ASP Advantage 1994 2nd Q2

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Text File | 1994-01-06 | 13.6 KB | 313 lines

BOOT.SYS QEMM.DOC Version 2.02 BOOT.SYS(tm) and the accompanying programs and documentation are Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 Hans Salvisberg All rights reserved This file contains information related to using Quarterdeck's QEMM 7.01 (and probably later) under BOOT.SYS control: 1. What's special about QEMM 7.01+ 2. How BOOT.SYS handles it 3. Using BOOT.EDIT 4. Using BOOT.RENAME 5. New Predicates 6. Running OPTIMIZE with BOOT.SYS installed 7. Using DOSDATA.SYS (7.02+) with DOS=LOW 8. Trouble-shooting 9. Acknowledgements 1. What's special about QEMM 7.01+ Version 7.01 of QEMM introduced a new feature called DOS-Up, which loads a larger part of DOS into upper memory than DOS can do on its own. This feature is enabled with commands like: DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS DEVICE=c:\qemm\QEMM386.SYS <parameters> DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOS-UP.SYS @filename The general idea behind DOS-Up is this: Dosdata.Sys goes resi- dent and immediately restarts the boot process. Dosdata.Sys keeps control during the short reboot and can manage DOS as DOS boots up. DOS starts executing Config.Sys and loads Dosdata.Sys again. Dosdata.Sys detects that it's running for the second time and lets the boot process continue; it doesn't even display a sign-on message. In a single-configuration setting, this process is completely transparent and you as the user will probably not notice what's going on, as long as Dosdata.Sys is loaded at the top of Con- fig.Sys. However, in a multi-configuration setting with BOOT.SYS (or any other third-party configuration manager), you may not want to load Dosdata.Sys for all your configurations, and thus you can't put it at the top of Config.Sys. 2. How BOOT.SYS handles it Let's look at a sample Config.Sys fragment with BOOT.SYS installed: DEVICE=c:\boot\BOOT.SYS DEVICE=BOOT.1 Plain DOS {commands for Plain DOS configuration} DEVICE=BOOT.2 Maximum Lower Memory DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS DEVICE=c:\qemm\QEMM386.SYS <parameters> DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOS-UP.SYS @<filename> {more commands} DEVICE=BOOT.3 Yet Another Configuration {...} DEVICE=BOOT.END Notice that BOOT.SYS is at the top and Dosdata.Sys and its two companion drivers are in configuration #2 (MaxMem). Selecting the Plain DOS configuration will not load any of the QEMM driv- ers. If you want to boot up the MaxMem configuration, your boot sequence will look like this: 1. BOOT.SYS displays its menu and you select the MaxMem config- uration. BOOT.SYS detects that it will be followed by a driver called Dosdata.Sys. It saves your menu choice(s) in a safe place and passes control back to DOS to execute the configuration you selected. 2. DOS runs Dosdata.Sys, which restarts the boot process. 3. BOOT.SYS is called for the second time; it realizes that it was restarted via Dosdata.Sys and that you've already made your menu choice(s) in step 1, and it makes those same choices again for you, without redisplaying its menu(s). Then it returns control back to DOS. 4. Dos runs Dosdata.Sys again, which passes control back to DOS without even displaying a sing-on message. 5. The boot process continues normally with QEMM386.Sys, DOS- Up.Sys, etc. Thanks to the special DOS-Up support built into BOOT.SYS you will barely notice anything special going on, with one exception: the BOOT.EDIT command. 3. Using BOOT.EDIT The BOOT.EDIT command in BOOT.SYS lets you edit selected Con- fig.Sys lines on-the-fly while booting up (see the BOOT.SYS docu- mentation). You can use BOOT.EDIT with all executable commands, but if DOS-Up is present, the editing needs to be done either in the first or the second pass, depending on what command you want to edit. We need to distinguish four categories of commands: A. DOS= commands are presented for editing during the first pass (step 1 in the list above). This is a technical restriction. B. BOOT.SET commands can be used in various ways, e.g. to change the menu structure on-the-fly by changing a BOOT.? condition, and/or to set different parameters for drivers loaded later on. In the former situation, a variable needs to have its proper value during both passes, in the latter situation only in the second pass, but BOOT.SYS cannot tell what a variable will be used for, and it presents BOOT.SET commands in both passes for editing (more below). C. All other editable commands following Dosdata.Sys are only presented in the second pass (step 3). D. There should usually be no commands preceding Dosdata.Sys. If there are any, they are treated like BOOT.SET. It is inconvenient and often unnecessary to make the same edits twice for BOOT.SET commands (and commands in category D). If you know that a certain variable will only be used during the second pass (step 3), e.g. because it serves as a parameter to a device driver that won't be loaded until the second pass, you can add the /Q2 parameter to the BOOT.EDIT command. For symmetry reasons /Q1 is also allowed even though we do not see any practical application for it. There is a simple test for finding out when you can use /Qi: if a variable is really used in both passes, you need to make exactly the same edits twice for the boot process to work as intended. If it's only used in one pass (pass i), then it doesn't matter what value it has in the other pass. The complete syntax for BOOT.EDIT looks like this: DEVICE=BOOT.EDIT [/Qi] [/Tn] [text] The /Qi parameter should only be used with commands in categories B and D--all other commands are handled automatically by BOOT.SYS. If both /Qi and /Tn are given, /Qi has to come first. 4. Using BOOT.RENAME Any BOOT.RENAME commands will be carried out in pass 1 and ignored in pass 2. 5. New Predicates The new predicates QEMM_PASS1 and QEMM_PASS2 can be used with BOOT.IF if you need to distinguish between the two passes; they are true in the presence of Dosdata.Sys only. QEMM_PASS1 is only true below the Dosdata.Sys line! 6. Running OPTIMIZE with BOOT.SYS installed Quarterdeck's OPTIMIZE was not designed to handle BOOT.SYS correctly. To run OPTIMIZE, you need to manually extract the configuration you wish to optimize, run OPTIMIZE, and manually reinsert the optimized configuration into Config.Sys. An alternative is to TRY to run OPTIMIZE with BOOT.SYS in place: 0. Create the file OPTIMIZE.EXC in your c:\qemm directory with the single line BOOT in it. If there already is an OPTIMIZE.EXC file, just add that line at the bottom. You only have to do this once. The remaining steps have to be done every time you wish to run OPTIMIZE. 1. For every configuration that has QEMM in it (EXCEPT for the one you wish to optimize) comment out the lines DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS DEVICE=c:\qemm\QEMM386.SYS ... DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOS-UP.SYS ... by putting REM in front of each. 2. Run OPTIMIZE and select the proper configuration on the boot menu(s) each time. After OPTIMIZE has completed success- fully: 3. Put the DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS line back where it belongs (OPTIMIZE moves it to the top of the file). 4. OPTIMIZE will always change the DOS-Up.Sys line to DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOS-UP.SYS @c:\qemm\DOS-UP.DAT no matter what the name of the data file was. If you have more than one QEMM configuration, you have to use different versions of DOS-UP.DAT for each: you have to change the file name on the DOS-Up.Sys line back to the proper name for this configuration and rename the newly optimized DOS-UP.DAT file accordingly. 5. Remove the REM's that you inserted in step 1. We have had some success in running OPTIMIZE this way, even if other memory managers were present in other configurations, but there's no guarantee this will work in all cases. You will have to experiment with your particular setup and you should compare the optimized Config.Sys line for line with the original one (usually saved as CONFIG.QDK) at least once to make sure the OPTIMIZE process doesn't introduce any other unwanted changes that you need to undo (besides 3 and 4 above). 7. Using DOSDATA.SYS (7.02+) with DOS=LOW Version 7.02 of QEMM has brought us another small twist. If you have set up BOOT.SYS with DOS=HIGH,NOUMB at the bottom of CON- FIG.SYS, as recommended, and you want to use DOSDATA.SYS in a DOS=LOW configuration, your PC may not be able to boot up under MS/PC-DOS 5.0 and later. You can work around the problem by adding an undocumented parame- ter to the DEVICE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS line, depending on your DOS version and whether you use disk compression: DOS 5.x /INITBASE=1101 DOS 6.x /INITBASE=1101 DOS 6.x with Stacker /INITBASE=1A01 DOS 6.x with DoubleSpace /INITBASE=1201 The parameter you supply is just a rough estimate and DOSDATA.SYS will do the necessary fine-tuning automatically. If you should be unable to boot up with the values above, here is the procedure to find out the correct value for your system: 1. Add the undocumented switch /REPORT to the DEVI- CE=c:\qemm\DOSDATA.SYS line and boot up with DOS=HIGH. Note the value reported by DOSDATA.SYS. 2. Add 0A00h (hexadecimal) to the value; high negative numbers will roll over to small positive ones. If you don't know how to do hexadecimal arithmetics ask a friend or contact us. 3. Use this value for /INITBASE=hhhh. /INITBASE is needed with QEMM 7.02 and 7.03. Later versions may not need it anymore. 8. Trouble-shooting We sometimes get error reports caused by improper use of QEMM. Please consider the following notes before contacting us. We believe the information presented here is correct, but of course the Quarterdeck documentation and tech support have the final word. - If Dosdata.Sys is loaded, it must always be followed by DOS- Up.Sys, otherwise your system will hang. - The typical load sequence is BOOT.SYS, Dosdata.Sys, QEMM386.Sys, and DOS-Up.Sys. If you have a reason for omit- ting QEMM386.Sys, DOS-Up.Sys can be made to continue without waiting for a key press by adding the NOPAUSE parameter. - QSETUP and OPTIMIZE always put Dosdata.Sys at the very top of Config.Sys. According to our tests Dosdata.Sys doesn't mind running after other drivers (such as BOOT.SYS) and other commands (such as the ones that are often listed above BOOT.SYS to provide BUFFERS, FILES, STACKS, etc. defaults for all configurations). However, if there is a problem, try moving these other commands below Dosdata.Sys. - You can bypass installation of Dosdata.Sys and/or QEMM386.Sys by holding down the Alt key while DOS is loading the driver and pressing the Esc key at the prompt. To bypass both drivers you need to depress the Alt key again very quickly after the first Esc. 9. Acknowledgements Thanks to Phil Gardner and Michael Chapman of Quarterdeck for their help in implementing the DOS-Up support. QEMM is a registered trademark of Quarterdeck Office Systems.