Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!uflorida!mephisto!utkcs2!stc06!rm3 From: rm3@stc06.ornl.gov (MCBROOM R C) Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms Subject: Re: Another county heard from Message-ID: <1990Aug23.175014.4688@cs.utk.edu> Date: 23 Aug 90 17:50:14 GMT References: <14679@shlump.nac.dec.com> Sender: news@cs.utk.edu (USENET News System) Reply-To: rm3@stc06.ctd.ornl.gov (MCBROOM R C) Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab Lines: 48 Variations on a theme. The various problems in netland with Windows 3.0 make for entertaining reading. The same old problem seems to be hitting again. In order to get the performance a program needs the programmer has to get in real close to the hardware and whenever that happens compatibility vanishes. Microsoft is no more immune than the rest of the world. While my experiences haven't been of the kind leading to system destruction, the frustration index is over the top. The system of interest is a IBM PS/2 MODEL 50 Z 1M RAM 30M harddisk The problem is the desktop utilities won't function. WRITE, CRDFILE, CALENDAR, and PBRUSH all have problems creating their temporary files. There are 10M of free space on the harddisk and defragmentation does not help. There is no problem with the swap files for non-windows applications. WRITE dies back to the shell with the message Insufficient memory to run Write even with everything out of the machine and the program manager minimized. The permutations with himem.sys and smartdrv.sys do not change anything. The clpbrd, clock, notepad, program manager, terminal, and file manager will all run simultaneously. Wordperfect 5.0, and LOTUS 123 2.2 will swap in from multiple instances. And now the punchline! A copy of the installation files to a last years PS/2 MODEL 50 WORKS FINE! Further fulminations, following all the instructions to enable print to a file won't work unless a printer is actually connected to the PS/2 parallel port, then the print option darkens and away you go. So much for sneaker net. Terminal maps the VT100 PF keys to F1-F4 but the VT100 command key F1 is locked to WINHLP! On-line applications that use the keypad functions won't work. There must be some way to tell WINHLP to work only from the menu but-- ___________________ R. C. McBroom INTERNET rm3@ornl.gov