Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!apple!portal!portal!cup.portal.com!Will
From: Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2
Subject: Re: RE : DOSMODE
Message-ID: <26531@cup.portal.com>
Date: 2 Feb 90 20:29:47 GMT
References: <344.25C82A9D@weyr.FIDONET.ORG>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 22


 "         I was under the assupmtion that OS/2 stopped whn you wnet into
 " DOS mode.....  Maybe I'm wrong.

< It is just the opposite.  OS/2 runs anytime (how else would you get back to 
< OS/2 from DOS if OS/2 was asleep?) - it is DOS that stops when you switch 
< back to an OS/2 task.

I too had been under the impression that OS/2 stopped when you went into DOS
mode.  I just assumed that they were switching from protected mode (OS/2) to
real mode (DOS) and that they weren't going to go to the trouble to context
switch while you were running in DOS mode.  I checked up on this, and I was
wrong.  They do indeed switch back and forth between real and protected modes
while you are using DOS in real mode, so OS/2 sessions running in protected
mode do get time while you are in DOS mode.  Now the interesting question
is why didn't they do the reverse and switch to real mode while you
have an OS/2 session in the foreground to allow you to run DOS tasks in the
background?  I'm going to guess that the reason is that a DOS program would
directly write to video memory and screw up whatever OS/2 sessions are
currently using the screen.

Will              (sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Will)