OK PC 9: CD

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ OK PC 9: CD / Okpcg9.iso / Util / 4DOS552 / 4DOS552.EXE / APPNOTES.DOC < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1996-04-17 | 77.8 KB | 1,858 lines

JP Software 4DOS Application Notes Version 5.52 -- April 17, 1996 Copyright 1988 - 1996, JP Software Inc., All Rights Reserved. Published by JP Software Inc., P.O. Box 1470, E. Arlington, MA 02174 USA, (617) 646-3975. This file provides information on using 4DOS with a variety of other software products. It is intended for use whenever you have a question about using another product with 4DOS, or suspect a compatibility problem. Virtually all of your software will work with 4DOS with no trouble. Inclusion of a product in this file does NOT mean there are compatibility problems with it! It only indicates that we have some information that may be useful to you when you use the product with 4DOS. Items which were significantly updated for this release of 4DOS are marked with the version number in the left margin. This file is formatted at 58 lines per page, and contains form feeds and page footers. It is somewhat long, so you may prefer to view it with a file viewer such as the 4DOS LIST command. You can print this file on most PC printers using the command: copy appnotes.doc prn Printing it with a program that formats the pages is not likely to work due to the formatting included in the file. (4/96-5.52) 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 1 Table of Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 General Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Running 4DOS along with COMMAND.COM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Executing DOS Commands from Your Applications . . . . . . . . . 7 Swapping to RAM Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4DOS and Other Command Line Editing Programs . . . . . . . . . . 8 4DOS and EXE File Compression Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Mouse Compatibility with 4DOS HELP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Information on Specific Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and OS/2 APPEND Command . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 MS-DOS 6.x and Windows 95 DBLSPACE and DRVSPACE . . . . . . . . 12 MS-DOS 6.x HELP Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 MS-DOS FASTOPEN Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 MS-DOS 4.0 and above FORMAT /S and SYS Command . . . . . . . . . 13 MS-DOS 6.x MEMMAKER Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 MS-DOS 6.x MOVE Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 MS-DOS 4.0 and above SELECT Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 MS-DOS / PC-DOS 6.x SMARTDRV Disk Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1DIR+ (Bourbaki) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 ANSI.SYS (various manufacturers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Bookshelf CD-ROM (Microsoft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 DESQview (Quarterdeck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 DOORWAY BBS Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 DR DOS / Novell DOS (Novell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Epsilon (Lugaru Software) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 FASTIO (Cyrix) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 FoxPro (Microsoft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Hijaak (Inset Systems) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 LapLink (Traveling Software) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 NDIS Network Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Netware (Novell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Netware Diskless Workstations (Novell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 OS/2 1.x, 2.x, and "3.x" (IBM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 QEMM and QRAM (Quarterdeck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 RoboComm Communications Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Software Carousel (SoftLogic Solutions) . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Stacker (Stac Electronics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 SuperStor (AddStor, Novell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 TSRCOM Utilities (TurboPower Software) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 UltraVision (Personics) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Windows 3.x (Microsoft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Windows 95 (Microsoft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 XyWrite (XyQuest / The Technology Group) . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Programs Requiring PATH to be Under 128 Characters . . . . . . . 31 Checkit (Touchstone); Computer Select CD-ROM (Ziff-Davis); RenderMan (AutoDesk); VINES Network (Banyan); Windows 3.0 (Microsoft); Word for Windows 6.0 (Microsoft) 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 2 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 3 Introduction ------------ We have made every effort to ensure that this file is as accurate and up to date as possible. Our information is based on our own investigations, reports from 4DOS beta testers, technical support calls, discussions with manufacturers of other products, and reports from our customers. Unfortunately, varying conditions between systems or between software releases can easily invalidate the results of previous tests. Therefore we cannot guarantee that every item in this file is accurate for all systems or will remain accurate over time; you may have to do your own testing to determine what works well on your system with the software you own. If you have a question or problem related to another program, first read through Chapter 3 and Appendix A of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide ("4DOS And Your Hardware And Software"). Those sections of the manual give general suggestions for using 4DOS with other products and for solving compatibility problems, and should always be used along with this file. If the techniques in the manual don't help, check below for both additional general suggestions which pertain to your question, and information on the specific product you are working with. Please note that some products are listed by category rather than or in addition to specific listings by product name; check the Table of Contents carefully to see where any particular product may be covered. Many of the items below refer to the 4DOS.INI file. See Chapter 5 of the Reference Manual, or the online help, for a complete explanation of 4DOS.INI and the directives which can be used there. Many popular software products are not covered in this file. If a program does not appear here, it simply means that as far as we know no additional information is necessary or useful when using that program with 4DOS. If you have a question or problem related to how 4DOS works with other hardware or software products, and it isn't addressed in the manuals or these notes, contact JP Software or your dealer for technical support. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 4 General Information ------------------- Running 4DOS along with COMMAND.COM: You may find a very rare program which will not work under 4DOS, but runs properly under COMMAND.COM. If you have determined that the problem cannot be solved through configuration changes or by eliminating or reconfiguring a third program which is causing the problem, use this section to see how to run 4DOS and COMMAND.COM together in order to diagnose such a problem. There are two methods of loading COMMAND.COM before another program. The first is to load it only when a specific program is running. This can be accomplished with the following command (assuming COMMAND.COM is in the root directory of drive C:): c:\command /c progname options where "progname" is the program name (with path if necessary) and "options" are any parameters for the program. This command will run COMMAND.COM, load and run the program, and upon exit from the program will exit from COMMAND.COM and return to 4DOS. If this is necessary to run a specific program, it can be defined as an alias: alias progname `c:\command /c progname %&` The "%&" passes all command line arguments on to the program. With this method, if the program is large COMMAND.COM may need to reload itself when the program exits. It will not be able to do so unless the COMSPEC is set properly. If you experience problems such as "Invalid COMMAND.COM" errors when using this method, use a batch file like the following to run the program in question (the SETLOCAL and ENDLOCAL cause COMSPEC to be restored to its previous value after the program exits). You will need to modify this file if your copy of COMMAND.COM is not stored in the C:\ directory: setlocal set comspec=C:\COMMAND.COM c:\command /c progname %& endlocal The second method is more drastic: you can start your system under COMMAND.COM, then run 4DOS. This approach is rarely necessary, and will use about 4 - 5K of additional RAM for the resident portion of COMMAND.COM. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 5 The following steps will set your system up to boot with COMMAND.COM, and run 4DOS automatically as part of the boot process: (1) Set up the SHELL= statement in CONFIG.SYS to run COMMAND.COM, or leave it out entirely. In other words, set it up just as you would if 4DOS were not on your system. (2) Separate your AUTOEXEC file into two parts: part 1, which remains in AUTOEXEC.BAT, should contain any commands you wish to have COMMAND.COM execute before 4DOS is started. This might include loading any TSRs which you cannot get to load properly under 4DOS. Part 2, which you must place in a separate batch file (we suggest the name 4DAUTO.BAT, but you can use any name you wish), should contain the commands you wish to have 4DOS execute when it is started. (3) Place the following line as the last line in the modified AUTOEXEC.BAT: 4DOS parameters filename where "parameters" represents any necessary 4DOS parameters for your INI file name, et.c (see the manuals or the Startup topic in the online help for additional details), and "filename" is the name of the new batch file you created for part 2 of your old AUTOEXEC file. Do NOT include a /P in the "parameters" or 4DOS will re-run AUTOEXEC and therefore load itself again, ad infinitum! (4) Be sure that KSTACK.COM is loaded in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file or your 4DOS startup file if you wish to use the 4DOS KEYSTACK command. This will load COMMAND.COM, execute the commands in AUTOEXEC, load 4DOS, execute the commands in your new batch file, and then give you the normal 4DOS prompt. There is one drawback to this second approach: because 4DOS is not loaded with a /P, the EXIT command will return you to COMMAND.COM if you inadvertently enter it at the primary shell prompt. You can get around this by including the /P parameter despite the caution above, and then placing the following line at the start of AUTOEXEC.BAT: if "%@eval[2+2]"=="4" quit This line tests the 4DOS variable function %@EVAL, which will return "4" under 4DOS and remain unchanged under COMMAND.COM. If %@EVAL returns a "4" the statement QUITs the batch file, preventing the infinite loop described above. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 6 Executing DOS Commands from Your Applications: In general you should have no trouble running DOS commands or "shelling to DOS" from within your applications. If you do, first check your COMSPEC setting (see the Reference Manual or online help for details), and check that enough memory is available for 4DOS to execute as a secondary shell. This should resolve most problems with "shell to DOS" operations. If those techniques do not resolve the problem, it may be due to one of the issues covered below: either the application was developed with a compiler that does not handle the format of 4DOS.COM properly, or it is using interrupt 2E and you have disabled interrupt 2E support. Compilers and the Format of 4DOS.COM: If you have an application which can run DOS commands from inside the application and that particular feature does not work, try to determine if the application was developed with Borland C or Lattice C. Some older versions of these compilers cannot properly execute 4DOS.COM to start a secondary shell, because 4DOS.COM (despite its name) is formatted as an EXE file, and the libraries shipped with these compilers do not use the proper method to determine what type of file they are running. If you suspect such a problem, make a copy of 4DOS.COM named 4DOS.EXE, and SET your COMSPEC variable to this file, for example: d:\4dos> copy 4dos.com 4dos.exe d:\4dos> set comspec=d:\4dos\4dos.exe Then run the application in question and see if it works. If so, you can use the above workaround to run the application. Be sure to contact the application vendor to see if they have an update which corrects this problem. Re-Enabling Interrupt 2E Support: COMMAND.COM contains an undocumented feature which allows programs to execute DOS commands by passing the command through software interrupt number 2E (hex). Not many programs use this feature, but full, documented support for it is available within 4DOS for those circumstances where it's needed. Interrupt 2E support is normally enabled within 4DOS, but can be disabled to save memory (INT 2E support requires about 100 bytes of resident memory). 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 7 If you have a program which is supposed to execute DOS commands and it does not work under 4DOS, check your 4DOS.INI file. If you see a line like this: FullINT2E = No then you have disabled INT 2E support. If the line is there, try removing this line or replacing it with one reading: FullINT2E = Yes to re-enable support for interrupt 2E, then check whether your program works properly. See Appendix C of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide for technical details on the INT 2E interface. Swapping to RAM Disks: In order to swap the primary shell to a RAM disk the RAM disk must be completely defined in CONFIG.SYS via a DEVICE= statement (most RAM disks are set up this way). RAM disks completely or partially defined in AUTOEXEC.BAT (such as the RAM disk / cache combination in Multisoft's PC Kwik Power Pak) cannot be used for swapping the primary shell, because AUTOEXEC.BAT has not been executed at the time that the root shell is loaded, and hence the RAM disk does not exist at that point. 4DOS and Other Command Line Editing Programs: Programs such as Anarkey (Moderne Software), PCED (Cove Software), and ReDOS (Multisoft) will work properly with 4DOS. However these programs require the use of SETDOS /L1 to operate, which will disable 4DOS's command recall and command line editing. In most cases you will be able to switch back and forth between 4DOS editing and the other editor by toggling the SETDOS /L state. When another editor is used 4DOS's command history will be maintained, and can be viewed with HISTORY, but will not be available for recall until a SETDOS /L0 is executed. 4DOS aliases, executable extensions, and other features will be active regardless of the SETDOS /L state. Aliases will be processed after any processing done by the other editing program. You must use care with other programs that provide an aliasing capability to avoid confusion if a command is expanded by both the other program and 4DOS! 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 8 4DOS and EXE File Compression Programs: If you use a file compression program like PKLITE, LZEXE, or DIET, you must use caution when compressing 4DOS files. Most such programs should be able to compress the 4DOS.COM file with no trouble. However if you have a copy of 4DOS that you intend to brand with your name and serial number, you must brand it BEFORE you run the file compression program, or the BRAND program will fail. Similarly, HELPCFG will not be able to modify your HELP system colors if you compress the 4HELP.EXE program. Mouse Compatibility with 4DOS HELP: The 4DOS HELP system depends on correct operation of your mouse driver. If your mouse doesn't work in HELP, or you have trouble with mouse "droppings" (characters left behind by the mouse cursor), be sure you have the most up to date working version of your mouse driver that is available. Users of Microsoft serial and PS/2 mice may notice a long delay when the HELP system starts. This is due to the long initialization time required for these mice, and is a function of the mouse driver, not the HELP system. If you don't use the mouse in HELP and want to speed up HELP startup, set HelpOptions = /X in 4DOS.INI. This will disable all mouse access in the HELP system. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 9 Information on Specific Products -------------------------------- The information below is listed alphabetically by product, with manufacturers' names included. MS-DOS commands are listed before other software products. Items marked with two asterisks [**] after the product name were supplied by users, and have not been tested by JP Software. MS-DOS, PC-DOS, and OS/2 APPEND Commands: 5.51 General Information for All Operating Systems --------------------------------------------- (The considerations in using APPEND are different under MS-DOS / PC-DOS and under OS/2 2.0 and above. Read this general information, then see the appropriate section below for your operating system.) ! CAUTION: In our opinion APPEND is a dangerous command. It is capable of "fooling" programs into thinking they are accessing one file when they are really accessing another one with the same name in a different directory. This can either do just what you want, or cause all sorts of trouble, depending on the circumstances. In particular, this behavior can cause 4DOS to place descriptions which go with files in one directory in the description file for another directory, because with APPEND running 4DOS can't tell whether APPEND has opened a file different from the one it asked for. In MS-DOS / PC-DOS 4.0 and above, and in OS/2 2.0 and above, the APPEND /PATH:OFF switch mitigates this problem somewhat; in particular it will keep 4DOS file description files from getting mixed up between directories. For this reason 4DOS will automatically set this switch if it detects that you are running APPEND under DOS 4.0 or above. The /X switch can be used, and it will affect 4DOS directory searches for many 4DOS commands (as it does for COMMAND.COM). Please note that this makes APPEND very dangerous: if you APPEND a directory with /X and then (say) delete *.BAK when no such files exist in the current directory, then the .BAK files in the APPENDed directory will be deleted instead. The APPEND /E switch will not work with 4DOS. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 10 5.51 MS-DOS and PC-DOS APPEND ------------------------ If you run APPEND under MS-DOS or PC-DOS, you must set up special aliases to compensate for unusual problems in the design of APPEND. Unlike most other commands in MS-DOS and PC-DOS, APPEND has both an external portion and an undocumented internal portion. The first time APPEND is run the external portion is executed, and loaded into memory as a TSR (memory-resident program). Subsequent uses of APPEND to adjust the APPEND path use an undocumented internal interface between COMMAND.COM and the TSR portion of APPEND. 4DOS does not support the internal portion of APPEND command under MS-DOS or PC-DOS. This means that you cannot change the APPEND path directly from 4DOS. However you can still use APPEND with 4DOS. APPEND should initially be loaded in the usual way, from AUTOEXEC or any other batch file, or from the command line. However to change the APPEND path after APPEND has been loaded for the first time, you must run APPEND from COMMAND.COM, not from 4DOS. To do this, enter the following command (modify the command appropriately if COMMAND.COM is not in the directory C:\): c:\command /c append [new path list] You could also set up a 4DOS alias to do the above command for you, for example: alias app `c:\command /c append` which would be invoked with the command app [new path list] If you must use APPEND to make certain applications work under MS-DOS or PC-DOS, we STRONGLY suggest that you set up the alias described above, and load APPEND in AUTOEXEC.BAT with an empty path. Then, for each application, set up an alias to run it that is similar to the following (this alias uses the "app" alias defined below to run APPEND under MS-DOS or PC-DOS): alias myprog `app c:\mydata^d:\util\myprog.exe^app ;` This alias sets the APPEND path, runs the application, and clears the APPEND path. When used in this way APPEND is less likely to cause trouble because it is disabled except when it is explicitly needed. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 11 5.51 APPEND and OS/2 DOS Sessions ---------------------------- If you run 4DOS in an OS/2 2.0 or above DOS session (VDM), APPEND is fully supported and the techniques described above for MS-DOS and PC-DOS are not necessary. If you must use APPEND to make certain applications work under OS/2, we STRONGLY suggest that you load APPEND in AUTOEXEC.BAT with an empty path. Then, for each application, set up an alias to run it that is similar to the following: alias myprog `append c:\mydata^d:\util\myprog.exe^append ;` This alias sets the APPEND path, runs the application, and clears the APPEND path. When used in this way APPEND is less likely to cause trouble because it is disabled except when it is explicitly needed. MS-DOS 6.x and Windows 95 DBLSPACE and DRVSPACE: 5.51 4DOS fully supports DBLSPACE and DRVSPACE compressed drives in MS-DOS 6 and above, and DRVSPACE compression in Windows 95. You can display and sort by compression ratios on these drives with the DIR /C and /O:c switches (the same switches also work with SELECT). See your Reference Manual or the online help for details on these switches. 4DOS will display Win95 DRVSPACE compression ratios whether you are in a "command prompt" boot (without the GUI loaded) or in a full Win95 boot. Windows 95 COMMAND.COM only displays compression ratios when the GUI is loaded. MS-DOS 6.x HELP Command: MS-DOS 6.0 and above include a complete on-line help system. Most of the time you probably won't need to access that system, because all of the internal commands and most external DOS utilities it discusses are also covered by the 4DOS help system. The MS-DOS 6 help also includes information on some commands which are not covered by the 4DOS help system. These include more complex parts of MS-DOS 6 such as DBLSPACE (a disk compression utility) and MEMMAKER; some commands which are not relevant to 4DOS users; and some rarely-used commands. (A complete list is available in the MS-DOS 6 topic in the 4DOS online help system.) 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 12 If you need to access MS-DOS 6 help for information on such topics, you can do so with an alias like this one, which assigns the command DOSHELP to load the MS-DOS 6 help system: alias doshelp c:\dos\help.com If you prefer, you can use the HELP command to refer to MS-DOS 6.0 help and another command such as 4DHELP to run 4DOS help. For example: alias help c:\dos\help.com alias 4dhelp *help In all of the above aliases, adjust the path used if your DOS files are not in the C:\DOS directory. For more information on aliases see the ALIAS command in your 4DOS manual or the online 4DOS help. MS-DOS FASTOPEN Command: The MS-DOS FASTOPEN command generally works with 4DOS, but does not properly detect renamed directories, and may have similar problems when directories are removed. This is a problem in FASTOPEN, not in 4DOS. If you use FASTOPEN and rename a directory with the 4DOS REN command, then do a DIR command, you may see the old name and not the new one displayed; you may also occasionally have trouble accessing files under the new name. You can usually solve this problem by including a DiskReset = Yes directive in 4DOS.INI. If DiskReset = Yes does not work, the only other solution we are aware of is to reboot your system after renaming a directory. Our opinion is that, if you have the memory to support it, a disk caching program will provide a much greater and more effective performance improvement than FASTOPEN (but don't run both at the same time!). MS-DOS 4.0 and above FORMAT /S and SYS Commands: The FORMAT /S and SYS commands in DOS 4 and above will copy 4DOS.COM to a newly formatted floppy disk and rename it COMMAND.COM, which may not be what you want and is confusing at best. See the discussion of "4DOS and DOS" in the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide for more information on this issue. MS-DOS 6.x MEMMAKER Command: 4DOS is fully compatible with MemMaker. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 13 MemMaker adds commands to the end of your AUTOEXEC.BAT file during its operation, and removes them when it is finished. If for some reason you have used a QUIT command in AUTOEXEC.BAT, remove it before running MemMaker. Otherwise, MemMaker's commands will not run and the memory optimization process will not work properly. MS-DOS 6.x MOVE Command: MS-DOS 6 includes an external MOVE command which is generally compatible with the 4DOS MOVE command. The syntax and features of the MS-DOS 6 MOVE command are slightly different than those offered by 4DOS's MOVE, so batch files written for one command may not work exactly the same way with the other, especially if more advanced or complex features are used. If you write batch files which use both commands, check the 4DOS and MS-DOS 6 documentation for your particular usage. MS-DOS 4.0 and above SELECT Command: In MS-DOS 4.0 and above, a SELECT command was included. This external command is totally unrelated to the 4DOS internal SELECT command. If you need to use both, you can set up aliases to adjust how the command names are handled. For example, the following two aliases set up SELECT to access the DOS 4.0 external SELECT command (assumed to be stored in C:\DOS\SELECT.EXE), and SEL to access the internal 4DOS SELECT command: alias select c:\dos\select.exe alias sel *select MS-DOS / PC-DOS 6.x SMARTDRV Disk Cache: 5.5 Under PC-DOS 6.1 and above, and MS-DOS 6.2 and above, COMMAND.COM instructs SMARTDRV to write all cached data to the disk before the command prompt is displayed. 4DOS offers the same capability, but you must enable it by adding the following line to your 4DOS.INI file: SDFlush = Yes SDFLUSH works with PC-DOS 6.1 and MS-DOS 6.2 as described above. In addition, SDFLUSH will work with MS-DOS 6.0 SMARTDRV. You may find this to be an improvement over MS-DOS 6.0 COMMAND.COM, which does not offer a similar feature. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 14 1DIR+ (Bourbaki): [**] 1DIR+ will work properly under 4DOS in its partially resident or EMS modes when set up as described below. It will work in its fully resident mode but cannot reliably exit back to 4DOS once started. If your copy of 1DIR+ is set up for fully resident mode, you can load it into memory under 4DOS to switch it to partially resident or EMS mode. To do so, from the directory where you normally run 1DIR+, type the commands: setdos /l1 1dirplus When 1DIR+ starts go to the "Wonder" / "Setup" menu and switch the mode to partially resident or EMS. Hit Esc to exit, and take the "Exit/Save" option (not "Save/Reset"). Back at the main menu, exit with "Wonder" / "Exit". At this point the system will probably hang. Reboot your computer. You should then be able to run 1DIR+ as described below. The above steps only need to be done once, when you install or re-install 1DIR+. Once 1DIR+ is set to EMS or partially-resident mode, you can start it from 4DOS using the following alias: alias 1dir `setdos /L1 ^ 1dirplus` The SETDOS /L1 is necessary to allow 1DIR+ to send command lines to 4DOS. You must do a SETDOS /L0 when you are done with 1DIR+ in order to get normal 4DOS command-line editing back. You can NOT do this within the alias above, as 1DIR+ returns to 4DOS in order to accomplish its work, and you don't want to switch back to /L0 mode until 1DIRPLUS has been removed from memory. If, after exiting from 1DIR+, you find that 4DOS's command line editing and history are unavailable, it is because you forgot to do the SETDOS /L0. If you go in and out of 1DIR+ regularly aliases like the following can be used to make the process quick: alias 1d `setdos /L1 ^ 1dirplus` alias 1e setdos /L0 If you run batch files from the 1DIRPLUS "compose" feature, you may find that INPUT commands in the batch file don't work properly unless they are preceded by SETDOS /L0. You must also do a SETDOS /L1 before the end of the batch file, or 1DIRPLUS won't pop up properly when the batch file is finished. For example: 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 15 setdos /l0 input Enter your name: %%name setdos /l1 ANSI.SYS (various manufacturers): If you have trouble with screen scrolling in 43-line or 50-line mode, try a different version of ANSI. We have had good results with PC Magazine's free utility ANSI.COM, and with the ANSI- UV.SYS program distributed with Personics' UltraVision EGA / VGA enhancement software. Some display-related device drivers may "fool" 4DOS into thinking an ANSI driver is present when this is not the case. If this happens you will see ANSI strings like "[2J" displayed on-screen when you use the CLS and COLOR commands. To correct the problem, place an ANSI = No directive in 4DOS.INI, or a SETDOS /A2 command in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Similarly, 4DOS may not be able to detect some ANSI drivers, in which case the colors you set with CLS and COLOR will not be "sticky" (i.e. they will be lost when you run an application, or otherwise change the display color). To correct the problem, place an ANSI = Yes directive in 4DOS.INI, or a SETDOS /A1 command in AUTOEXEC.BAT. Bookshelf CD-ROM (Microsoft): [**] Microsoft Bookshelf uses the environment variable CDPATH, which is also used (for a totally different purpose) by 4DOS. If you are using MS Bookshelf and want to set a CDPATH variable for 4DOS, set _CDPATH instead. 4DOS will search for _CDPATH first; when it is found, 4DOS will use it, and ignore CDPATH. DESQview (Quarterdeck): 4DOS works well as both the primary shell loaded before DESQview, and as the secondary shell loaded inside any DESQview window. The general information about multitaskers in Chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide applies to DESQview as well. You should read it before continuing with this discussion. To use 4DOS as a secondary shell with DESQview, you must add it to your DESQview "Open Window" menu. To do this, select the Add a Program option, then press the "O" key (for Other Program). Press Enter and you will get an Add a Program window. You'll need to modify settings on the standard first screen, and on the second "advanced options" screen. Set the Program Name to C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM (adjust the drive and path for your own 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 16 computer). Set the Parameters to whatever 4DOS startup options you want, but do not use /C or /P. For other DESQview parameters, the defaults are workable with the following changes: To run 4DOS in a full-screen window: Writes Text Directly to Screen: Y (screen 1) Virtualize Text / Graphics: N (screen 1) Close on Exit to DOS: Y (screen 2) Uses its Own Colors: Y (screen 2) To run 4DOS in a window smaller than the full screen: Writes Text Directly to Screen: N (screen 1) Virtualize Text / Graphics: Y/T (screen 1) Close on Exit to DOS: Y (screen 2) Uses its Own Colors: Y (screen 2) 4DOS is written to be "DESQview-aware", and will not "bleed through" to other windows when running full-screen commands such as HELP, LIST, or SELECT. You should normally exit a DESQview 4DOS window with the EXIT command, rather than with the Close option on DESQview's main menu. If you do use the Close option while at the 4DOS prompt, 4DOS will be notified of your action and will clean up its resources (for example, the shell number and disk swap file in use in that window). However this notification has a side- effect: it disables the Quit option on the DESQview main menu (this is a feature of DESQview). To disable the notification and reenable the Quit option, you can use a DVCleanup = No directive in 4DOS.INI. If you do so, be sure to exit 4DOS windows with the EXIT command to avoid leaving stray swap files on your disk or inadvertently using up 4DOS shell numbers. Some users report that DESQview uses all upper memory space when it loads, leaving no upper memory available to 4DOS. If you have UMBLoad and / or UMBEnvironment set to Yes in 4DOS.INI, this will result in a couple of harmless error messages when 4DOS is started under DESQview. To eliminate these messages, place the following lines at the end of 4DOS.INI: [Secondary] UMBLoad = No UMBEnvironment = No DESQview includes the ability to assign "logical drives" to subdirectory paths to make access to commonly used directories easier, or to support older applications that can't handle subdirectories. This is similar to the DOS SUBST command. 4DOS commands like DIR and COPY may not work as you expect on DESQview logical drives, because DESQview does not support certain 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 17 standard DOS calls which 4DOS uses to determine whether a name you enter is the name of a file or a subdirectory. If you are using specific filenames without wildcards, 4DOS commands will generally work properly on DESQview logical drives. However problems may occur with "implied wildcards" (for example, when 4DOS interprets DIR A* as DIR A*.*), filename completion, and other wildcard file access. We know of no circumstances where these problems would cause a loss of data. However for the sake of safety, when using DESQview logical drives we suggest you use the /N switches on commands like COPY and MOVE to verify the command's operation before files are actually modified. Under 4DOS, the DESQview DOS Services option will not work in its default configuration. To make DOS Services work under 4DOS, you must first create a batch file, DOSSERV.BAT, in your DESQview directory to run DOS Services under COMMAND.COM. (We are assuming that DESQview is in directory C:\DV and COMMAND.COM is in directory C:\; you will need to modify the settings below if your system is configured differently.) The batch file is: set comspec=c:\command.com c:\dv\dosserv c:\command exit Then, make the following changes on the DESQview change a program screen for DOS Services (items marked ** are on the second page of the screen): * Memory Allocation = 128K or greater * Program Name = C:\DV\DOSSERV.BAT (modify from previous value of C:\DV\DOSSERV). ** Close on Exit to DOS = N ** System Memory = 10K or greater ** Allow Close Window = N Once these steps are taken, you should be able to open the DOS Services window normally. However you will not be able to close it with a close window command. Instead, go to the window where DOS Services allows you to compose a DOS command, and type EXIT to close the window. DOORWAY BBS Software: DOORWAY uses the caret [^] in certain command line arguments. 4DOS will interpret this symbol as a command separator, and will not pass the line to DOORWAY properly. You can work around this problem by changing your 4DOS command separator permanently (with the CommandSep directive in 4DOS.INI) or temporarily when starting DOORWAY (with the SETDOS /C command), or by using the 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 18 4DOS escape character (ctrl-X) before each caret in the DOORWAY command line. DR DOS / Novell DOS (Novell): 4DOS will work properly as a command processor (including as the primary shell) under DR DOS / Novell DOS 3.4 and above, including Novell DOS 7.0. Some aspects of using 4DOS with DR DOS / Novell DOS are discussed in Chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide. Be sure to read that information before continuing with this section. Internal vs. External Commands: DR DOS 5.0's design makes the ASSIGN, JOIN, MORE, and SUBST commands internal (in MS-DOS / PC-DOS they are external). 4DOS supports all MS-DOS internal commands, but does not have internal support for ASSIGN, JOIN, MORE, and SUBST. To access these DR DOS internal commands when using 4DOS as the command processor, you must set up aliases which run DR DOS's COMMAND.COM. The following 4DOS aliases accomplish this (adjust these if COMMAND.COM is not in C:\): alias assign `c:\command /c assign %&` alias join `c:\command /c join %&` alias more `c:\command /c more %&` alias subst `c:\command /c subst %&` In DR DOS 6 and above, ASSIGN, JOIN, and SUBST were changed back to external commands, so the corresponding aliases are not necessary. For the MORE command, a much better alternative can be set up by aliasing it to the 4DOS LIST command: alias more list /s This provides a scrollable, full-screen display rather than the simple paged display offered by DR DOS (or MS-DOS) MORE. CONFIG.SYS SETs: DR DOS and Novell DOS allow you to put SET commands in CONFIG.SYS to set environment variables. 4DOS will retrieve this information and store it in the 4DOS environment, as DR DOS / Novell DOS COMMAND.COM does. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 19 5.5 TASKMAX: 4DOS will work with TASKMAX and TASKMGR (we refer to both as TASKMAX here), as long as you start new tasks according to the instructions below. You may need to experiment with the UMBLoad directive in 4DOS.INI when running TASKMAX. Depending on your system configuration and your version of TASKMAX, using UMBLoad = Yes may make the system more or less stable. We do recommend that you use UMBLoad = Yes if it works on your system, as this allows 4DOS better control over secondary shell startups under TASKMAX. When using 4DOS with TASKMAX you generally can NOT use the Ins key on the TASKMAX menu to start new tasks. If you do, your system will hang. This is due to assumptions TASKMAX must make when starting new tasks. These assumptions are valid for COMMAND.COM, but not for 4DOS. Under Novell DOS 7.0 you can avoid this provblem easily, by telling TASKMGR to start a new shell when a new task is initiated. To do so, check the TASKMGR.INI file for these lines: [Shell] Exec=False Change the second line to read: Exec=True Once this is done, you should be able to use Ins to start new tasks without any difficulties. The method described above is not available under DR DOS 6 and below; you must use the TASKMAX /C command instead. For example, this command: taskmax /c c:\4dos.com will start a new secondary copy of 4DOS as a new task,, and display a prompt. The same approach should be used when starting any task which needs a command processor. To start a task which runs a .BTM or .BAT file, use a command like this: taskmax /c c:\4dos.com /c startwp.bat This tells 4DOS to run the specified batch file, and exit automatically (removing the task from the task list) when the batch file is done. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 20 If you have tasks you start regularly using the approach described above, use a batch file or a set of 4DOS aliases to help automate the process. Epsilon (Lugaru Software): [**] Epsilon can run 4DOS as a concurrent process, and pass commands to 4DOS for execution. In this mode it traps 4DOS's input requests and feeds the keystrokes to 4DOS. However it does not feed backspaces etc. -- only actual characters. This means that editing of input isn't seen by 4DOS. To fix the problem, either run 4DOS as a shell, and not as a concurrent process, or use a SETDOS /L1 for the copy of 4DOS that is run under Epsilon. To use the more flexible SETDOS /L1 approach you must use 4START.BAT (or .BTM) to set up the SETDOS /L1 before running Epsilon. Epsilon sets the environment variable EPSRUNS=Y whenever it starts a secondary shell; you can use this variable to set up 4START to work with Epsilon. Place the following line in 4START to issue the SETDOS /L1 command in a secondary shell started by Epsilon, but ignore it otherwise: if "%epsruns"=="Y" setdos /l1 FASTIO (Cyrix): [**] 5.5 The FASTIO hardware utility (distributed with some systems containing Cyrix microprocessors) contains a bug which can hang your system if FASTIO is run under 4DOS. The hang will occur any time Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break is pressed after FASTIO runs. This bug has been fixed by Cyrix; contact your system vendor for a corrected version of FASTIO. FoxPro (Microsoft): [**] FoxPro works well with 4DOS, but may have trouble if 4DOS or the master environment is loaded high (in a UMB). If you experience compatibility problems between FoxPro and 4DOS, try removing any UMBEnvironment = Yes line in 4DOS.INI; if that doesn't help, try removing any UMBLoad = Yes line as well. Hijaak (Inset Systems): 4DOS is generally compatible with Hijaak. However the DOSCAP utility can sometimes interfere with 4DOS's disk swap file, causing the system to hang. If you experience a problem with DOSCAP and disk swapping, configure your system to swap to EMS or XMS memory. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 21 LapLink (Traveling Software): [**] LapLink's "self-cloning" feature may not work properly with 4DOS's CTTY command. If you need to use the self-cloning feature, start a temporary copy of COMMAND.COM first (see "Running 4DOS along with COMMAND.COM" at the beginning of this file for details). NDIS Network Drivers: Under 4DOS, some NDIS network drivers may hang your system when the NETBIND program is run in AUTOEXEC.BAT. This is because these drivers use memory without allocating it, and 4DOS is then unable to avoid overwriting the memory used by the drivers. When NETBIND runs it attempts to use the corrupted memory area, and the system hangs. If you have this problem, you can solve it using the following steps: (1) Add this line to 4DOS.INI: MaxLoadAddress=448 (2) Make sure that NETBIND is the FIRST external program to run after 4DOS starts. Do not run ANY other external program prior to NETBIND, in either 4START or AUTOEXEC. (3) If you cannot run NETBIND first, add a SWAPPING OFF command at the beginning of AUTOEXEC, and a SWAPPING ON command immediately before NETBIND is run. However, we strongly recommend that you run NETBIND first if at all possible. Many NDIS drivers do not exhibit this problem; if your NDIS drivers work properly, there is no need to make the changes shown above. Netware (Novell): Before reading this information be sure you have read the section on 4DOS and Novell Netware in Chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide. The discussion below covers certain specific problems; if your copy of 4DOS is working properly with Netware, you may not need to read it at all. See the following section for details on using 4DOS with diskless workstations under Novell Netware. Some versions of Netware may occasionally produce a "pipe not found" message when loading under 4DOS. This message refers to 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 22 Netware features related to COMMAND.COM, and does not apply to 4DOS; the message can be ignored. 5.51 Under some versions of Netware the DEL /Q command may not delete all files specified with a wildcard (for example, DEL /Q *.* might delete some files and leave others alone). If you experience this problem, use DEL without the /Q switch. The problem is due to bugs in Netware's FCB support, not problems in 4DOS. If you use the 4DOS FOR (@filename) command or the %@FILEOPEN and %@FILEREAD variable functions to process lines from a file, you may find that the read is terminated after the first line. This is because Netware is closing the file before 4DOS is finished with it. To work around this problem, add the following line to your NET.CFG or SHELL.CFG file (SHELL.CFG is used in older versions of Netware, and NET.CFG in more recent versions): EOJ=OFF In certain extremely rare circumstances using EOJ=OFF can leave files open on your server if an application does not close them properly. We have never seen this problem occur in practice but you may wish to keep it in mind if you must use EOJ=OFF to prevent Netware from closing files you are processing. If you use 4DOS input redirection in a .BAT file which resides on a Netware drive, you may experience incorrect file assignments on some systems. When this occurs, an application run from within the batch file, or a secondary shell run from such an application, may loop forever attempting to read lines from the batch file rather than accepting input from the keyboard. For example: copy /r *.* g: < YES wp rem Now if the user shells from WP, the system will rem loop forever reading lines from the batch file or rem blank lines at the prompt. This problem occurs because Netware does not handle file assignments properly when 4DOS input redirection is used in a .BAT file. We are still awaiting a solution to this problem from Novell. You can work around it in several ways: * Change the batch file to a .BTM file. * Place the file BTM mode with the LOADBTM command at any point prior to the use of input redirection. * Move the file to a non-Netware drive. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 23 * User reports indicate that adding a line which does a "dummy" output redirection just before the input redirection will prevent the problem from occurring. For example: echo This is junk > junk.dat copy /r *.* g: < YES wp del junk.dat When loading a secondary 4DOS shell under Netware you can swap to a network drive if you wish, but you MUST set SwapReopen = Yes in 4DOS.INI, or Netware will close the file and 4DOS will halt with a swap file error. You can also avoid this problem by swapping to EMS, XMS, or a local hard disk or RAM disk. The UMBLoad directive in 4DOS.INI is compatible with Netware. The UMBEnvironment directive is compatible with Netware 3.11 and above, but not with earlier versions. Netware Diskless Workstations (Novell): 4DOS can be set up to run properly on Novell Netware diskless workstations which boot from the server. To do so, you must make several changes to 4DOS.INI and your other startup files as detailed below. The goal of all these changes is to ensure that there is NO access to the boot drive after the network software is loaded. In the discussion below, the term "boot image" refers to files on the A: drive image set up to boot the workstation. This text assumes that your 4DOS files are in the server directory F:\SYSTEM\4DOS; be SURE to substitute the appropriate path for your network! The 4DOS directory on the server should contain at least a copy of 4DOS.COM, 4HELP.EXE, and 4DOS.HLP. In this description we assume other files like secondary copies of 4START and 4DOS.INI are stored there as well. You can move any of these files to another network directory if you change the corresponding directive below. 1) Place a copy of 4DOS.COM into the boot image and be sure the SHELL command in the boot image CONFIG.SYS looks like this: SHELL=\4DOS.COM @\4DOS.INI /P 2) Create a boot image 4DOS.INI file if you don't have one. Add these lines to the file: 4StartPath=\ AutoExecPath=\ 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 24 HelpPath=F:\SYSTEM\4DOS\ NextINIFile=F:\SYSTEM\4DOS\4DOS.INI This forces secondary copies of 4DOS to read the INI file from the network, and not from the boot drive. Any directives which you might normally put in the [Secondary] section of 4DOS.INI should go into this file (see step 7), and not in the 4DOS.INI file that is part of the boot image. 3) If you want a 4START file for the primary shell, create one and make it part of the boot image. 4) Rename your boot image AUTOEXEC file to AUTOEXEC.BTM. 4DOS reads each line of a BAT file separately, and keeping AUTOEXEC as a BAT file will therefore cause access to the boot image drive after the network is loaded. This advice violates the usual rule that TSRs should not be loaded from a BTM file. As a result you will have a small "hole" in memory when AUTOEXEC is done. Generally such holes waste a small amount of memory, but cause no other trouble, and users have not reported any ill effects from this approach. 5) Be sure that in AUTOEXEC.BTM you switch the current drive and directory to a network drive and directory at some point before the file terminates, for example with a command like CDD F:\. Otherwise, the current drive will remain the boot drive and 4DOS will attempt to access that drive. Also be sure that you set the COMSPEC variable to the copy of 4DOS on the network, for example: SET COMSPEC=F:\SYSTEM\4DOS\4DOS.COM If you don't, secondary shells will not work properly from applications run on the workstation. 6) Create a new boot image AUTOEXEC.BAT file with one line in it which reads: AUTOEXEC.BTM This transfers control to the AUTOEXEC.BTM file as soon as 4DOS starts. 7) Create the secondary INI file <4DOS path>\4DOS.INI (the one referred to in the NextINIFile directive in step 2 above), and put at least the following line in it: 4StartPath=F:\SYSTEM\4DOS\ 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 25 This forces 4DOS to find 4START and 4EXIT for secondary shells on the network drive, and prevents it from attempting to look for these files on the boot drive. There need not be a 4START or 4EXIT file in this directory, but if you do want to use 4START or 4EXIT for secondary shells they must be in the specified network directory. Any other 4DOS.INI directives for secondary shells should also go into this file, and not in the 4DOS.INI file that is part of the boot image. 8) If you wish to swap secondary shells to a network drive add this line to the secondary 4DOS.INI file: SwapReopen=Yes After these changes are made, generate a boot image and set up the diskless workstation normally. 4DOS should start and operate properly when you boot the workstation. OS/2 1.x, 2.x, and "3.x" (IBM): 4DOS works properly as the shell in OS/2 DOS sessions under OS/2 1.2, 1.3, 2.0, 2.1, 2.11, and "3.0", including OS/2 Warp and OS/2 for Windows. For complete details see Chapter 4 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide. 5.51 Internally OS/2 Warp reports its version number as "2.3" rather than "3.0", and 4DOS displays the value reported by OS/2. Therefore output from the VER command under OS/2 Warp will report OS/2 version "2.30" rather than "3.00". If you see a message like "Cannot find OSO001.MSG" when running external utilities like TREE or DISKCOPY in OS/2 DOS sessions, you probably need to include the line: loadhigh append c:\os2;c:\os2\system in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file used by these DOS sessions, or set up the append path in an alias or batch file used to run such programs (change the drive letter if OS/2 is installed on a different drive). Be sure to read the notes and cautions on APPEND on page 10 of this file before using APPEND. If you use OS/2, you will probably want to use our companion product 4OS2 in your OS/2 sessions. See the ORDERINF.DOC file for more information. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 26 QEMM and QRAM (Quarterdeck): Both QEMM and QRAM are compatible with 4DOS, and will allow you to load the 4DOS resident code and the master environment into high DOS memory (UMBs) via the UMBLoad and UMBEnvironment directives in 4DOS.INI. For these directives to work with QRAM you must have QEXT loaded also (this is the normal method of loading QRAM). QEMM's Stealth mode is compatible with 4DOS, but can decrease general system stability on some systems. If you have unusual problems or system hangs with Stealth turned on, try turning it off and see if the problems clear up (this is the procedure recommended by Quarterdeck in their Stealth documentation). If you use FILES.COM to load part of the DOS file handle table into high memory, you must follow Quarterdeck's recommendations and keep a minimum of FILES=8 in CONFIG.SYS. Lower values may cause 4DOS to hang during boot, especially if disk swapping is used. 5.5 If you use QEMM's OPTIMIZE and your AUTOEXEC has 4DOS-specific commands like GLOBAL, IFF, aliases, etc., OPTIMIZE will recognize them based on the 4DOS.CMD file distributed with QEMM. This ASCII file contains a simple list of 4DOS commands. If you have a version of 4DOS.CMD created before 4DOS 5.5 was released, you may want to add the new FFIND command to it to make it complete. To use 4DOS.CMD it must be renamed to OPTIMIZE.EXC before running OPTIMIZE; see your QEMM documentation for details. 5.5 If you have used aliases to redefine standard internal commands like COPY (for example, to ensure that COPY always prompts you before replacing an existing file), QEMM's OPTIMIZE may not always work properly because the commands will not perform as it expects. Before running OPTIMIZE you may want to temporarily disable any 4DOS aliases (e.g., with a REM on the line(s) in AUTOEXEC.BAT or 4START which load the aliases). 5.51 QEMM OPTIMIZE may attempt to use a LOADHI command on the SHELL= line in CONFIG.SYS to load 4DOS into upper memory. 4DOS was designed to load itself into upper memory, and memory managers sometimes cannot load 4DOS there correctly. Therefore 4DOS works best if its own directives (UMBLoad etc.) are used instead of LOADHI. In some cases your system may hang if you try to load 4DOS into upper memory with LOADHI. To prevent OPTIMIZE from placing a LOADHI command on your SHELL= line, and allow 4DOS to load itself into upper memory, use the /NOSHELL switch when you start OPTIMIZE, for example: optimize /noshell 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 27 This problem does not affect the use of LOADHI with other programs. It only occurs if LOADHI is used to load 4DOS itself. 5.51 If you load 4DOS or 4DOS data blocks into upper memory, you can specify a particular upper memory region with UMBLoad and other similar directives in 4DOS.INI, as loong as you also have DOS=UMB enabled in CONFIG.SYS. QEMM offers similar region selection capability for the command processor through its LOADHI command, and this may be enabled automatically when you run OPTIMIZE (you can find out by checking the SHELL= line in CONFIG.SYS to see if it begins with a LOADHI command placed there by OPTIMIZE). Neither of these methods of region selection is optimal. If you use 4DOS region selection you must use DOS=UMB, which may not give the optimum arrangement for memory-resident programs and device drivers. However QEMM region selection with LOADHI uses some unusual techniques which may not work with 4DOS (your system may hang when 4DOS loads), depending on your configuration. There are three ways to work around this problem: (1) Allow OPTIMIZE to select a region for 4DOS and use LOADHI to put it there. If this causes a system hang, use one of the other techniques. (2) Set up the SHELL= line without LOADHI and load 4DOS normally. Then enable DOS=UMB and use the 4DOS region selection capability (UMBLoad=n, etc.) in 4DOS.INI. (3) Set up the SHELL= line without LOADHI and load 4DOS normally. Then allow QEMM to load 4DOS into the first available region by setting UMBLoad=Yes, etc. in 4DOS.INI. RoboComm Communications Software: [**] If you have trouble shelling out of RoboComm (for example, to use an external protocol like DSZ), try increasing the setting for Files and Extract memory to 256K. Software Carousel (SoftLogic Solutions): Please see the general section on multitaskers in chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide before reading this section. The information below applies to all versions of Software Carousel. Software Carousel will not work properly with 4DOS loaded as the primary shell. It is designed with the assumption that 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 28 COMMAND.COM is the system command processor, and contains logic which specifically depends on COMMAND.COM and the way it is written, and which actually modifies the copy of COMMAND.COM in memory. This makes it impossible to write a program which works properly as an alternate command processor loaded underneath (i.e. before) Software Carousel. However, 4DOS can be run without difficulty inside a Software Carousel partition, if the instructions below are followed. When loading 4DOS into a Carousel partition, the best method is to leave the COMSPEC set to COMMAND.COM when Carousel is loaded. 4DOS should then be set up in the Carousel options file just like any other program. For example, to load 4DOS into partition 1: d:\path\4DOS.COM [parameters] [filename] where: d:\path is the drive and path where 4DOS.COM is located [parameters] is any 4DOS command line parameters (/E, @ininame, etc.; do NOT use /P here) [filename] is the name of a batch file to be executed when the partition is started To use different 4DOS.INI files for different Software Carousel partitions, use the "@ininame" parameter in the "parameters" section of your Carousel setup to invoke a specific file. For example, the parameters could be set to @D:\WP\4DOSWP.INI to use that initialization file for the WP partition. Because 4DOS can only be loaded in a partition when running Software Carousel, and not as the primary command processor, using 4DOS disk swapping in multiple partitions is subject to the cautionary note on this subject in the general information section on multitaskers in Chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide; please read it carefully. As stated in that note, if you use disk swapping you will probably want to use the UniqueSwapName directive in 4DOS.INI to avoid swap file name conflicts. Stacker (Stac Electronics): 4DOS fully supports Stacker compressed drives. The 4DOS DIR and SELECT commands cannot display compression ratios on Stacker drives, because certain information required for this function is not readily available to 4DOS under the current Stacker software. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 29 SuperStor (AddStor, Novell): 4DOS fully supports SuperStor compressed drives, under both the stand-alone version of SuperStor from AddStor, and the version of SuperStor bundled with some versions of DR DOS / Novell DOS. You can display and sort by compression ratios on SuperStor drives with the DIR /C and /O:c switches (the same switches also work with SELECT). See your Reference Manual or the online help for details on these switches. TSRCOM Utilities (TurboPower Software): The TSRCOM utilities will work properly with 4DOS as long as you use TSRCOM version 2.6 or later. The current release is version 3.5 or later, and is available on the 4DOS Utility Disk and on many bulletin boards and on-line systems. If you use TSRCOM's MARK and RELEASE to manage your TSRs, 4DOS swapping (as set with the SWAPPING command) must be in the same state when RELEASE is run as it was when MARK (or FMARK) was run. This is a characteristic of the design of MARK and RELEASE (or any other such products), and not a bug. If you do not observe this rule (for example, if you run MARK with SWAPPING OFF in AUTOEXEC and later run RELEASE from the prompt with SWAPPING ON), you may receive unusual error messages or hang your system. The same restriction applies to MARKNET and RELNET. UltraVision (Personics): The DE program distributed with UltraVision is written specifically for COMMAND.COM, and cannot be used to set directory colors with 4DOS. Use 4DOS's built-in directory colorization instead. Windows 3.x (Microsoft): Most information about Windows is in chapter 3 of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide. 4DOS has been tested thoroughly and works well with Windows. Under some circumstances you may find that Windows overrides the environment size specified in your 4DOS.INI file, and creates a smaller environment. This can leave insufficient environment space for your 4DOS sessions running under Windows. If you experience this problem, edit the SYSTEM.INI file in your Windows directory, and find the section labelled [NonWindowsApp]. Add the following line to this section: CommandEnvSize = 0 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 30 This tells Windows not to force a particular environment size, which will allow 4DOS to set the size itself. If you set up a PIF file for 4DOS, be sure to allow your 4DOS sessions access to the same type of memory used to swap your primary shell. If you do not, your Windows sessions may not be able to retrieve aliases and the command history from the primary shell. For example, if the primary shell swaps to XMS memory, and you set the XMS memory limit to 0 in the PIF file, your 4DOS sessions under Windows may start without inheriting aliases and history from the primary shell. If you set up a PIF file please note that the 4DOS MEMORY command will report the maximum amount of EMS memory which Windows can theoretically make available in that window. Because Windows provides a virtual memory capability, this number may be much larger than the size of physical RAM. For example, if you set the EMS Limit in your PIF file to -1, Windows will report total EMS memory of 64 MB to 4DOS as this is the theoretical limit on Windows' virtual memory manager. Virtual memory figures which give the appearance of excess memory are a feature of Windows, and not a bug in 4DOS. Windows 95 (Microsoft): For information on using 4DOS with Windows 95 see the "Win95" topic in the online help system (you can retrieve this information quickly by entering the command HELP WIN95 at the 4DOS prompt). XyWrite (XyQuest / The Technology Group): [**] The "shell to DOS" capability of earlier versions of XyWrite (published by XyQuest) shells to COMMAND.COM, even if you have your COMSPEC variable set to 4DOS. The only way we know of to work around the problem is to make a copy of 4DOS.COM and call it COMMAND.COM. If you do this, be sure to save the real COMMAND.COM in another directory in case you need it for another purpose. Some users have reported that the same problem occurs with Signature, a newer word processor from XyQuest. XyWrite 4, from The Technology Group (the successor to XyQuest) uses the shell specified by COMSPEC, and has no known compatibility problems with 4DOS. Programs Requiring PATH to be Under 128 Characters: The following programs contain bugs which prevent them from working properly if you have a PATH which is over 128 characters 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 31 long. Since 4DOS allows you to create a PATH up to 255 characters long this can appear to be a conflict between the program involved and 4DOS. If your path is longer than 128 characters, see Appendix A of the 4DOS Introduction and Installation Guide for information on creating a batch file to reduce the PATH length while one of these programs is running. Checkit (Touchstone): [**] Checkit version 3 requires a path length under 128 characters. Computer Select CD-ROM (Ziff-Davis): [**] Computer Select cannot find its help program if your PATH is over 128 characters long. RenderMan (AutoDesk): RenderMan will hang your system if it is started with a PATH longer than 128 characters. VINES Network (Banyan): [**] VINES' installation may not work properly if your PATH is longer than 128 characters. Windows 3.0 (Microsoft): The Windows 3 Setup Applications option, which scans your disk drives for applications to be added to Windows program groups, will not work properly if your PATH is more than 128 characters long. This problem is fixed in Windows 3.1. 5.5 Word for Windows 6.0 (Microsoft): The Word for Windows version 6 help system will not work properly if your PATH is more than 128 characters long. This problem is fixed in Word for Windows 6.0a and above. 4DOS 5.52 [04-17-96] APPNOTES.DOC page 32