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1990-10-08
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ID:BX Technical Support via BIX
(Byte Information eXchange)
Quarterdeck Technical Note
by Bob Perry
As the advertisement in BYTE magazine said, "Imagine a
setting in which communal wisdom is on tap. A place that has the
fit and feel of a small, friendly town, yet the sophistication
and resources of a global community. One which you can visit
electronically--to increase your knowledge of computers and their
applications, hone your skills, share insights with thousands of
other computer pros, and have fun." Such is the Byte Information
eXchange, or BIX, as it is known.
BIX is a flat-fee subscription, on-line information
service. There is a $156 annual fee, billed $39 quarterly.
Telecommunications charges are extra. You may buy off-peak
access via Tymnet at $20 per month or $3 per hour, or you may buy
peak access at $6 per hour (available only in the 48 contiguous
states). Various special interest conferences and vendor support
conferences are available as well as personal BIXmail.
You may subscribe directly through your computer and
modem. Set your program for full duplex, 7 bits, even parity,
and 1 stop bit. Call BIX on their registration-only line: 800-
225-4129. In MA call 617-861-9767. International:
NU1310690157800. At the prompt, "login:" you enter BIX. At the
second prompt, "name:" you enter BIX.VILLE.
In August of 1987 Quarterdeck launched its DESQview
conference on BIX. Technical support can be obtained by entering
"join DESQview" at the BIX ":" prompt. Although the conference
name is "DESQview", please note that all of our Quarterdeck
products are supported on BIX. Likewise personal BIXmail can be
sent to the moderator of the DESQview conference whose BIXname is
"QOS.REP2." Upon joining the DESQview conference you will see
the topic areas you may choose from within the conference:
Topics are: 'digest', 'bulletins', 'comments', 'tech', 'user'.
Also: 'cbix', 'listings'.
Topic?
Here is a summary of these topic areas:
'digest'= Summary of important threads of historical
value.
'bulletins'= Announcing new products, conferences, READ
ONLY topics of general interest to all.
'comments'= Suggestions and ideas (comments) from users.
'tech' = Primary tech support arena.
'user' = User to user ideas.
Perhaps one of the nicest and most useful features of BIX
is its "search" command. Subscribers that join our DESQview
conference can do a "search" within any topic area. For example,
let's say that a user just purchased a Northgate computer with an
Adaptec hard disk controller. At the BIX prompt, enter "search
northgate". Here's a sample (actually taken from the conference)
of what is displayed:
Read:search northgate
Searching from 1 to 2513 for 'northgate'
Msg #520 I've been using DV (2.01) on my Northgate 386, and find
Msg #626 I have a Northgate '386 on which I run DV. My memory i
Msg #657 to retrieve a file's size. Using DV 2.2, QEMM 4.2 on a
Msg #688 i have a northgate 386 and use QEMM 4.2 as well as dv 2
Msg #755 i'm using the new 2.2 and 4.whatever comes with it, on
Msg #957 If you have a northgate 386 and cannot use QEMM.SYS wit
Msg #957 Newest Northgate 386's will have the BIOS fixed so th
Msg #958 Please could I have some more info on this. I have 2 No
Msg #959 apparently fixes the problem. One manufacturer (Northga
Msg #983 TITLE: NOrthgate 386
Msg #983 now that the northgate BIOS has been amended.
Msg #986 northgate bios amended? i have an early northgate 386
Msg #990 Yes if you are using QEMM. The early Northgate 386 BI
Msg #991 Northgate 386 disk from a 5/75 meg partition to 32 32
Msg #993 thanks, jerry, will check w/ northgate re new BIOS.
Msg #1000 My machine is a Northgate '386, and I am quite please
Msg #1004 The machine I got from Northgate was right off the st
Msg #1136 and not to swap. I am running DV 386 on a Northgate w
Msg #1145 and turbo pascal) hangs the computer. I'm using a Nor
Msg #1328 I just bought a Northgate 386, 25MHz, 4MB RAM, DV 2.2
Msg #1334 Northgate (VGA-16 800x600). I've added the X=C600-CA
Msg #1334 with the way Northgate has its memory mapped ?? AArug
Msg #1337 Re: my Northgate & QEMM/Loadhi ... when I was using a
Msg #1544 386 on a northgate 386 with dos 4.0. QEMM switches no
Msg #1995 either VPIC 2.6 or CSHOW 8 on a Northgate 25 Mhz 386
Msg #2242 I'm using a Northgate 386/20 with AMI BIOS version 3.
Msg #2242 BIOS and the graphics card are custom Northgate versi
Msg #2250 Northgate tech support said they thought switch 5 wou
Msg #2368 running on a file server that is a 386 20 Mhz Northga
Msg #2368 This is what the Northgate computers use. Is there a
Msg #2372 Northgate provides a driver - ADAPTEC.DVR (DRV?) - wi
Msg #2400 Northgate with a Video 7 VGA card. I had to set a sw
Msg #2448 I get like 560K windows no problem on my Northgate 38
Msg #2448 through FFFF comes out as mapped ROM; on the Northgat
Msg #2449 On my Northgate, I have the exp mem page frame at E80
Msg #2450 Gee, Greg, I get 576k windows on my Northgate. :)
Msg #2464 I just tried to install QEMM-386 on my Northgate 386
Read:
The subscriber may then browse through the list of
message excerpts and select ones that are interesting and
applicable to the situation. In our example, note that Msg #2372
mentions Adaptec. By entering this message number at the BIX
prompt, the message contents are displayed:
Read:2372
==========================
desqview/tech #2372, from geallen, 1120 chars, Thu May 10 00:36:41 1990
This is a comment to message 2368.
There are additional comments to message 2368.
--------------------------
Northgate provides a driver - ADAPTEC.DVR (DRV?) - with their
system but do not normally install it and there is little or no
mention of it in their documentation. I talked to tech support
about it and I didn't understand exactly what it does, but it's
something like this - the Adaptec controller has some
intelligence built in to drive a wide variety of disk drives but
make them all look like a Type 1 to the CMOS (or something like
that). The ADAPTEC.DRV (DVR?) either defeats or enables this
intelligence. Oh well -even though the technical details escaped
me, the bottom line is that some programs (MACE+ utilities among
them) REQUIRE that driver to be installed to work properly with
an Adaptec controller. I don't know of any others specifically,
but I suspect that any programs doing anything tricky with disk
I/O may run into problems if the driver is not installed.
I don't know of any programs that won't run with the driver
installed, so you might find the file and include
DEVICE=ADAPTEC.DVR (DRV?) IN .More.. your CONFIG.SYS file.
p.s. The confusion over DVR vs. DRV is because I'm too lazy to
look it up. No more unread messages in this topic Hit <RETURN>
for next active conf/topic.
Read:
Thus the collective wisdom of many users over the years
that our conference has been in existence can provide the threads
of technical support information necessary to solve almost any
problem related to Quarterdeck products. Users establish a
network of persons with similar interests and products. BIX is
more like an extended family or fraternity than most electronic
databases. Join us!
Copyright (C) 1990 by Quarterdeck Office Systems
* * * E N D O F F I L E * * *