Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!tukki!jyu.fi!otto From: otto@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: dos version upgrade Message-ID: Date: 8 Feb 90 22:55:04 GMT References: <22708@usc.edu> Sender: news@tukki.jyu.fi Organization: Justice HQ, Mega-City One Lines: 55 In-reply-to: kjh@pollux.usc.edu's message of 7 Feb 90 02:22:06 GMT In article <22708@usc.edu> kjh@pollux.usc.edu (Kenneth J. Hendrickson N8DGN) writes: I am going to upgrade my version of DOS (despite how poor the O/S is), in order to use 1.44 MB floppies. (Only version 3.3 and up supports this). I would like comments on these questions and related issues: 1) What bugs in 3.3 or 4.0 have been found? Have they been corrected? Are the patches available? There are bugs in all DOS versions, luckily MicroS*t has a reasonable good record on these. For example, on most versions of DOS 3.30 the CONFIG.SYS command DRIVPARM won't work (MicroS*t issued a fix for this, but most OEMs haven't applied it). Some major bugs have been found in DOS 4.0, for which patches are available (actually, you probably will have your DOS already patched if you buy it now). These had to do with the new disk I/O routines (see below). 2) What significant advantages does 4.0 offer over 3.3? What disadvantages does version 4.0 have compared to 3.2? The one major advantage in DOS 4.0 is the ability to make disk partitions greater than 32Mbytes. The major drawback (in my point of view) is that DOS 4.0 is significantly (about 40k) larger than DOS 3.30, thus taking up valuable lowest-640k-memory. Also the large disks get slow, since the FAT- based file system is hardly ideal for these capacities. 3) I understand that some of my existing software won't work under 4.0. I am speaking specifically of the Norton Utilities; the FAT is allegedly different on 4.0 than previous versions. Does anybody know if the Norton Utilities version 4.5 (Advanced Edition) works with DOS 4.0? Is there other software which won't work correctly with DOS 4.0? Yes, Norton Advanced 4.5 will work correctly on DOS 4.0, as will PC Tools V5. Most of the major packages now available have been upgraded to work with it. The main cause for non-operation (my view, again) is software that can't cope with a disk drive larger than 32Mbytes. Additional Note: I will also be runing minix on my PC. Minix will probably be my primary operating system, except where I want to use some DOS applications. Minix is a Unix version 7 operating system written by Andy Tanenbaum, and is available very cheaply (~$100). Source code is included for this price! For more information, read comp.os.minix. A word of warning: Minix is NOT intended to be a "real" operating system, but simply a teaching aid for Mr. Tanenbaum's course for operating systems (since he couldn't share AT&T code) -- this means that it is not very robust, operating-wise. If you are used to Unix, you will be disappointed. The last I heard, it could only support "small-model" (code+data <64k) programs, is this currently true ? -- * * * Otto J. Makela (otto@jyu.fi, MAKELA_OTTO_@FINJYU.BITNET) * * * * * * * * Phone: +358 41 613 847, BBS: +358 41 211 562 (CCITT, Bell 2400/1200/300) * * Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE * * * * freopen("/dev/null","r",stdflame); * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *