#DOS 6/Bridgeboard
56 messages in this thread
I've been waiting for this question to come up, but it hasn't – so here
goes:
I've installed DOS 6 on my 386/25 BB, and, naturally, ran DBLSPACE to
compress my hard drive. Because of this, I have to use the hard drive
auto-config selection in SETUP in order to accommodate this new
arrangement. Now, the startup hangs up while the program "reads" the disk,
requiring me to reboot. Has anyone figured out a way to configure SETUP so
that this doesn't happen? It's not a real hassle, but it's annoying.
Thanks in advance…..Nancy
Nancy,
I haven't tried installed DOS 6 on my BB (it's only an A2088 anyway, so
no big deal), but have installed it on my NCR laptop. I would strongly
suspect you don't need to change setup at all, that you should have left
it just as it was before you installed DOS 6. The pysical drive type is
still the same..same physical parameters. DoubleSpace doesn't change any
of that…including the physical capacity of the drive.
What it does is compress before it stores onto the drive, and
decompress as it reads from the drive. Quite similar to the way LHARC,
ZIP, ARC, etc. files work. All of the data is there, just compressed to
fit into a smaller space.
So, during bootup, the BIOS ROM has to know what kind of drive is out
there, in order to figure out how to read the partition and boot code from
the drive. That information is not compressed. Under DOS 6, the boot
code looks for the file DBLSPACE.BIN (also not compressed) and if it finds
it…loads it. DBLSPACE.BIN then looks for compressed drives, if there,
it reads the DBLSPACE.INI file (also not compressed) and mounts drives it
finds there and re-arranges drive letters internally (thus..presuming you
have a standard setup…renames your real C: drive to H: and then points
all calls to C: to the dblspace software and CVF.
In other words…for bootup, the system has to know what type of drive
is really out there..not what it will eventually become.
Try this…(presuming it did the normal thing and created an H: drive)
go to the H: drive and type DIR /A and you'll see those uncompressed files
it needs for bootup and you'll see the DBLSPACE.000 file which is what
you're really working with when you address your compressed C: drive.
Don
I'll try that. It may work. The reason I assumed it wouldn't was
because AFTER I installed DBLSPACE I ended up at the setup program at
startup. So, I just set it to auto-config.
However, under DOS 6, using DBLSPACE, Drive C: boots from the
compressed file, so I'm wondering if there's a possibility that the
byte count of the unit, as perceived by Startup, might not be
diminished by the contents of H:. If this is so, how would that
affect the number of sectors, etc?
Aside from having to do a warm reboot everytime I go to the PC side,
I'm crazy about DBLESPACE, though. My drive went from about 35 meg
free to 183 meg free (on a 240 meg actual drive). Not bad, I'd say.
Still, it would be nice to be able to go directly into Windows
without all this messing around.
Hope people keep contributing to this thread until the problem is solved.
Thanks a lot for the response…..Nancy
Don't forget, at boot time…what you see after bootup as drive H:
is drive C: at boot time.
Part of the boot procedure is that DoubleSpace "swaps" drive letters.
Basically, the boot procedure is as follows:
Power on
Self Test (POST)
ROM code goes out and looks for a boot disk in A:
If found, boots from the floppy
ROM then looks for first HD and if it finds it, looks in CMOS for
what type of drive it is.
Based on CMOS parameters, looks in partition table for active
partition..and if found looks on active partition for io.sys
and msdos.sys
Presuming it finds them, loads them up and turns control over to
them.
And this is where the magic occurs…msdos.sys goes out and looks
for dblspace.bin on that same drive. If found, it's loaded and then
dblspace.bin goes out and looks for dblspace.ini and if it's found,
it looks in it and mounts the drives that are described in it.
In your case, it would see that the file DBLSPACE.000 should be
mounted as drive C: and the .INI file also says that what is currently
you C: drive…should now be called H:…so it does it's magic and
changes the name of C: to H: and then mounts the compressed volumn
as C:
It now reverts back to the "normal" boot code and continues with
the bootup looking on what is now C: for config.sys, then autoexec.bat
and so forth.
If you'll look on your H: drive, you'll see all those files there if
you use the DIR /A command at the H: prompt. You should see the following
files:
io.sys
msdos.sys
dblspace.bin
dblspace.ini
dblspace.000
[and if you've got a windows permanent swap file] 386spart.par
and any other files you may have copied to H:
So on bootup…what you now see as H: is what the ROM sees as the first
HD and that's what must be described in CMOS so the ROM code knows where
to find things. It's only after you're past the ROM code (when you see
the Starting MS-DOS… line) that drive names change.
If SETUP is poping up, it is probably for some reason other than it
doesn't understand the HD's configuration. It may have to do with the way
you (or DOS 6's setup programs) reconfigured memory.
For example, on my DOS machine…I moved some of the memory around so
that a different memory configuration than was in CMOS…so the first
bootup "yelled" at me until I reconfigured it.
Let me know how things work out if you reset SETUP's HD parameters
backto the way it was before you installed DOS 6.
Don
Don,
I tried it, and, you were right. It works fine.
There was one additional glitch – AMOUSE refused to load on boot up.
However, when I looked at my AUTOEXEC.BAT file, I discovered that MEMMAKER
was loading AMOUSE into high memory. I just took out the LH command, and
now everything appears to work fine.
I'm going to save your message for future reference, though – I have a
hunch some questions will come up on our user group board pertaining to
this topic.
PS – aren't you the same person who resolved my quandry about the new
Janus not synching with the BINDDRIVERS commands under WB 2.04? (When C=
was thoroughly stumped!?)
Whatta guy! Thank you.
…..Nancy
In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Nancy,
Yup…I'm one in the same. I try to keep up on BB type things but it
is a bit difficult when all I've got is the XT BB, but since I also use
DOS 6 on my notebook computer, I at least knew what was going on with it.
Don
I'm sure glad you're a whiz. Here's another puzzle:
Suddenly my BB has started booting up w/o installing AMouse. It will
install, though, on a reboot – although sometimes I get the SETUP program
first. (I just press END to reboot.)
It could be related to something on the Amiga side, though. A few weeks
ago, I had sort of a hard disk catastrophy in that, while I was printing
out some pages from ProPage, I decided to do some disk copying. Suddenly
my system slowed down, and I "dropped" a floppy icon on one of my Work
partitions. Well, that was the end as far as booting was concerned. I
could boot from a separate disk, and everything was there, but I couldn't
boot from the hard drive.
I never did figure it out, although I have, and read, just about every
Amiga reference book available. I finally took it to my friendly Amiga
tech, and he "fixed" it..
However, my system has never been quite the same since. For example, I had
previously had both CNote and ClockDJ running at Startup, but now, if I
run them, I get a "recoverable software error."
I'm not sure where to even begin trying to tackle this problem. Ideally,
I'd like to move right into Windows when I go to the BB. As it is, I get
there in fits and starts.
Do you have any idea what could be wrong?
Gratefully, in advance,
…..Nancy
From Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Nancy,
When you dropped the floppy ICON onto the partition, the system started
copying all the files from that floppy onto your work partition. And, of
course, overwritting same named files with files from the floppy.
I'd suggest re-installing the Janus software on the Amiga side. It
might not hurt to also re-install the AmigaDOS software from the original
floppies. Make sure you've got a backup of your startup files or anything
else you've modified just in case.
My guess is that you've edited the Startup-Sequence rather than editing
the User-Startup file. While that's ok…it can cause problems when
upgrading since it's highly possible that the upgrade will also replace
Startup-Sequence.
As to the BB. It should boot cleanly into Windows…presuming you have
it setup to do that. Again, the re-install of the Janus software may
clear things up. One other thing that may help is to do the reset and
rebind trick. On my BB, I've got a hardware add-on that among other
things, gives me password protection during startup. I use it, not to
keep others from using my computer, but to halt the BB's bootup before it
even gets to config.sys. Then when I reboot it…I'm sure that it's not
in the middle of something..particularly a disk write. I don't know if
you have that capability in SETUP (to add a password) but if you do, try
it. Add the password and then do the reset/2nd binddrivers and see if
that helps. If SETUP doesn't allow a password, you can do essentiall the
same thing by adding a PAUSE at the top of AutoExec.bat. You'll have to
hit a CR to make it continue of course.
Don
I've "kept" your response, and I'll try it tomorrow. My guess is that it
will work. (Makes sense.)
But the only time I altered the startup-sequence was when I was trying to
get the new Janus to work w/2.04 – and that only amounted to scattering
BINDDRIVERS around. (I deleted them.)
The fellow who "fixed" my foul-up might have added or deleted something,
though. As a matter of fact, I looked at it yesterday and it seemed a bit
shorter. (I was working on a job, so I didn't really have time to go into
it.) I'll check that out, too.
I should be a professional computer person. Lately I'm spending more hours
fooling around with the computer than I do working with it. (I'm a
writer.) Are you a professional? You just know so much about these things
it boggles my mind.
…..Nancy
From Edmonton, AB, Canada
You are lucky you even got MS-Trash 6.0 to work….the horror stories I've
been hearing are unreal….I have a 486 BB customer who crashed tring to
install it, and get's a "MS-DOS 6.0 not installed proporly, insert
uninstall disk" opon boot up. He can't get rid of this message even after
REPARTITIONING AND FORMATING his drive with DOS 5.0.
I dunno what to tell this guy…I'm going to have him send the drive in
and see what I can do. I've heard of this happening to several other
people….the result being they had to REPLACE their HD.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
I'd try removing the partitions with FDISK, then booting from a lower
version DOS, say 3.2, Add in the partitions with FDISK, format, then boot
with DOS 5.0 and then reformat and install the software.
If I see this actually confirmed, I'll never trust Microsoft MSDOS again!
It sounds like there doing some wierd cheating at the driver level, that
just isn't safe!
DrDOS looks better and better when you have to use one of THOSE
machines…
Bob Comer
My personal opinion of DOS 6.0? Trash it if you've bought it! I've had
nothing but problems with it and havn't had yet one inch of problems from my
DOS 5.1a. DrDos I don't like one bit because it's too cryptic to use and
secondly it uses Stacker which I dislike very much. I had Stacker trash a 230
meg hard drive before it was even compresses, now I use SuperStor Pro and
havn't had any problems with it or the previous versions.
Deryk
Luckily, I haven't bought it yet… 🙂
Bob Comer
Thats what this guy did…I told him to boot off 5.0….remove the
partions…reboot with the setup disk. Worked fine, considering he gets a
MS-DOS 6.0 error ,and can't boot off th HD.
Well Bill Gates is getting married, if this dosen't prove he's crazy I
dunno what does. :>
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
I don't know about the getting married part, (I want to some day.)
But MS definitely has a wierd sense of "system friedly software"!
You know the old saying, "power corrupts, and abosolute power corrupts
absolutely" or words to that effect anyway…
Bob Comer
All I know is, if I was pulling in oh…just under 6 BILLION a YEAR…and
still in my 30's, getting married would be the furthest thing from my
mind.
Dave the Playboy
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Yeah, I'd agree. If I had Gates' billions, I'd be making like Robert
Redford to Demi Moore in that current flick, I suspect. <g>
Not to put Demi down (she used to be hot, I don't like her with short
hair)…but for a million bucks…don't you think you could buy
better? Samantha Fox, Traci Lords, Marla Maples…oh thats right,
Marla is up to 5 million now :> Donald Trump….a man of my own
heart
Dave,
Well…now we know why your customer keeps getting the message. You
told him to boot from the DOS 6 install disk. Among other things, it goes
out and looks to see what's going on with the system. It sees an
incomplete DOS 6 install and trys to get the user to uninstall it so they
can start over again.
Have your user boot and install with DOS 5 and then do the DOS 6
upgrade.
As an alternative, have your user create a DOS 6 boot floppy via the /F
switch to INSTALL.
Don
I told him to boot from the dos 5.0 disks….he hasn't touched the 6.0
disk since the crash.
It won't let him "sys c:" when booting from a 5.0 floppy…..tells
him…get this….incorrect DOS version.
Kooky message to get when tring to transfer the current DOS version.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Dave,
I've been monitoring the activity on the MSDOS forum relative to DOS 6
and haven't seen any messages about similar problems to the one you
related. The VAST majority of problems I see are from people not reading
the manual and trying to do things that are specifically spelled out as no
no's in the manual (such as trying to use SmartDrv on the compressed
volumn itself).
I do agree that MSDOS isn't the neatest thing going, but it is a very
worthwhile improvement over DOS 5 if for no other reason than the
compression software.
I installed it on my NCR laptop and every test I've tried has worked
just fine…with the system now working as fast…or faster than it did
before. And, I went from 4.5Meg free (out of 120 Meg) to 78 Meg of free
diskspace.
I strongly suspect that your BB customer could very easily get rid of
that message if he simply created and booted from a DOS 6 floppy, got rid
of the config.sys and autoexec.bat files on his/her HD and SYS'ed it and
then started the install from scratch again.
Don
He FORMATTED THE DAMN THING….formatted…that should make everything
vanish….and he still gets the same message. This crash happened during
install. It's not a case of him screwing up…I walked him through
install.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Dave,
He formatted it under DOS 5 (according to your message)…I presume
that was after booting from a clean DOS 5 floppy? And that he used the /S
option to format to put DOS 5 on the disk?
I'm sure you're aware that FORMAT in and of itself does nothing but
check the sectors and 0 the FAT and root directory. It does not 0 the
sectors on the drive.
Use something like WIPEDISK to really 0 all the sectors, then FORMAT it
after booting with a DOS 5 floppy. There is nothing that I've seen in DOS
6 that will do ANY physical harm to a system.
Don
Some people over on GEnie have been trashing MS-DOS 6.0 on line for
similar reasons: Crashes, and then trouble de-installing it. They
didn't sound like neos to me, either.
Ron,
People have also been trashing it here in the MSDOS forum. But for
the most part, when they explained what they did, it turns out they
didn't follow the instructions. Yes, there were some folks who
(based on the message…for what that's worth) did everything right
and still had problems. But then there were lots of folks (like me)
who followed the instructions and aren't having problems at all.
Wait a minute!! Are you saying that MS-DOS 6.0 is actually trashing HD's
making them unusable again? Is this only for those using the autoboot
virtual drive or a actual PC hard drive? I have a friend that is
considering installing 6.0 for his 2386BB and would like to warn him if
there are major problems.
// John – K7KB (Flying via AutoPilot)
\X/ "Worf: To Hell with the Prime Directive – Give the Borg Windows!"
The customer I'm refering to has a Western Digital 250MB IDE HD….god
knows what it would do to a virtual drive.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Well my friend already had DOS 6.0 installed and he say's it's
working fine, no problems so far. He did mention that if someone was
using a program like Stacker previously that you have to be real
carefull with the installation of 6.0, like do it by the book.
That happened to me with SuperStor Pro, but the reason had nothing to
do with the BB – rather with my failure to realize that a "last
drive=" statement in my config.sys would cause SSP to gasp, roll over
and die (eating 95% of my drive in the process). I had to do a
low-level format to get rid of it. Your customer will probably have
to do the same. But if I were you, I'd double-check to see if he had
any memory-resident programs operating, OR a "last drive=" statement
operant. I'd bet it was one or the other.
BTW, I have SSP installed on my other 2000 (286 BB) and the
installation went with out a hitch. But – I don't have Windows on
that drive, and did not have any memory managers or pseudo-disks
operating.
Thanks for the response…..Nancy
He has an IDE drive…and I on't have an IDE low leveler.
Dave,
Have your customer do this (or you do it for him)
1. Boot from the DOS 6 install disk 1
2. During bootup, when you see the 'Starting MS-DOS…' prompt Hit the
F5 key to force it to bypass config.sys and autoexec.bat and "clean boot"
3. At the A: prompt type INSTALL /F
4. It will create a bootable floppy with a minimal set of files on the
floppy. It will not create a full set of install disks…but you don't
need them.
5. Now, reboot from that floppy and FORMAT /S the user's HD
6. After it copies the system files to the HD reboot from the HD
7. Now you should be able to put the install disk back in A: and redo
the installation of DOS 6.
Of course your user will then have to restore his files, making sure he
doesn't restore the DOS directory or the system files including config.sys
and autoexec.bat (he can restore those two files to different names and
then resolve the new and old versions by hand).
I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS, but it should work…it was the procedure
reccomended by [I forget who…but someone who should know] when some
other user trashed their HD due to a power glitch at the wrong time.
Don
I maybe should not say this, but my company just sent me E-mail telling me
not to use DoubleSpace if I had 6.0, period. They quoted disasterous loss
of data with no particulars. And my local dealer is dumping 6.0 upgrade
packs at below cost for some reason. Have you any comments on the
upgrade?
Tom Jones, Oklahoma City
What programs like stacker do is, look at each sector as 2
sectors…effectivly doubling the space, but it is very risky…I lost 300
megs with stacker 2.0
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Dave,
No it's not…what programs like Stacker (and DoubleSpace) do is sit in
the food chain between DOS and the drive and compress data as it goes onto
the drive and decompress it as it comes off…very similar to what LHARC,
ZIP, ARC and the like do.
Yes..there is more to it than that…but that's the basics. It has
nothing to do with looking at 1 sector as if it were two sectors.
Don
Thats not what my stacker manual said…I shouldn't have said programs
like stacker…I should just say stacker. Thats why stacker is the for
runner in compression….and in HD crashes.
Dave
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Dave,
Re-read your stacker manual. It makes it *appear* as if for each
sector, you now have two sectors. It does not make 2 sectors out of one,
in fact, it doesn't even give you a true doubling of space. It depends on
what type of file you're adding to a compressed drive. Get the amount of
free space on a compressed drive…then copy a 1 Meg ZIP'ed file onto that
drive and then get the amount of free space again. You'll find the
numbers differ by 2 Meg. Your 1 Meg file took up 2 Meg of space on the
compressed drive.
That's because the amount of free space reported is based on the
presumption that any new files you add will be close to the average 2:1
compression ration. ZIP files won't compress…and thus eat up the full 1
Meg of space…which means you lose 2 Meg of space if you were adding
"typical" files that would be able to compress at 2:1.
There's no black magic involved in the compression itself…it's the
same thing programs like ZIP do. The magic involved is inserting the code
to do the compression/decompression appropriately in the food chain
between the OS and the disk so that it's transparent to anything that
doesn't try to write directly to the hardware.
Don
Details, Details…..all I know was I lost 300 megs with it….and I knew
what I was doing. It didn't crash during install. Several days later I
started getting errors like crazy…chkdsk 50 files…then another 50
would go bad…then it just up and died when I was tring to transfer the
files to another drive in order to back them up.
Dave
PS…can't be just ZIP type compression…all 300 megs were .GIF's on a
200megs drive (you can't compress .GIF's)
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
Yes, you can compress .GIF files. They may not compress much, about 5%,
but they can be compressed.
-sja
You missed the point…I had 300 megs of .GIFs on a 200 meg drive. Thats
50% compression with stacker and a repoted 100 megs left.
Dave,
No, I didn't miss the point. You said "(You can't compress .GIFs)".
Yes you can.
-sja
Tom,
A special intro promotion is selling DOS 6 for under $50, is this what
you're referring to about dumping? If you're sources are speculating
about the dumping, I'd begin to wonder if someone isn't trying to poison
the upgrade market…
*** jd
Didn't mean to poison the well John, a dealer in town told me he was
selling Dos6 for $49 only because a competitor had forced him to do it
by "dumping" (his words) it for that price. Probably sour grapes that
the intro offer has temporarily slashed his prices against his
desires.
$49.95 is the suggested list price of the upgrade until May 31st.
After that, it's supposed to go to a suggested list price of $129.95.
That is $12.95 just for the upgrade packet, not full Dos6.0 then?
Interesting that in this day the local PC dealers are asking exactly MSRP.
Kairetsu anyone?
Tom
Tom,
$12.95…NO $129.95. You're off by a factor of 10! That's the list
price after May 31st. Before then…the list price (or introductory price
if you will) is $49.95. I've seen it advertised for a few dollars
cheaper..but not much cheaper than that. After May 31st, I'm sure you'll
see it for much less than the $129.95 list price. I presume MicroSoft's
dealer pricing doesn't allow much profit at the $49.95 level, but probably
allows quite a bit at the $129.95 level.
And yes, that's the UPGRADE, at least that's the way it's licensed. In
fact, I belive you can force it to do a clean install from scratch but you
have to do a few things by hand.
Don
If it is like the Windows 3.1 upgrade, it is a complete version, with
nothing to change for a normal install.
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
I can get DOS 6.0 around here for $42 + change.
In Delaware
Chris
It seems to work fine, except for the problem w/C='s startup program.
Mind you, I had had a previous very poor experience with SuperStor
Pro – caused by my usual casual "know-it-all" reading of the dox – so
before I installed it I read the instructions very carefully.
Mind you, I haven't tried all the programs on that drive yet – so I
can't say for sure that everything is fine – but so far I have had no
problems.
I wonder what the word is on the PC forums. (I spend so much money
over here, I don't do anything in the PC area but download.)
Don't know, I like you don't read PC forums. Maybe we should.
Tom
If you have a Bridgeboard, you should definitely check out some of the PC
forums. You'll go crazy. Good ones are WINADV, PICS, DTP, WINWORD, WP,
COREL, ADOBE – and there are some others. There are some super programs
posted. BTW, one of the best source for graphics anywhere is the WPUsers
forum on another big international communications network. There are
upwards of 500 archives of really nice graphics on there.
I'm on the PC forums all the time. My CI$ bill has gone sky high since I
discovered them. (And my hard drive keeps filling up.)
…..Nancy
From Edmonton, AB, Canada
Thanks for the tips Nancy, I expect to receive one soon. Since I won't be
playing with a 4000/30 until they get it right this may keep me
entertained.
Tom, Oklahoma City
Tom;
Please forgive this message but I am trying to do some testing to see if I
can properly reply to a message on this forum.
-bill
Guess you did it right Bill, I got it.
Tom
Thanks. Actually I did not need a response as the problem that I was
troubleshooting was one where an error occurred while trying to reply…
thus it would have been obvious to me if the message had not worked.
I appreciate your bothering to let me know though, since obviously you
would not have known that I already knew it worked. The fact that the
reply to you did work lead me almost directly to the source of the
problems that I was having.
-bill