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[About The Guide]
USING BNU
When running BNU, avoid using any other software which
purports to enhance communications products (such as
16550.EXE). These WILL NOT work, and could cause your system
to crash or work unreliably. BNU already uses the 16550 and
16550AN to full advantage.
Avoid loading DOS's MODE command with BNU. BNU is
incompatible with it's communications handling - if loaded
after BNU, then both may fail to operate reliably. Printer
redirection is usually ok, provided MODE is loaded before
BNU.
If you need to set a COM port's baud rate (which is why MODE
is most often used), then you can get BNU to do that by
"locking" the baud rate (using BNU /L as documented below)
which sets the COM port immediately to that rate. Remember
to "unlock" the baud rate if not using a constant speed
between computer and modem.
BNU.COM would normally be loaded in your AUTOEXEC.BAT, and
installed as part of your normal system startup. A typical
command line might be:
BNU /F
[Loads BNU.COM with default settings and fast ANSI]
BNU will respond with a short copyright notice and an
indication that it has been successfully loaded. The number
of ports installed for will also be shown.
BNU.SYS must be loaded from CONFIG.SYS (and probably can be
using QuarterDeck's DEVICE.COM under DESQview but I have only
run it this way for short periods) using a "device" line,
such as:
device = C:\BNU.SYS /P2 /L0:19200,8N1 /F
[Loads BNU.SYS for 2 ports, port 0 (COM1) locked at
19200 baud 8 data bits 1 stop bit normal parity, fast
ANSI]
A similar copyright message is displayed as an indication
that the driver has been installed.
If BNU encounters an error in the command line, the driver
will NOT be installed. The device driver version displays
the command line parameter in error.
BNU has been successfully run loaded "high" above the 640K
mark using both QuarterDeck's QEMM(tm) and Qualitas'
386MAX(tm) 386 memory management products. It should be
noted that there may be performance differences as a result
of either 386i virtual mode switching or differences in
hardware RAM access speeds between mother-board RAM and that
used on an extended RAM card. You should test the results on
your own hardware before deciding which method is better,
since generalisations without considering all the factors
involved can be misleading.
Other enhanced memory products may or may not work, but I am
either not familiar with them or do not know enough about
them to comment.
Since BNU.COM can be unloaded at any time (unless BNU
considers it unsafe to do so for various reasons), you should
be aware that doing so sometimes creates "holes" in memory.
This is not a problem so far as MS-DOS or various
applications running in it are concerned, but the effect of
releasing more memory for DOS to use may be lost. This is
almost always the case when unloaded from within a batch
file: the memory freed will not be available until after the
batch file terminates.
If the desired effect is to "disable" BNU completely, refer
to the /Q and /C command line switches below. This leaves
BNU loaded, but provides a means of disabling the driver
completely and forces use of the BIOS INT 14H functions or a
previously installed driver.
One note regarding PS/2 hardware and applications which use
its specific INT 14H functions (though I haven't actually
seen any). A PS/2's extended BIOS contains a superset of INT
14H services, which were designed after FOSSILs first become
available for PC's. The additional services are NOT
compatible with the extended functions supported by FOSSIL,
and you should therefore either unload (/U) or deactivate
(/Q) BNU prior running such software.
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Written by Dave Pearson