home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!fuug!mits!kennu
- From: kennu@mits.mdata.fi (Kenneth Falck)
- Subject: Re: Novice question: how to boot from a bat file?
- Message-ID: <1992Sep1.155702.18745@mits.mdata.fi>
- Organization: Microdata Oy, Helsinki, Finland
- References: <Bttt82.53K@NCoast.ORG> <1992Aug31.183957.1391@mits.mdata.fi> <1992Aug31.214211.20267@midway.uchicago.edu>
- Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:57:02 GMT
- Lines: 56
-
- In article <1992Aug31.214211.20267@midway.uchicago.edu> pynq@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
- >In article <1992Aug31.183957.1391@mits.mdata.fi> kennu@mits.mdata.fi (Kenneth Falck) writes:
- >>Of course you can trash your hard disk if you boot prematurely,
- >>but it has nothing to do with whether you do it by jumping
- >>to FFFF:0000 or pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del or the Reset button.
- >
- >How long ago was it that we were hashing this one out before?
- >
- >(As in, is it just my imagination or has the recycle rate gone ski-high
- >in just that last few weeks?)
-
- I don't know, I haven't been following the traffic 100% constantly,
- though I remember some discussion about Smartdrive.
-
- >Anyway, for the record, it makes all the difference in the world whether
- >you use JMP FFFF:0 or emulate C/A/D, if you are using a write-behind cache.
- >
- >Some people think this is a bug in SmartDrive... (If you don't get
- >this, you really haven't been paying attention!)
-
- Well, I suppose the major difference is that Smartdrive probably captures
- IRQ1 and checks for Ctrl-Alt-Del before continuing with the keyboard
- interrupt, and cannot check for a jump to FFFF:0000. (I wonder can it
- be done, by the way, by placing some odd statement in FFFF:0000....
- I've never checked out what that address really contains anyway.)
-
- But anyway, my point was meant to be that nobody should reboot the
- computer before making sure all buffers have been flushed, no matter
- who does the flushing. (Smartdrive after a timeout or the user by
- pressing a key combination or running a "sync" command.) It just
- seemed strange to flame someone who posts a reboot.com program
- because this program could be "dangerous" or something. (Unless
- I misunderstood that posting.)
-
- >Anyway, somebody ought to get Ralf to post the one true solution to the
- >auto-reboot program.
-
- Hmm... sounds like something my religion teacher might say... (Yes,
- religion is compulsory at school in Finland.) But anyway, if someone
- wants to reboot from a batch file, why not just first ask the user
- to press a key to signal that he has flushed the cache buffers,
- and then reboot freely?
-
- Unfortunately I just don't remember what exactly was the original
- purpose of this rebooting from a batch file ... Just wanted to
- add my opinion on auto-rebooting in general.
-
- Actually, in this age of background-writing caches, the next MSDOS
- release should probably contain a "flush cache buffers" interrupt
- service which could become a standard point for all different
- caching software to check for a call to flush. (Though I doubt
- that even Microsoft's own software would reliably support it....:-)
-
- --
- kennu@mits.mdata.fi
-
-