Info-IBMPC Digest V92 #41
Info-IBMPC Digest
Today's Editor:
Gregory Hicks - Rota Spain <GHI...@brl.mil
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - WSMR Downtime
What do you do with your windows? (V92 #36)
Re: Prodigy Query (V92 #36)
Today's Queries:
Removing TSR's from base memory
More i486 Problems
WINDOWS 3.0 Printer Driver for Gemini-10X.
communications libraries
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Date: Wed, 11 Mar 92 10:28:37 EST
From: Gregory Hicks - Rota Spain <ghi...@brl.mil>
Subject: Administrivia - WSMR Downtime
Mark/Harold:
I just talked to the people back at WSMR... They're predicting that
the system *should* be back up sometime mid-day Friday (the 13th) IF
all things go as planned.
Thanks for all the assistance though!
Best,
Gregory Hicks
[WMSR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL has, in fact, been up since Friday! gph]
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Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 12:44:39 PST
From: lar...@microsoft.com
Subject: What do you do with your windows? (V92 #36)
|| >From: ma...@Violin.CC.MsState.Edu (Mubashir Cheema)
|| I recently acquired Windows 3.0 and I don't seem to understand one
|| thing. What is it for? What do I do with it? What major advantage
|| does it have over Dos? (I don't see any except being able to use mouse
|| and also the thing is bit more colorful) I think it was made for lazy
|| people who couldn't learn couple of DOS commands.
|| Don't tell me I could multi-task with it. I've been using Amigas
|| extensively
I've got to jump in here, even though I suspect that there will
probably be some form of an "official" response from MS if anyone in
the DOS/Windows group is listening...... :)
I'm going to be brutally honest about this one. Basically, Windows by
itself IS pretty useless. The thing that makes Windows great is the
same thing that has made DOS the most popular operating system in
history. It's the applications that are available for it.
GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces) have been proven to be significantly
easier for users to understand for beginning users, and are arguably
the wave of the future. I don't know of a significant operating system
being introduced for the PC market that doesn't have a GUI available on
it, be it PM, X, GEM, or Windows. Windows is arguably the best GUI
available for DOS based on what I consider the most significant
criteria: What applications are available for the platform.
Consider the list of available windows apps: Excel, WinWord, PageMaker,
Corel Draw, WordPerfect, Lotus 123, etc just to name a couple off the
top of my head.
You also hit on one of the significant reasons to use Windows -
Multi-tasking.
Windows is a non pre-emptive multi-tasking operating system. On a 386,
it does an ok job of multi-tasking multiple DOS applications, but on a
286 it functions as a simple task switcher like DOS 5 does. It really
shines when multi-tasking Windows applications however.
In addition, when you couple the multi-tasking capabilities of Windows
with a windows mechanism known as DDE (for Dynamic Data Exchange), you
can generate some truely incredible synergy between Windows
applications. With Win 3.0/Win 3.1 Microsoft has introduced a concept
known as OLE (Open Linking and Embedding) which allows you to cut and
past from multiple "applets" allowing applications to take advantage of
the capabilities of other shipped applications. This allows an applet
like an equation editor to manage all the information about formatting
an equation even when the equation is embedded in a word document.
With OLE, you can simply double-click on the object and bring up the
"agent" that manages it (in my example, the equation editor).
For application developers, Windows gives developers the ability to
develop their applications without knowing anything about the
underlying hardware of the machine - a windows application that runs on
a machine with a CGA adapter will also run on a machine with a graphics
accelerator that runs in 1024x1024 with 24 bits of color.
In addition, when you write an application for windows, your
application instantly will support literally hundreds of printers
transparently - Windows does all the work for you.
To re-iterate, Windows as a stand-alone product is not extraordinarily
interesting - there are lots of productivity packages that provide
similar functionality to users, the real benefit of Windows is the
applications that run on it.
I will also point out that there are more than 5000 Windows
applications available today and still more will come out with Win 3.1.
The available windows applications span all ranges of applications from
games (Microsoft's Entertainment pack, Berkley-Soft's After Dark, and
Sierra's Laffer Utilities for Windows) to Spreadsheets (Microsoft
Excel, Lotus 1-2-3) to Word processors (Microsoft Word For Windows,
Lotus Ami), to Desktop publishing (Aldus Pagemaker, Microsoft
Publisher), to presentation graphics (Microsoft Powerpoint), to
development tools (Microsoft Visual Basic) etc......
Larry Osterman
Disclaimer: The opinions above are my own. They are not necessarily
the same as those of Microsoft. I only work here.
-----------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 92 19:20:15 PST
From: p <ole!polari!tra...@uunet.uu.net>
Subject: Re: Prodigy Query (V92 #36)
In reply to your question about prodigy. Prodigy still does
have certain directory information in its stage.dat file. This is in
order to keep it a certain length of cache. In some cases other
programs do the same thing. Lets take Windows, if you take a look in
the WIN.COM file you will find at the end of the file that it has your
directory stucture, I have called MS and they said that it is not
needed in order to work but fills the blank spaces like a cache. In
addtion to that Prodigy does have an free offer to send away for a
Stage.dat Directory Structure Remover which is usually sent to you in a
matter of days.
One more thing, a while back a person reported to a Newspaper
that he recieved a virus from Prodigy, which is a load of bull. I
found out that he was using Norton Anti-Virus to pick up the virus and
in fact it was not a virus, but the Stage.dat file changed (writing new
data for the cache) and thats what NAV reported, not that there was a
virus. You see, Prodigy doesn't accept any type of file u/l's so you
can't send them a virus, and most of the information that is sent to
your computer is text information (not executable files) which cannot
contain a virus... Hope I helped a little, I will tell you the truth,
for information services prodigy is a good deal, although for mail
services, I would stick to the service you are using for mail now....
Alon A. Traut <TRAUTAA>
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Date: Sun, 8 Mar 92 00:00:27 -0500
From: Bhima.Nit...@rpi.edu
Subject: Removing TSR's from base memory
I have a Compaq '386 running Dos-5. Is there a small program which
removes TSR's from base memory ( and also frees up the software
interrupt)?
Bhima
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Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1992 17:25:43 -0800 (PST)
From: "John K. Duchowski" <DUC...@ucrac1.ucr.edu>
Subject: More i486 Problems
Hello Everyone,
About a week ago, I described my i486 problems. I think that I am a
bit closer to figuring out what's going on - in large part thanks to
the advice I have received from many good people who responded to my
posting. I now have few more facts at hand, so I thought that I'd ask
few more questions just to get things straight. My system is:
Micronics i486-33 MHz ASIC EISA
256 K cache
8 Meg RAM
running under DR DOS 6.0 (CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are appended at
the bottom). I can't shell out to DOS from many applications (Kermit,
Telix) as they complain about environment being full. Some of my
chemical ap- plications (Alchemy, Interquanta) although work very fast,
crash when I ask them to display/manipulate graphics. I am still
running into numerous problems with Windows 3.0 applications (Mathcad,
Freelance Graphics).
I called Micronics and they suspect that most of my problems are most
likely related to incompatible RAM and cache chips. For example,
CHKDSK gives 654,336 for total memory whereas I should be getting
655,360. However, I am not sure that I understand all these new chip
specifications. For one, what is meant by 4 Meg x 9 (RAM) and 32 K x 8
? From the mother- board manual it seems that I should have 8 Meg by
populating two SIMM banks whereas I get 8 Meg with eight banks filled.
I am now worried whether in- compatible SIMM chips might have caused
lasting damage to the motherboard. Micronics engineer also said that
they chips they recommend are Siemmens, Toshiba or Mitsubishi (4 Meg x
9) and Toshiba (32 K x 8) for cache. Mine are HY 514003-70 (no
manufacturer listed) for RAM and MT 5C2568-20 (no manufacturer listed)
for cache. The only thing that I can make out of this is that the RAM
are 70 ns and cache 20 ns but not much else.
Anyway, the advice that I would have for all the would be buyers is
that they should make absolutely sure what the manufacturer of given
equipment recommends, what is your vendor sticking in and whether your
individual equipment pieces can all talk to each other. Hopefully, by
next week I will be able to send a more cheerful message :)
Once again, many thanks for all the great information and advice I
have received.
John
SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /P /E:1024
BREAK=ON
HIBUFFERS=20
FILES=30
FASTOPEN=512
LASTDRIVE=E
HISTORY=ON, 256, OFF, OFF, OFF
COUNTRY=001,,C:\DRDOS\COUNTRY.SYS
HIDOS=ON
?"Load MemoryMAX software (Y/N) "DEVICE=C:\SYS\EMM386.SYS /F=AUTO /K=7168 /B=FFFF /R=AUTO
rem device=C:\himem.sys
rem device=C:\WINDOWS\smartdrv.sys 2048 1024
HIDEVICE=C:\SYS\RAPIDBIO.SYS
HIDEVICE=C:\SYS\ANSI.SYS
HIDEVICE=C:\SYS\MSMOUSE.SYS /1
HIDEVICE=C:\SYS\VANILLA.SYS
rem hidevice=c:\sys\vsafe.sys /1+/2-/3-/4+/5+/6+/7-/8-
=========
@ECHO OFF
REM The DRDOSBEG and DRDOSEND labels tell the SETUP program which
REM statements it should process. Put any additional statements for
REM DR DOS between these two labels. Any other statements e.g. for
REM other operating systems should be placed outside the labels.
:DRDOSBEG
PATH = C:\;C:\DRDOS;C:\PCTOOLS;C:\WINDOWS;C:\EPSILON;C:\BIN;C:\BCPP\BIN
PATH = %PATH%;C:\MSFEXE;C:\PK;C:\WINWORD
MIRROR C:
rem datamon /sentry+
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET PCTOOLS=C:\PCTOOLS
SET LIB=C:\MSFLIB
SET INCLUDE=C:\MSFINC
SET INIT=C:\MSFEXE
SET TMP=C:\MSFTMP
SET CPSS=C:\CTEXT
IF NOT "%TEMP%"=="" MD %TEMP% >NUL
VERIFY ON
PROMPT $P$G
rem delwatch c: /f:200 /b:1
rem diskmap c:
MEMMAX -U >NUL
C:\DRDOS\INITCPSS
C:\DRDOS\WELCOME
C:\DRDOS\TIM
rem run if necessary c:\cpav\cpav.exe /s
:DRDOSEND
rem start of unattended backup installation
rem C:
rem cd C:\TAPE
rem autoback C:\TAPE
rem cd \
rem C:
rem end of unattended backup installation
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Date: Mon, 9 Mar 1992 11:17-0800
From: v...@godzilla.sch.symbolics.com
Subject: WINDOWS 3.0 Printer Driver for Gemini-10X.
I am looking for a WINDOWS 3.0 driver for my Star Gemini-10X printer.
I have not been able to get it to print properly from Microsoft Excel.
If I use the IBM Graphics Printer driver, the Gemini-10X would print
part of the characters, skip some vertical spacing then print the rest
of the characters. If I use the Epson 9-pin or Star 9-pin drivers in
the WINDOWS3 library I only get garbage printing. This is driving me
crazy, but I like my Gemini-10X printer. Does anyone have a driver
that work properly with the 10X??. Thanks for any help.
-- Vu Ngo
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Date: Thu, 5 Mar 92 13:54:44 -0500
From: GIBSON <gt6...@prism.gatech.edu>
Subject: communications libraries
I would like to incorporate modem file transfers into some software I'm
writing in C. Can some programmers offer some comments on the
commercial libraries that they have used? Thank you.
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End of Info-IBMPC Digest V92 #41
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