Night Owl 6/Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso/015a/qos_dos5.zip/QOS&DOS5.DOC

Text File | 1991-06-17 | 6KB | 142 lines

Quarterdeck Office Systems
Dos 5 & Quarterdeck Products
Quarterdeck Technical Note #200
by the Quarterdeck Compatibility Department

The shipping versions of all Quarterdeck products are essentially
compatible with DOS 5.  Some shipping Quarterdeck products have
already been modified with DOS 5 compatibility in mind;  others
will contain changes in future releases to enhance our DOS 5
support.  Users of Quarterdeck products who have installed DOS 5
should observe the following guidelines with our currently
shipping products:

1.  Do not use the "DOS=UMB" option or the DEVICEHIGH or LOADHIGH
statements.  Quarterdeck's LOADHI technology, available with our
QEMM and QRAM products, makes the DOS=UMB option unnecessary,
and it affects the performance of Quarterdeck products that have
not been specially modified to support it.

2.  If you are a DESQview user, do not use the DOS=HIGH option;
it results in a net loss of conventional memory inside DESQview.
If you are not a DESQview user, use QEMM386 or DOS's HIMEM.SYS
to provide the High Memory Area for DOS=HIGH to use.  Versions
of Quarterdeck's QEXT.SYS dated earlier than June 1991 do not
work with the DOS=HIGH option.

3.  Obtain DESQview 2.34 or later if you wish to run Microsoft
Windows standard mode in a DV window on a DOS 5 system.

4.  Use QEMM386, not DOS 5's EMM386.EXE, as an 80386 memory
manager if you are running DESQview on an 80386.  EMM386 cannot
provide the range of features to DESQview users that QEMM-386 can.

5.  If you load DOS 5's DOSKEY before DESQview, use its
/REINSTALL option to load it again in each DESQview window in
which you wish to use it.

6.  If you use QRAM 1.01 or earlier or QEMM-50/60 5.00 or earlier,
load QEXT.SYS before QRAM.SYS or QEMM.SYS (if you wish to use
QEXT.SYS).

7.  Don't use the DOS 5 DOSSHELL's task switcher option with
DESQview.


We believe there are difficulties running Windows 3.0
standard mode inside DESQview 2.30-2.33 on DOS 5 systems.
Various symptoms have been reported, including hangs while Windows is
loading, hangs upon exiting Windows, hangs when opening apps in
Windows, and UAEs from Windows.  DESQview 2.34 runs well with
Windows 3.0 Standard Mode on DOS 5 systems.

Manifest 1.00 crashes if loaded on a DOS 5 system.  Upgrades to
Manifest 1.01 have been available through Quarterdeck since
February 1991.

Manifest 1.01 is essentially compatible with DOS 5.  However, the
differences between DOS 5's data structures and those of earlier
versions of DOS result in a number of small inaccuracies, mostly
occurring on the DOS/Overview and DOS/Drivers screens.  Future
versions of Manifest will incorporate various changes to support
DOS 5.

It is important that users upgrading from DOS 2 or 3 to DOS 4 or 5
manually change the BUFFERS=1 line in their CONFIG.SYS file
to BUFFERS=15 (or whatever).  Otherwise, they will experience a
slowdown when BUFFERS.COM fails to load additional buffers
from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, leaving the system with a total of
one buffer.  (BUFFERS.COM can only be used with DOS versions
2 and 3.)

The DOS 5 utility SETVER does NOT take effect when run inside
DESQview 2.33 or earlier.  DESQview 2.34 and later versions
support SETVER.

If Manifest 1.01 is made resident, then popped up over the DOS 5
DOSSHELL when the latter program is in text mode (Manifest will
not pop up over a graphics screen), the palette of DOSSHELL will
not be restored when Manifest pops down:  parts of the screen will
blink, and DOSSHELL's colours will have gone from high to
low intensity.

The DOS 5 utility DISPLAY.SYS cannot be successfully loaded into
upper memory by the LOADHI.SYS that ships with QEMM-386 5.13 and
earlier, QEMM-50/60 5.00 and earlier, and QRAM 1.01 and earlier;
it gives the error message "CON code page driver cannot be
initialized."  A new field in the DOS 5 device header that
identifies the end of memory is the reason for this failure;
future versions of LOADHI.SYS will be able to load DISPLAY.SYS
into upper memory.

80386 users who run DESQview under DOS 5's EMM386.EXE memory
scheme instead of QEMM-386 will commonly observe smaller window
sizes in DESQview, less access to expanded memory in which to run
multiple programs, a diminished ability to run programs in
background or in small windows without video conflicts, and
other problems.  It is strongly recommended in general that users
on 80386 systems use QEMM386 as their 80386 memory manager,
for the following reasons:

1.  QEMM-386 commonly provides 96K more High RAM by default
than EMM386 on non-PS/2 systems, and 32K more by default on
PS/2 systems.  EMM386 allows these areas to be included
manually, but this requires some expertise.

2.  EMM386 provides no Analysis feature.  This would help a novice
user determine whether the B000 and E000 areas could be
included.  It also lets QEMM-386 users reclaim unused
addresses in the system ROM and in other areas in high
memory, which is a great advantage to memory-hungry users.

3.  EMM386 has no OPTIMIZE program to automatically load
TSRs and device drivers into the optimum regions of upper
memory.  Novice users have difficulty getting good results
from the LOADHI feature without OPTIMIZE.

4.  EMM386 provides no control over the region of High RAM
that can be used to load programs high.

5.  DOS 5 has no equivalent to Manifest.

6.  DOS 5 has no equivalent for VIDRAM, which allows users
to extend conventional memory on EGA/VGA systems
that aren't using EGA/VGA graphics.

7.  EMM386 cannot manage ShadowRAM or Top Memory, a feature
that QEMM-386 users on limited-memory systems depend heavily
upon.  Many one-meg systems will have nothing to manage but
ShadowRAM or Top Memory.

8.  Microsoft Windows 3.0 Standard Mode will not run under EMM386.

9.  EMM386 can't map ROMs into faster RAM.

10.  EMM386 can't increase the size of conventional memory
on monochrome, Hercules, CGA, and 512K systems.


MICROSOFT's automated support line is 206/646-5103 for DOS 5.