jrm@cblpe.ATT.COM (John Miller) (06/10/87)
As you may know, IBM has announced a multitasking operating system called OS/2 to be available in early '88. It will be capable of running old PC/MS-DOS programs in "real" mode. Also, it will be capable of running multiple "protected" mode programs not yet widely availble. I have an application that needs a multitasking MS-DOS environment. Basically, I want to remotely run a accounting package (via terminal) and locally be able to run editors, spell checkers etc. OS/2 gives me this capability IF IT RUNS ON A AT&T 6300+. In an effort to find out if ANY IBM operating system runs on the 6300+, I installed IBM's DOS 3.2 last nite. My initial observations are: -3.2 couldn't read the C: drive that already had a copy of ATT MS-DOS 3.1 on it. After some effort, I was able to reformat the C: drive (loosing everything on it) and copy DOS 3.2 to it. Then I ran norton on the drive to see what 3.2 did to it. It seems that they formatted it with many more clusters than what AT&T 3.1 had used. That is why they couldn't read the old format. (about 3000 with 3.1 vs 10000 with 3.2) -3.2 couldn't find my AT&T battery powered clock. It always came up with the date set to 1-1-1980 at 0:0 or something close to this. -when scrolling more then a half of screen of text, in a color mode (white foreground, blue background), the upper half of the screen flickered until the scrolling stopped. No other problems were noticeable. I am still playing with it though. Has anyone tried this sort of experiment? Are there more problems lurking that I haven't found yet AND does anyone have a solution for the above noted problems short of returning to 3.1? Thanks, John R. Miller, AT&T Bell Labs ihnp4!cblpe!jrm (614) 860-4314