CompuServe Messages

Dave, On Sharp machines, the problem is NOT the BIOS, but rather the SAVE_TO_DISK (or perhaps SLEEP_TO_DISK..I forget the exact wording Sharp uses) sleep mode that Sharp laptops use. This is a problem with Sharp machines and DoubleSpace…and it's been stated so by MicroSoft. So yes, your buddy is (in your own words) an idiot. Do you honestly believe that MicroSoft wouldn't thoroughly test any new release with the #1 selling BIOS ROMs? FYI, the reason the SAVE(SLEEP)_TO_DISK is causing problems is when a Sharp goes into sleep mode…it writes all it's memory out to disk. When doublespace is active, that information gets compressed of course. Everything is well and good at this point…then the problem occurs. The system powers down the CPU and RAM. What's supposed to occur when it comes out of suspend mode is that it re-reads that information from disk and back to RAM. Of course at this point, it can't find it…the save file is no longer visible since doublespace is not yet been reactivated. This is what the Microsoft product support folks have been saying. It certainly makes a whole lot more sense than some generic problem with all ROMs from a major manufacturer. As to your customer…I would strongly suspect the fault lies somewhere other than in DOS 6 itself. It is possible that DOS 6 brought out an existing weakness in the 386BB itself…or in your modifications to the board to make it a 486 BB. I have no idea which may be true. In fact, it could be as simple as your customer not following the upgrade instructions or reading the manual. DOS 6 in an of itself, is nothing but DOS 5 with a few new utilities. For example, many folks reported problems trying to use the versions of EMM386 or SmartDrv that were supplied with Windows 3.1 rather than the newer versions of the same programs supplied with DOS 6. As soon as they switched to the new versions (and this IS mentioned in the manual) their problems disappeared. Don