[net.micro.pc] MSDOS/P.C. Write questions

nessus@nsc.NSC.COM (Kchula-Rrit) (11/05/86)

[The Cray in my basement runs CP/M.]

    I am a new user of MSDOS(tm) and P.C. Write(tm) and have been reasonably
happy with them.  However, I do have a few questions...

    To start with, my system consists of:

	0.  Compustar , a Fry's Electronics PC/XT clone, with 256K RAM
	    on the motherboard upgraded by them to 640K.

	1.  Fry's Multi-I/O card with Clock/Calendar, Game port,
	    1 Parallel port, and two Serial ports.

	2.  Paradise Auto-Switch EGA card

	3.  Two 360K Floppy-disk drives.

	4.  Samsung color monitor.

     My questions are:

	0.	Can P.C. Write(tm) handle a IDS-440 printer?  They have
	    IDS-460 listed in the Printer-Picker menu.  The text prints
	    all right on my IDS-440, how about graphics/special characters?

	1.	When I run P.C. Write from, for example, Drive A to edit
	    a file on Drive B, the display wakes up in monochrome(black
	    and white to be exact).  Sometimes it does this when both
	    P.C. Write are on the same drive, also.  Why is this and
	    what can be done about it?

	2.	My autoexec.bat looks something like this:

	    GETCLOCK [Cannot remember if it really is there or not.]
	    PSPOOL LPT1:
	    RAMDISK C:/2/M=360/U=128/9
	    COPY RAMDISK.COM C:
	    COPY COMMAND.COM C:
	    C:

		Can anyone tell me what the "/U" really does?  The manual
	    that came with the Multi-I/O card says that this specifies
	    "application program space".  Is this the amount of RAM that
	    MSDOS has to work with?

	3.	Also, I talked to someone here at work, and they said
	    that it would be better to specify my RAMDISK to 128K instead
	    of 360K, but if I load P.C. Write and an edit file, that
	    pretty much fills up the RAMdisk.  What is the optimal size
	    for the RAMdisk that this utility makes?

	4.	This is not really a question, but a good word about
	    Fry's.  The Paradise board died about 3 days after we bought
	    the system.  We took it[the system] down to Fry's, and they
	    replaced the [Paradise] board on the spot after determining
	    that it was indeed the problem.

						Thanx,
						Kchula-Rrit
						!menlo70!nsc!nessus