F
FlitchGlitch
Recent XP Home acquisition after upgrade from NT4 Sp6a to Win2K failed
with multiple fatal system errors and lots of blue. Final straw was
when the upgrade wrote IE5.(4 I think) over the IE6 I had downloaded
just the previous week. Don't they check for these things?
Anyway...
I have a large number of legacy (i.e. old) MS-DOS programs constructed
back in the eighties and early nineties which are absolutely
essential. A rewrite would cost around two man years and really big
bucks for the compiler so that's not an option.
But I did do some homework. I have a test program called
"MD11xxxx.EXE" (the "xxxx" will be explained in a moment) which is a
simple "Hello world" type program. In MS-DOS 5.2 the dialog would be
(user actions and explanations in square brackets):
C> [Presuming the MD11xxxx.EXE is on the root directory of C:]
C> [user enters] MD11xxxx
Sucess MD11 Started - Press Enter to Terminate [MD11xxxx displays on
console]
[user presses enter]
MD11 ended [MD11xxxx displays on console]
C>
That's it! Very simple!
The "xxxx" is "PROT" or "REAL"; they're functionally identical and at
the source code level word-for-word identical. If it's MD11PROT the
program uses DPMI memory and can run in up to 16 meg of memory. If
it's MD11REAL it runs in real memory (below 640K). This has nothing to
do with any options chosen in the properties box; the programs are
compiled, link-edited, and then bound to a stub loader which
determines its memory use (this last step is the only difference). I
don't really understand this but I could pull out and quote from the
manual if it would help. The point is that while MD11REAL is only 38K
and MD11PROT is 92K (i.e. both should be able to run in a 256K (that's
K not M) machine) some of the other programs are much larger and must
run in protected mode only.
Under MS-DOS the programs ran as above using full screen. IIRC under
Win 3.1 they ran either in a DOS window or full screen depending on
your use of ALT-ENTER. Same in NT4. Both ran in a box or if you really
wanted to you could go to full screen. The norm was a box. Prior to
conversion to Win2K I had my son test them on his Win2K machines, both
a notebook and the desktop at work, and both the PROT and REAL
versions ran just as they did in NT4. Well, because of the disaster in
installing Win2K on my machine I didn't test on an XP machine and
bingo, they don't work! Well, REAL sort of works, but PROT doesn't
work at all.
For REAL, either double click on the file name, or enter it in the run
box, and the whole screen immediately goes black, and then after a
couple of heart-stopping moments, the correct dialog appears. I can
continue in full screen or use ALT-ENTER to go to a standard DOS box.
Either way an ENTER produces the appropriate "ended" message. It
doesn't seem to matter what folder I run it from and the Properties
Screen Usage button makes no difference either way. Nor does the
setting of the Run parameter on the Program screen-- it currently says
"minimized" but it doesn't matter what I change it to. Running in
compatibility mode for any of the four optional systems has absolutely
no effect either.
With PROT the settings in the properties screens have no effect at all
(same as for REAL) nor do the parameters I enter for memory (do it
intelligently or make them up at random -- I might as well save the
wear-and-tear on my fingers). The behavior is slightly different
though. It does open a DOS box but if you blink you'll miss it.
Without any user intervention, the box expands to cover the entire
screen and it becomes black (you actually see it rise up). Then
there's a couple of seconds delay and then the desktop reappears as
though nothing had happened. No wording, nothing.
As a matter of interest my other son runs Win 98 SE so I had him try
them out. It works (or actually doesn't) the same as XP with the
slight variance that in PROT mode, after the blanking (or black-ing)
of the screen it waits. If you do nothing I presume it would just
continue forever but if you hit enter as you would normally it returns
to a normal DOS box, the heading of which says "MD11PROT Finished" but
there's no text in the box itself.
My guess is that between NT/Win2K and the XP family they've changed
the way they handle the console which is what I'm writing to. How do I
get it back to the way it was under NT?
Just say the word and I'll post the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS from
MS-DOS or the Autoexec.NT and Config.NT from the NT era or the same
named files from the XP era and if you tell me how (screen shot
capture) I'll provide the Properties.
Oh, there are no TSR's nor direct hardware writes. These are serious
text manipulation and storage programs; no games, no sound, no
internet, no network...think accounting applications on a 360.
Tearing my hair out here...
with multiple fatal system errors and lots of blue. Final straw was
when the upgrade wrote IE5.(4 I think) over the IE6 I had downloaded
just the previous week. Don't they check for these things?
Anyway...
I have a large number of legacy (i.e. old) MS-DOS programs constructed
back in the eighties and early nineties which are absolutely
essential. A rewrite would cost around two man years and really big
bucks for the compiler so that's not an option.
But I did do some homework. I have a test program called
"MD11xxxx.EXE" (the "xxxx" will be explained in a moment) which is a
simple "Hello world" type program. In MS-DOS 5.2 the dialog would be
(user actions and explanations in square brackets):
C> [Presuming the MD11xxxx.EXE is on the root directory of C:]
C> [user enters] MD11xxxx
Sucess MD11 Started - Press Enter to Terminate [MD11xxxx displays on
console]
[user presses enter]
MD11 ended [MD11xxxx displays on console]
C>
That's it! Very simple!
The "xxxx" is "PROT" or "REAL"; they're functionally identical and at
the source code level word-for-word identical. If it's MD11PROT the
program uses DPMI memory and can run in up to 16 meg of memory. If
it's MD11REAL it runs in real memory (below 640K). This has nothing to
do with any options chosen in the properties box; the programs are
compiled, link-edited, and then bound to a stub loader which
determines its memory use (this last step is the only difference). I
don't really understand this but I could pull out and quote from the
manual if it would help. The point is that while MD11REAL is only 38K
and MD11PROT is 92K (i.e. both should be able to run in a 256K (that's
K not M) machine) some of the other programs are much larger and must
run in protected mode only.
Under MS-DOS the programs ran as above using full screen. IIRC under
Win 3.1 they ran either in a DOS window or full screen depending on
your use of ALT-ENTER. Same in NT4. Both ran in a box or if you really
wanted to you could go to full screen. The norm was a box. Prior to
conversion to Win2K I had my son test them on his Win2K machines, both
a notebook and the desktop at work, and both the PROT and REAL
versions ran just as they did in NT4. Well, because of the disaster in
installing Win2K on my machine I didn't test on an XP machine and
bingo, they don't work! Well, REAL sort of works, but PROT doesn't
work at all.
For REAL, either double click on the file name, or enter it in the run
box, and the whole screen immediately goes black, and then after a
couple of heart-stopping moments, the correct dialog appears. I can
continue in full screen or use ALT-ENTER to go to a standard DOS box.
Either way an ENTER produces the appropriate "ended" message. It
doesn't seem to matter what folder I run it from and the Properties
Screen Usage button makes no difference either way. Nor does the
setting of the Run parameter on the Program screen-- it currently says
"minimized" but it doesn't matter what I change it to. Running in
compatibility mode for any of the four optional systems has absolutely
no effect either.
With PROT the settings in the properties screens have no effect at all
(same as for REAL) nor do the parameters I enter for memory (do it
intelligently or make them up at random -- I might as well save the
wear-and-tear on my fingers). The behavior is slightly different
though. It does open a DOS box but if you blink you'll miss it.
Without any user intervention, the box expands to cover the entire
screen and it becomes black (you actually see it rise up). Then
there's a couple of seconds delay and then the desktop reappears as
though nothing had happened. No wording, nothing.
As a matter of interest my other son runs Win 98 SE so I had him try
them out. It works (or actually doesn't) the same as XP with the
slight variance that in PROT mode, after the blanking (or black-ing)
of the screen it waits. If you do nothing I presume it would just
continue forever but if you hit enter as you would normally it returns
to a normal DOS box, the heading of which says "MD11PROT Finished" but
there's no text in the box itself.
My guess is that between NT/Win2K and the XP family they've changed
the way they handle the console which is what I'm writing to. How do I
get it back to the way it was under NT?
Just say the word and I'll post the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS from
MS-DOS or the Autoexec.NT and Config.NT from the NT era or the same
named files from the XP era and if you tell me how (screen shot
capture) I'll provide the Properties.
Oh, there are no TSR's nor direct hardware writes. These are serious
text manipulation and storage programs; no games, no sound, no
internet, no network...think accounting applications on a 360.
Tearing my hair out here...
