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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!romkey@MIT-BORAX
From: romkey%MIT-BORAX@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: DOS 2.0
Message-ID: <13591@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Nov-83 20:13:35 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.13591
Posted: Thu Nov 10 20:13:35 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Nov-83 23:52:00 EST
Lines: 18

1. I don't believe that you can install or remove device drivers
without rebooting. They're loaded into an area of memory between DOS
and COMMAND.COM, and I think the part of DOS that loads them is
probably overwritten by other parts of DOS later.

2. The line buffer is in the transient part of COMMAND.COM. When
COMMAND.COM is going to run a program, it checksums the transient part
before it loads the program. When the program terminates, it sees if
the checksum is the same. If it is, it assumes that nothing was
touched; otherwise it reloads that part. If you have a stack or
something in high memory (or maybe a .EXE program? I'm not sure about
them - I always generate .COM files), it might step on this part of
COMMAND.COM. Let's try sorting high memory - the checksum won't
change, but it should be interesting when COMMAND.COM tries to execute
part of its transient portion!

John Romkey
romkey@mit-borax