Now that DOS 5.0's been around for a few months, has anyone found 
any hidden jewels in it?
        How about hidden pitfalls?

66 responses total.

A lot of people who had a Unix partition on their hard drive found that
the DOS 5.0 upgrade trashed it.  I didn't have any problems, but that's
probably because I installed DOS before I installed Unix.

One thing I'd have liked to see in DOS 5.0 is a version of 4DOS, instead
of that yucky COMMAND.COM that Microsloshed seems to like so much.  (Hey,
I know why they haven't bundled 4DOS with DOS -- if MS makes the command-
line interface difficult to use, more people will use Windows!  Hmm...)
Norton seems to have picked up on this, though -- I hear that Norton 6.0
has a version of 4DOS, called NDOS, bundled with it.

Microsoft needs to get their things in order.  A lot of folk had problems
with Dos 4.1 when simply putting it onto a hard drive formatted under 3.3.
I lost a lot of stuff on my hard drive when I installed 4.1 and immediately
began having lots of problems.  Once I reformatted and used 4.1, it worked
fine.
 
I haven't seen/used 5.0 as I haven't had an IBM since last summer.

  Microsoft has handled the last two major OS upgrades in a particularly
graceless fashion.  Most people I knew just stuck with MS-DOS 3.3 rather
than upgrade to 4.x

They may not have handled it most gracefully, but the latest seems to
be a smashing success, judging by sales.  There are always going to be
problems with an initial release of a software product meant to run on
so many different machines.  What's important is how gracefully they handle
these problems.

 This being Microsoft, I expect major f*ckups..

   I think this time they did it right (mostly).  Using 5.0, and 386MAX,
I have 623K free for conventional programs.  The only odd thing I have
bumped into is in QuickBasic (I know, I know, stop and clean up the floor)
if I bring up a shell, and then run TCOM (Glen Roberts rather decent
terminal proggram), I can't do anything when exiting TCOM.  Memory is
trashed, and I can't run anything.  I don't think this happened on DOS 4.
   So while DOS 5 isn't great, and probably never could be, it seems
an improvemant, if only for the fact that it isn't as corpulent as 4 was.

Anyone having problems with 5.0 and TELIX?  I put the status line at the
bottom, and with DOS 5.0 it seems to get written over ocassionally.

        I haven't had any problems like that. 

Got an interesting problem on my father-in-law's machine.  Came up recently
after he upgraded to DOS 5.0.  In his CHKDSK listing he's got about 67MB
free on the disk. This is about normal.  The DIR listing reports at the bottom
that there is only 20MB free.  VERY STRANGE.  He's got a Packard-Bell 25MHz
SX machine that otherwise seems to run everything hunky-dory.  Any thoughts?

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the amount of extended memory
that HIMEM.SYS can handle?  I have a 486 with 32MB of RAM, but HIMEM
only uses about 16MB for XMS and the remaining 16MB is unusable. Is
there any way to get all 32MB into XMS?

Finally found the problem on the father-in-law's machine.  Turned out to be
a glitch in SMARTCAN or TRASHCAN from Norton Desktop for Windows.  In upgrading
norton never purged the old files and the new program never recognized the
old deleted files -- to the tune of 20 megs.

The arithmetic would indicate that there is still another 47Meg lurking
around onthat HD. Am I reading #9 and #11 correctly?

yea, I know.  It's OK now, and I don't know why.  I've seen strange stuff,
but never like that before.

Re#10:  That sounds odd, since I thought that XMS was more a memory usage
registry and not an actual manager.  What are you doing that cannot reach
the extra memory?  Have you considered using QEMM-386 instead?  I *think* it
tops out at 64MB.

First of all, I think 486's top out at 32MB, not 64MB -- please correct me
if I'm wrong.

If you're really serious about *efficiently* using XMS, use QEMM386 or 386/Max
or something OTHER than HIMEM.SYS.  HIMEM.SYS is a memory pig and generally
behaves badly with many systems and software configurations.  QEMM is much
more forgiving and will report errors if they happen, not just a freeze-up,
like HIMEM.SYS.  We are developing in Protected mode where I work and we
DO have problems with HIMEM and not with QEMM.  QEMM seems to be much more
stable.  Look at it this way:  Do you trust Microsoft to do something right?

Um, I saw a 486DX2/50 machine with 64MB of memory in it just the other
day, so I'm sure the 486 doesn't "top out" at 32MB.  Many motherboards
do, but that has nothing to do with the chip itself, which has a VM
address space of 2^32, or 4GB.

Hey, I saw one too, imagine that...

I have a 486DX4/100 and it has 128MB of RAM.

That just goes to show how old this item is.  Not long before the last
responses in this item, I got what was considered to be a perfectly adequate
computer -- a 386sx-25 with two megs or RAM.  Times certainly have changed.

I have one of those too!  Except with 4M.

Re 18, what do you do with all that memory?  That's even more than 
Windows NT requires!! 

I've known people who have used that kind of memory for intensive video stuff.
That amount of memory could also be used to run a loaded conferencing system,
like Grex.  I certainly have no need for that amount of memory, but I imagine
that in a few years I will probably reread this and have trouble imagining
that I ever could have thought that was a lot.

I'm curious. Do some people still use those old operating systems these day
or is everyone buying up the media hype and getting Winbloat Me from our
favorite software monopoly? Or perhaps they're like me and made the switch
to Linux

(Dammit Bill the Penguin means business!)

I'm using NT 4 at the moment, since it's what was supplied by the corporate
IS department on my notebook, and I don't have a working modem in my own
desktop machine.  It runs Linux, but hasn't been unpacked since I moved.  I'll
porbably unpack it once my DSL line gets installed.

So in 1995 I said I had no need for 128 MB of memory, but that in a few years
that comment would seem strange.  I'm currently using a notebook that I think
has 128 MB of memory, if not 256 MB.  At my previous job, I had a computer
on my desk with 256 MB of memory, and made reasonably good use of it.

I'm using Mac OS 7.1, 7.5, 7.6.1 and even 6.8.  My one 486/66 PC runs Windoze
95.  I have a digitizing tablet, color scanner, laser printer, CD ROM, inkjet
printer and AppleTalk network for the Macs.  All old stuff but it all works
as well as the day it was new.  I have tons of old software to go with it too.

I have Win95 on my machines.  Win98 gave me trouble and doesn't get along
with all my hardware.  I'm guessing WinME would be even worse.

I should also mention the advantage to all using all this old stuff:  Dirt
cheap!  The digitizing tablet, 2 working laser printers, color scanner, Sony
monitors were free and the rest of the stuff was close to free ;-)  I have
DOS 6.2 on a tiny, home assembled, 386.  It use to run a little BBS.

I have DOS 3.3 on a Zenith 150 for programming an X-10 home control
system.  My Mac SE has MacOS 6.x, and my Powerbook 140 runs with MacOS
7.1.  Finally, my IBM ThinkPad runs with Win. 3.1 (I forget which DOS).
This is the only machine I keep closer to current, though it's a PowerMac
7200/150 with MacOS 8.6. 

This response has been erased.

I run my primary machine on Novell DOS 7 and Linux 2.2.something.  I have
a windows machine in the basement for those inevitable moments when
nothing else can read the file.

Mine does Linux 2.2.18, Windows 98, and MS-DOS 6.22/Windows 3.1. Nothing
like having a tool for every job in one place. I once tried upgrading the 
kernel to the 2.4 series but for some reason, I couldn't get pppd to work.
after upgrading that. Everything else worked fine but if I can't go online,
then what's the point? (Probably a bad config script or something.) Since
I haven't the bandwidth to download FreeBSD and I haven't seen it in the
stores yet, it'll be a while before I get the taste of BSD. I imagine that
in my neck of the woods, I won't see DSL for a while, either. I really
don't like the 56k modem bullshit that only gets me 45k if I'm lucky.
I haven't seen a good reason yet to put more memory in it yet even though
it's got 64Mb, but I haven't checked out memory prices, either.
Really the only reason I keep Winblows 98 around is just to use my stuff
hooked up to the USB ports and to print and play games. When I need
stability, Linux hasn't died on me yet. It was fun playing root and ripping
through the thing like a bull in a china shop. (So that's what happens when
you delete all the files in the /dev folder ;-) ) and making it do kernel
panics and stuff. It's just a lot of fun learning it. Windows isn't very
fun at all for doing freaky shit. (Unless rebooting floats your boat) ;-P

I am now up to Linux Kernel 2.4.0, and I just got a USB modem working a
few days ago.  The new kernel has USB and PNP support in it and they are
both working well.

I finally got yet another windows game from a relative over christmas, so
my last system upgrade included one of those drive cage units where you
mount drives in trays and switch them about as needed.  Now I can play
Lemmings Revolution without having to sit in the basement.

Klaus, did the 386 run a BBS that belonged to you?  or which one?  I'd 
be curious to know if I was ever on it.

I'm not quite sure what his is in reference to but the bbs I ran was really
just a personal bbs that was used by family and close friends.

I wondered on reading your earlier post whether it was a
dial-up or packet radio BBS.  What you wrote in March makes
me think it was probably a dial-up one.

Ahh, okay.  #27.  Yes, that ran a little personal, dial-up, BBS.  You may have
been on the ARROW dial-up BBS which was an old XT that I had donated to the
ARROW for that purpose.

I've never used that one.  What's ARROW?

ARROW is a amateur radio club localto Ann Arbor. (It stands for
"Amateur Radio Repeaters Of Washtenaw", but this is mostly forgotten.)

Thanks Rane, I shall have to look them up.  At some point
this year I should be visiting Michigan.  Who knows, by then
I may have a transceiver! :-)

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