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From: awd@dbase.A-T.COM (Alastair Dallas)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms.programmer
Subject: Re: Okay, so am I missing anything from this AUX "device"?
Summary: OX.SYS exists
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.192300.29677@dbase.A-T.COM>
Date: 11 Feb 91 19:23:00 GMT
References: <1991Feb6.193818.11660@javelin.es.com> <11332@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Organization: Ashton-Tate, Inc.
Lines: 40

Ok, so I was wr.. wr... wrong.  The debug output sent to the AUX device
can be very, very useful.  I got private email saying "you can't ignore
this output, you'll have buggy software" and now I realize that that is
true.  (For the record, I'm not part of Ashton-Tate's Windows development
team, if they had one which I'm not confirming.)  Ashton-Tate's rumored,
possibly existent Windows development team gave me a copy of OX.SYS and
the stuff I'm playing with at home started telling me about all kinds 
of interesting things.  For example, you can set the class background
brush to COLOR_BACKGROUND+1 or somesuch, but don't try passing that
to a GDI call in place of an HBRUSH.  The system shines on these errors
unless you're in debug mode and if you don't have an aux monitor set
up you can't tell what happened.

In article <11332@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>, brad@huey.Jpl.Nasa.GOV (Brad Hines) writes:
> I have a question about this, too.  I have a secondary monochrome
> monitor, and I also get this "Not ready reading from device AUX" when
> I run the debugging version of Windows.

Right, a monochrome monitor is not an AUX device without OX.SYS, and OX.SYS
doesn't work on PS/1 type monochrome monitors, just MDAs.

> I get the AUX-related error, and my internal modem (on COM1) starts
> clicking its relay and so-on.  Usually the only recourse is to reboot.
> 
> Does OX.SYS fix this?  I've looked for OX.SYS on all my favorite ftp
> sites and haven't been able to find it.  Does anyone know where it is?

OX.SYS has one slight problem and that is that the debug display is a 
stack trace (which is surprisingly useful--it knows the names of the 
System toolbox calls you've made) followed by Abort, Ignore, etc.  The
OX.SYS magic can't conjure up a keypress from the AUX device to save
itself, so you end up rebooting.  When CodeView is active, the stack trace 
appears in the command window and the keyboard is heard.

I'm sorry I can't help you find OX.SYS, but when you do, you'll be happy.
I'm assuming that OX.SYS is freeware.  It is fairly small--I'd probably
be able to post a hex dump if you like typing (I can't email well yet).
Probably best to find a "real" copy.

/alastair/