[comp.sys.ibm.pc] DOS 3.2 Environment size fix

jag2@nvuxj.UUCP (02/11/87)

[Is there a reason for this anymore?]

	As a user of the Desqview multi-tasking software I was very
much interested in the recent discussion of the environment size
issue.  It seems that starting the command.com command interpreter
from Desqview causes the environment size to be reset to the pitiful 160
byte default.  The fix described by someone was to perform the required
modification to the copy of command.com residing in the Desqview directory
thereby increasing the default size.  But alas, DOS 3.2 was not included
in the list of fixes that I had compiled from this newsgroup.  Perhaps I
missed that fix or perhaps no one has bothered to post one so I went ahead
and debugged the thing.  Here are the results:

/* start fix (<cr>=carriage return, enter or whatever) */
debug command.com <cr>
-e 0d4f <cr>
xxxx:0D4F   0A.32 <cr>		/* debug prints the 0A. and you type the 32 */
-w <cr>
-q <cr>
/* end fix */

	The 0A is the hex number of 16 byte pages that dos will allot to 
environment by default.  32 pages is 50 pages or 800 bytes of environment
space.  Use whatever amount you feel you need.  I must confess that this
is essentially the same fix as the 3.1 fix that was posted many moons ago.
It was, however, a different address in the code and I did spend many minutes
looking for it.  If you feel that this information is of some help to you
or your company, please feel obligated to send to me a cash gratuity in
multiples of $16.00 using only USA hexadecimal currency (via Email). |-}


J.A. Gardina @ Bell Communications Research, Inc.
...ihnp4!nvuxj!jag2  or preferably  ...ihnp4!wbux2!jag

P.S. I must (under duress) also give credit to an associate, Jake Kjelstrup
(pronounced "kludge strap"), who was able to save me many more minutes by
giving me the appropriate commands to debug.   I do detest manuals and his
help was nearly invaluable.

vanzandt@uiucdcsp.UUCP (02/15/87)

	Why not use the /E:xx parameter on the command = command.com
command? This allows you to variably set the environment to whatever
size you want. See discussions on command.com, config.sys, and the shell
command in the IBM PC-DOS 3.2 manual. It works great...


+=============================================================================+
|	Lonnie VanZandt University of Illinois	 Dept. of CS (217) 333-1925   |
|									      |
|       arpa		vanzandt@p.cs.uiuc.edu   vanzandt@uiuc.ARPA	      |
|       csnet		vanzandt@uiuc.csnet				      |
|       usenet		ihnp4!uiucdcs!vanzandt				      |
+=============================================================================+

jag2@nvuxj.UUCP (02/18/87)

In article <75800021@uiucdcsp>, vanzandt@uiucdcsp.UUCP writes:
> 
> 	Why not use the /E:xx parameter on the command = command.com
> command? This allows you to variably set the environment to whatever
> size you want. See discussions on command.com, config.sys, and the shell
> command in the IBM PC-DOS 3.2 manual. It works great...
> |	Lonnie VanZandt University of Illinois	 Dept. of CS (217) 333-1925   |

	As I stated in the article containing the fix, the Desqview operating
system starts a command.com on it's own with no obvious way to pass it
options.   Since I posted that fix, I found that I could indeed pass options
to command.com by changing the "command to start program" entry to something
like "command.com /e:512 /c setup" where setup is a batch program that
starts my command editor and sets environment variables. 

	I still prefer the larger defualt.  If I want it to be smaller
I could use the /e option.

J. A. Gardina
...ihnp4!nvuxj!jag2