I single stepped through the process. Everything normal until at the very end when AUTOEXEC.BAT completes, the command prompt comes up, and then the system explodes. I get a "black screen of death" :-) from EMM386.EXE, which starts off "The system memory manager (EMM386.EXE) has detected an error caused by a fault in one of the device drivers or programs loaded in the system" followed by a lot of supposedly (but to me not really) diagnostics. (If there is a way to capture this, I haven't figured out how.) The screen says that the system is in an unstable state and should be rebooted. Again, Ctl-Alt-Del is dead, and I have to press the button. When I boot from a floppy so I can restore CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to their states below, everything is fine. I am stumped. I don't want to use DR-DOS as my personal primary working OS if it is unstable with random lockups. Any ideas? Thanks very much. ========== CONFIG.SYS ========== REM DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\EMM386.EXE DPMI=ON FRAME=NONE MULTI=OFF ROM=AUTO DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\DPMS.EXE DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\SETVER.EXE DEVICEHIGH C:\DRDOS\VDISK.SYS 20480 256 /E:8 DEVICEHIGH SIZE=D70 C:\UTILS\NANSI.SYS /S DEVICEHIGH C:\DRDOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,437,2) BREAK=OFF BUFFERS=10 FILES=20 FCBS=4,4 LASTDRIVE=G HISTORY=ON,512,ON COUNTRY=1,,C:\DRDOS\COUNTRY.SYS STACKS=9,256 REM SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /E:1024 /P SHELL=C:\NDOS.COM @C:\NU\NDOS.INI /P ============ AUTOEXEC.BAT ============ @ECHO OFF REM RAMdisk assumed to be at E: E: CD \ MKDIR TEMP MKDIR BAT MKDIR UTILS MKDIR DOWNLOAD MKDIR CACHE C: CD \ SET SYMANTEC=C:\SYMANTEC SET NU=C:\NU SET TEMP=E:\TEMP SET TMP=E:\TEMP SET DRDOSCFG=C:\DRDOS SET PCPLUS=C:\PCPLUS SET SWDISK=C:;D:;E: SET AWDISK=C:;D:;E: SET DIRCMD=/P/OGE SET KEDIT=UMB NOEMS WIDTH 1024 VERIFY OFF LOADHIGH C:\UTILS\IOMDOS\GUEST.EXE C:\DRDOS\NWCACHE.EXE E:- F: 7670 1024 /LEND=ON /DELAY=100 LOADHIGH C:\DRDOS\DRMOUSE.COM C:\NLOFF.COM CALL C:\BAT\LOADRAMD.BAT CALL C:\BAT\ALISTSET.BAT PATH E:\;E:\BAT;E:\UTILS;C:\BAT;C:\UTILS;C:\;C:\DRDOS;C:\NU;C:\UTILS\ARACHNE;C:\PKWARE;C:\WINDOWS PROMPT $P$G E:\UTILS\NCC.EXE /CO80 E:\BAT\M.BAT ========== MEM /DEBUG ========== +- Address --- Name ----- Size ------------- Type ----------------------------+ | 0:0000 | -------- | 400h, 1,024 | Interrupt vectors | | 40:0000 | -------- | 100h, 256 | ROM BIOS data area | | 50:0000 | DOS | 200h, 512 | DOS data area | | 70:0000 | BIOS | 900h, 2,304 | Device drivers | | 70:0023 | CON | | System device driver | | 70:0035 | AUX | | System device driver | | 70:0047 | PRN | | System device driver | | 70:0059 | CLOCK$ | | System device driver | | 70:006B | COM1 | | System device driver | | 70:007D | COM2 | | System device driver | | 70:008F | COM3 | | System device driver | | 70:00A1 | COM4 | | System device driver | | 70:00C7 | LPT1 | | System device driver | | 70:00D9 | LPT2 | | System device driver | | 70:00EB | LPT3 | | System device driver | | 70:016E | A:-D: | | System device driver | | 100:0000 | DOS | 13C0h, 5,056 | System | | 100:0048 | NUL | | System device driver | | 100:00CC | DOS | 10Fh, 271 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 5 total blocks | | 23C:0000 | DOS | 10B0h, 4,272 | System | | 23E:0000 | DOS | A5h, 165 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 3 total blocks | | 24B:0000 | VCPIXXX0 | 420h, 1,056 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | 265:0000 | EMMQXXX0 | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | 279:0000 | DPMIXXX0 | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | 28E:0000 | DPMSXXX0 | 3B0h, 944 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | 2CA:0000 | SETVERXX | 1F0h, 496 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | 2EA:0000 | DOS | 356h, 854 | HANDLES=, FCBS= 16 total blocks | | 347:0000 | NDOS | 110h, 272 | Program | | 358:0000 | MEM | 160h, 352 | Environment | | 36E:0000 | MEM | 15C20h, 89,120 | Program | | 1930:0000 | -------- | 868F0h, 551,152 | FREE | | 9FBF:0000 | DOS | 28410h, 164,880 | System | | 9FC0:0000 | -------- | 400h, 1,024 | Extended ROM BIOS data area | +-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+ | C800:0000 | EMM386 | 1A0h, 416 | XMS Upper Memory Block | | C81A:0000 | DOS | 1A0h, 416 | XMS Upper Memory Block | | C834:0000 | DOS | 410h, 1,040 | XMS Upper Memory Block | | C875:0000 | DOS | 75D0h, 30,160 | System | | C877:0000 | E: | 880h, 2,176 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | C900:0000 | CON | C60h, 3,168 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | C9C7:0000 | CON | 5630h, 22,064 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | CFD2:0000 | NDOS | C30h, 3,120 | Data | | D095:0000 | NDOS | 410h, 1,040 | Environment | | D0D6:0000 | GUEST | 110h, 272 | Environment | | D0E7:0000 | GUEST | 4C10h, 19,472 | Program | | D0F8:33E8 | F: | | DEVICE = installed device driver | | D5A8:0000 | NWCACHE | 15C0h, 5,568 | XMS Upper Memory Block | | D704:0000 | NWCACHE | 4010h, 16,400 | XMS Upper Memory Block | | DB05:0000 | -------- | 2210h, 8,720 | FREE | | DD26:0000 | DRMOUSE | 1990h, 6,544 | Program | | DEBF:0000 | -------- | 2390h, 9,104 | FREE | | E0F8:0000 | E0F80 | 26D0h, 9,936 | Data | | E0FA:0000 | SCSIMGR$ | 0h, 0 | DEVICE = installed device driver | | E365:0000 | -------- | B9B0h, 47,536 | FREE | +-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+ | FFFF:00E0 | -------- | 2160h, 8,544 | FREE | | FFFF:2240 | DOS | F70h, 3,952 | DOS BIOS code | | FFFF:31B0 | DOS | 7280h, 29,312 | DOS kernel code | | FFFF:A430 | DOS | 14C8h, 5,320 | BUFFERS= 10 disk buffers | | FFFF:B8F8 | -------- | 4708h, 18,184 | FREE | +-----------+----------+------------------+-----------------------------------+ + Memory Type --------- Total Bytes ( Kbytes ) ----- Available For Programs -+ | | | | | Conventional | 654,336 ( 639K ) | 640,624 ( 626K ) | | Upper | 159,744 ( 156K ) | 65,360 ( 64K ) | | High | 65,520 ( 64K ) | 26,728 ( 26K ) | | Extended | 66,060,288 ( 64,512K ) | 0 ( 0K ) | | Extended via XMS | -------- | 36,233,216 ( 35,384K ) | | Extended via DPMI | 36,233,216 ( 35,384K ) | 36,224,768 ( 35,376K ) | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Largest executable program: 640,608 ( 626K ) | | Total Free DOS memory: 705,984 ( 689K ) | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ============ NDOS aliases ============ 2e=xcopy %& e:\ /v @F10=color bla on gre bor yel ^ cls @F11=color bla on gre bor yelr @F12=color bla on gre bor magr aw=e:\utils\anywhere.exe %& b=cdd c:\ ^ exit bb=cdd c:\ ^ keystack "7" ^ exit c=cdd c:\ calc=echo %@eval[%&] dirx=dir %& /o:e /j | list /s e=cdd e:\ lister=%& | list /s m2e=move %& e:\ p=e:\utils\p.com %& ^ cls pasx=pascii -c x.cfg %& r=e:\utils\r.com %& ^ cls rm=del %& ro=attrib +r %& rw=attrib -r %& x=exit ===== M.BAT ===== @ECHO OFF E:\UTILS\NCC.EXE E:\UTILS\MYSCREEN.CFG /SET CLS -- Paul Bartlett bartlett "at" smart "dot" net PGP key info in message headers