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ID:SK Using SideKick Plus in DESQview
Quarterdeck Technical Note
by Stan Young
SideKick Plus can be run in DESQview, but will typically require a
great deal more memory than the original SideKick (Version 1.5).
While Borland makes a great point in its advertising indicating that
SideKick Plus takes no more than 64K of memory, THIS IS WHEN SIDEKICK
IS NOT ACTIVE! When SideKick Plus is active, it takes between 256K
and 440K depending on the number of SideKick utilities installed and
the size of their data. If you have problems of any kind while
running SideKick Plus in a window, try giving it more memory.
General SideKick Plus Setup:
In general, you should set up SideKick Plus as you normally would.
The only suggestions would be that you disable SideKick's background
communications facility and that if you have expanded memory, you set
up your modules in SideKick to use it. Also, since memory is a
consideration, we would suggest you install only the modules you
intend to use and for those utilities that expand themselves within
the module (such as Notepad, giving the option of 1 to 9 notepads),
avoid making them bigger than you need.
Alt Key conflict:
After bringing up SideKick Plus with the activate key and opening a
utility, you can bring up the SideKick menu by holding down the Alt
key for several seconds. If, when the menu come up, you select the
next utility you want with the Alt key combination, there is no
problem, but if you let go of the Alt key before making a selection,
the DESQview menu will come up. This is normal since this is the
default key DESQview uses to bring up its menu, if you hit the ESC key
at that point, you will go back to SideKick. For most people this is
probably a "glitch" they can live with, but if you are not one of
those people, you must redefine the DESQview key (see manual) since
there is no way to redefine this usage for SideKick.
Running SideKick Plus before DESQview:
This is easy. It simply does not work. If you load SideKick Plus
before DESQview, the system will hang up when you try to pop up
SideKick. Apparently there is some manipulation of interrupts that is
performed by SideKick Plus in preparation for swapping itself out of
memory that is incompatible with running DESQview. We will
undoubtedly look into the problem, but it is likely that a solution to
this problem can only come from Borland.
Running SideKick Plus in a DESQview window as a non-resident program:
SideKick Plus provides a command line option "/G" for running SideKick
Plus in a non-resident mode. It is generally suggested that this
option be used when loading SideKick Plus into a DESQview window.
Loaded in this fashion, SideKick Plus will load and bring up its main
menu. When you exit SideKick Plus, it is removed from memory. In this
mode, SideKick Plus runs as a standard application in DESQview.
Running SideKick Plus in a window as a resident program:
SideKick Plus can also be used as a resident program within a DESQview
window. There are certainly potential conflicts when this is done,
but it has been tested with a limited number of programs and appears
to work. If you are trying to run it in a window with another
program, you would make a batch file that first ran SideKick Plus and
then the other program. To run a fairly full-sized SideKick Plus, you
would need to allocate enough memory for the program plus xxK to cover
the resident overhead of SideKick Plus. If you are running SideKick
Plus with a small program, you may have to allocate even more memory
due to the fact that SideKick Plus when active uses 256-440K.
When you bring up SideKick Plus, it will swap a section of the program
running in that window out to disk or expanded memory and swap itself
in. Please note, in general, your access to SideKick Plus will be
much faster if you take the preceding suggestion and load it in its
own window and use DESQview for your switching.
Communications in SideKick Plus:
The SideKick Plus manual (on page 353) indicates that SideKick Plus
somehow uses IRQ2 for communications. It is unclear exactly what this
means since the normal hardware IRQ's for communications would be IRQ3
(Comm 2) and IRQ4 (Comm 1). IRQ2 is never used for a serial port in
any configuration that we are aware of. In any case, SideKick
communications seem to have problems in DESQview versions prior to
2.2 which are due to the unconventional use of the hardware
interrupts. We were able to work around some of these problems in
version 2.2 of DESQview, however SideKick Plus will still interfere
with the use of both COM ports concurrently.
Alternatives:
SideKick Plus offers some advantages over the original SideKick, but
has some disadvantages as well. It is certainly not perfectly suited
for use in an environment such as DESQview. You may want to consider
sticking with the original SideKick which can be run before DESQview
or resident in a window (even in multiple windows). You might want
to consider the DESQview Companions, which is a set of four utilities
(Notepad, Calculator, Datebook and Communications package) that have
low memory overhead and are well designed to run in DESQview. Or,
you may want to consider WordPerfect's Library programs. These are
also individual utility programs that run well in DESQview since
WordPerfect supports the DESQview screen call.
Copyright (C) 1990 by Quarterdeck Office Systems
* * * E N D O F F I L E * * *