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1993-12-01
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4DOS and MS-DOS 5.0
(Copyright 1991, JP Software Inc., All Rights Reserved. Published by
JP Software Inc., P.O. Box 1470, E. Arlington, MA 02174 USA, (617)
646-3975. Released June 11, 1991.)
4DOS Compatible with DOS 5
As you've probably heard, the newest release of MS-DOS, version 5.0,
was announced today, and may already be on the shelves at your
favorite computer store. DOS 5 contains a number of important
enhancements, but few of them are in the area of command processing.
4DOS continues to offer a vast improvement over the standard DOS
command processor, so you can continue to enjoy the improved power,
flexibility, and control provided by 4DOS while using this latest
version of DOS.
We've done extensive testing with 4DOS and DOS 5, and we're pleased
to be able to tell you that they're fully compatible. You can
install 4DOS under DOS 5 as you have under earlier versions of DOS,
and continue to use all the features, power, and flexibility that
4DOS provides. 4DOS versions 3.02a and 3.03 are fully compatible
with DOS 5; the same is almost certainly true of 4DOS 3.0 and 3.01,
but we have not specifically tested these older versions.
These notes tell you how to use the current release of 4DOS with
DOS 5. A major new release of 4DOS, to be released later this
summer, will add many new features and improvements, take advantage
of new capabilities offered by DOS 5, and adjust some 4DOS command
switches to conform more closely to those used in DOS 5. (The term
"DOS 5", as we use it here, refers to MS-DOS 5.0; for information on
using 4DOS with DR-DOS 5.0 see the COMPAT.DOC file that came with
your copy of 4DOS.)
Installing 4DOS with DOS 5
The first thing you'll notice if you install DOS 5 from the retail
upgrade package is that 4DOS doesn't get loaded. That's because DOS
5's SETUP installation program converts your SHELL= line in
CONFIG.SYS to load COMMAND.COM. To fix this, just save a copy of
CONFIG.SYS before installing DOS 5, and use your editor to move the
old 4DOS SHELL= line back to your new CONFIG.SYS. If you haven't
saved a copy of CONFIG.SYS, use the one SETUP saves on your DOS 5
Uninstall disk as CONFIG.DAT.
You may also find that 4DOS's HELP appears not to work properly
under DOS 5, whether you invoke it with the HELP command or the F1
key. This is probably because your DOS directory is in the PATH
before your 4DOS directory, so 4DOS finds DOS's HELP.EXE instead of
its own. To fix this, rearrange your PATH so the 4DOS directory is
before the DOS directory. If you don't want to rearrange the PATH,
you can set up a 4HELP environment variable to tell 4DOS where to
find the HELP.EXE program when F1 is pressed, and an alias to do the
same for the HELP command. If your 4DOS HELP.EXE program is in the
directory C:\4DOS, and DOS's HELP.EXE program is in C:\DOS, the
appropriate commands to add to AUTOEXEC would be:
set 4help=c:\4dos\help.exe
alias help c:\4dos\help.exe
alias doshelp c:\dos\help.exe
The second alias allows you to use the command DOSHELP if you want to
access DOS 5's HELP. In the next release of 4DOS we will change the
name of the HELP program to 4HELP.EXE to avoid conflicts with DOS 5's
HELP as well as many other software packages that use the name
HELP.EXE for their help systems.
Once you've taken care of these minor glitches, you can install and run
4DOS normally under DOS 5.
4DOS and DOS 5 Upper Memory Block Support
4DOS uses Upper Memory Blocks (UMBs) to support the /U and /E:nnnnU
startup switches; see your 4DOS manual for the details. UMBs can be
provided by most 386 memory managers (e.g. 386MAX or QEMM) and by
some 286 products (e.g. MOVE'EM or QRAM, with appropriate hardware).
Under MS-DOS 4 and below, UMBs are managed by your memory manager or
an XMS driver. DOS 5 introduces a new approach where UMBs can be
managed by DOS itself, if you use the DOS=UMB directive in
CONFIG.SYS. 4DOS currently uses UMBs allocated by your memory
manager or XMS driver, but can't access UMBs managed by DOS 5. If
you have a memory manager with UMB support you'll probably find that
it provides more flexible UMB management than DOS 5, and continue to
use it; in this case 4DOS's /U and /E:nnnnU options will work just
fine. If you do allow DOS 5 to manage your UMBs, the 4DOS version 3
/U and /E:nnnnU switches will not work, eliminating the memory
savings they normally provide. Our upcoming release will fully
support the use of UMBs managed by DOS 5.
DOS 5 adds one new internal command which uses UMBs, LOADHIGH (or LH),
which we've also added to the next release of 4DOS. LOADHIGH works only
with DOS 5 UMB management, so if you don't choose to use DOS 5 to manage
UMBs, you can skip this tip. However you can access DOS 5's LOADHIGH
command right now with two aliases:
alias loadhigh command /c loadhigh
alias lh loadhigh
These aliases assume that COMMAND.COM is in a directory that's on your
PATH. If you use them and the LOADHIGH operation is unsuccesful, you
may leave a "hole" in lower memory. This is not usually harmful, but
can waste memory.
DOS=HIGH and 4DOS
DOS 5 also includes a DOS=HIGH option to load the kernel of DOS into
memory above 1MB. This option is unrelated to UMBs, and works properly
with 4DOS. The memory savings it achieves will be added to any you've
already generated with 4DOS.
ANSI Driver Detection under DOS 5
On some systems, once DOS 5 is installed you may see strings like
"[2J" on the screen when you try to do a CLS command, or see similar
problems with COLOR. This is because, under DOS 5, 4DOS may think an
ANSI driver is loaded when in fact you aren't using one. To get
around the problem use the command SETDOS /A2 to tell 4DOS to assume
an ANSI driver is not installed. Place this command in the 4START
file (see page 25 of your 4DOS manual) to make it effective in both
primary and secondary shells. SETDOS /A2 is available in 4DOS 3.03
and above, but is not listed in the version 3.03 documentation.
DOS External Command Error Messages
MS-DOS versions 4 and 5 include an unusual mechanism for displaying
errors from external DOS commands like XCOPY, FORMAT, or DISKCOPY.
These commands use the command processor to retrieve their error
messages; if the messages aren't found they display cryptic messages
like "Parse error 3" or "Extended error 7". 4DOS does not currently
support this mechanism, but will support it in the next release, due
out later this summer. In most cases these errors are generated by
simple typographical errors which are almost immediately obvious. If
you see error messages like this while using MS-DOS 4 or 5 with 4DOS,
and the cause isn't obvious, check the attached list of error codes
to interpret the message.
4DOS and the DOS 5 Shell
Finally, DOS 5 contains an entirely rewritten DOS shell (DOSSHELL.EXE).
4DOS works fine with DOSSHELL. If you have COMSPEC set properly for
4DOS and use Shift+F9 to get a command prompt from DOSSHELL, you'll get
4DOS. However if you use the built-in "MS-DOS Command Prompt" menu
choice, you'll get COMMAND.COM. To change this, put the cursor on this
menu choice and then select File Properties from the menu, and change
the command line to load 4DOS.COM (with its full path) instead of
COMMAND.COM.