MSCDEX AND DOS 4.0
James Jay Morgan
In all the to do about licencing, no one addressed the question of
what ver of MSCDEX you need for DOS 4.0, and whether you can upgrade from
a current version or have to purchase a new copy. You need ver 2.3 to work
with DOS 4. Since DOS 4 uses a lot of memory I'm more interested in what
version will work with DOS 5.0, and when Microsoft will get around to
including the MSCDEX as a part of DOS instead of selling it as extra.
We did purchase 2.3 from Meridian, a reseller in CA @ (800) 755-8324, and
since we only needed 1 copy I didn't investigate whether or not you
can upgrade the various versions you get with cd-rom drives. Microsoft
now offers a site licence that may be of interest to larger users. Meridian
has details.
Jim Morgan
RUTH LILLY MEDICAL LIBRARY
INDIANA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
IZI...@INDYVAX.BITNET
Matthew Seitz
>
>You need ver 2.3 to work with DOS 4.
Actually, you need version 2.20 of MSCDEX. There is no version 2.3 available
yet. You may be referring to the Meridian release version number. This number
referrs to the whole package of MSCDEX and device drivers. It is not the same
as the MSCDEX version number.
>ince DOS 4 uses a lot of memory I'm more interested in what
>version will work with DOS 5.0, and when Microsoft will get around to
>including the MSCDEX as a part of DOS instead of selling it as extra.
So far there is no official word from Microsoft about DOS 5.0 compatablility
with MSCDEX 2.20. I have had some customers report problems with MS-DOS 5.0.
I have a message pending with the product manager for MSCDEX, so I'll let you
know. It may be important that when Windows 3.0 was released, it was not
fully compatible with the current release of MSCDEX (2.10). It was a few months
before the compatible 2.20 came out. A similar situation may occur this time.
>We did purchase 2.3 from Meridian, a reseller in CA @ (800) 755-8324, and
>since we only needed 1 copy I didn't investigate whether or not you
>can upgrade the various versions you get with cd-rom drives.
Usually you can, but it may take some time to find someone who understands
what you're talking about.
--
Matthew Seitz
Note new address:
se...@netcom.com
Shaun Case
> In article <347330E7...@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU> James Jay Morgan
> <IZI...@INDYVAX.bitnet> writes:
> >
> >You need ver 2.3 to work with DOS 4.
>
> Actually, you need version 2.20 of MSCDEX. There is no version 2.3 available
> yet. You may be referring to the Meridian release version number. This
number
> referrs to the whole package of MSCDEX and device drivers. It is not the same
> as the MSCDEX version number.
Last night I installed my CD ROM drive from DAK on my 386 running MSDOS 4.01.
The
drive came with a Sony version of MSCDEX, labelled 2.11 on the diskettes. I
installed
it and it worked just fine (*). MSCDEX reported it was versinon 2.10, though.
(*): I tried 5 of the CD ROMS -- library of the future, the language package,
the encyclopedia, the reference lib, and the US atlas. Everything worked fine
except the atlas, which displayed a globe and kept the drive activity light
flashing.
I was also able to play music CDs, including a Gorilla Biscuits disk that has
99 tracks.
So, my questions are:
1) Do I really need MSCDEX 2.2 when 2.1 works?
2) Is the Atlas disk bad, or do I need a newer version of MSCDEX?
The installation using the program from DAK was relatively painless. It did
modify my CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT without telling me, and made a whole
bunch of subdirectories on my hard disk, but that's not too terrible.
I had some trouble getting the language library to work -- it went resident
ok, but wouldn't pop up until I left 132X40 mode and went to 80X25. That caused
about 5 minutes of frustration, since the language pack was what I really
wanted.
More later...
Shaun.
------- End of Forwarded Message
Matthew Seitz
>
>1) Do I really need MSCDEX 2.2 [for DOS 4.0] when 2.1 works?
2.1 will work with DOS 4.0, but it had some DOS 4.0 compatablitily bugs,
according to Microsofts documentation for 2.20. The documentation describes
a few minor bugs and implies there were some other minor bugs that were
corrected in 2.20.