pshuang@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (06/04/91)
In article <46285@super.ORG> grantham@super.ORG (Jon Grantham) writes:
But it would be nice to be able to run a TSR that has some hot-key or
something that lets me get out of the game without using the
"hot-key" "ctrl-alt-delete". Is there a program like that out there?
Or is this just fundamentally incompatible with the nature of DOS?
To answer the theoretical part of your question, there are indeed TSR
programs which permit you to break out of many of old types of games
which have no "EXIT-TO-DOS" option. They also work wonderfully for
buggy programs which lock up. They don't work for *ALL* cases; because
of limitations of DOS, if the foreground application takes control of
the keyboard interrupt and the timer interrupt and does other
non-standard, nasty things to seize the hardware completely, it is
impossible for the TSR to ever get control (example: Windows 3.0 would
be almost impossible to terminate using a TSR loaded in advance).
However, if the program isn't being that fascist, the TSR can sneak
between it and DOS and convince DOS that the program had asked to be
terminated. Usually if you have to resort to doing such a thing to a
real application, you should finish up anything pending and then reboot
the machine, because the TSR did lie to DOS and that could have left
some internal DOS bookkeeping undone (i.e. from experience I know that
breaking-out tends to stop CED from working). However, breaking out of
a game should not cause any problems.
Note in OS/2 and some 386-multitasking executives, because they use the
hardware virtual machine capability of the i386+ chips to seal off your
application almost completely from the hardware, mediating all hardware
requests, such programs as you're asking about generally aren't
necessary because the executive is always available to close your
application by brute force.
Now the practical side of your question: I automatically load such a
program myself in my AUTOEXEC.BAT because of the number of software
packages I use automatically increases the possibility that some
combination of them will interfere with each other and lock up the
computer. However, I can not be sure of the name of the particular
little program I use (my DOS machine is a good twenty-minute walk away).
I think PC Magazine may have written something like that, so checking
their utilities collection would be worth a shot. I also know a package
called Powerkit II (which offers many other keyboard and screen
controls) can terminate the running application upon request.
Singing off,
UNIX:/etc/ping instantiated (Ping Huang).merckens@dbf.kun.nl (Merckens A) (06/05/91)
In article <46285@super.ORG> grantham@super.ORG (Jon Grantham) writes: > But it would be nice to be able to run a TSR that has some hot-key or > something that lets me get out of the game without using the > "hot-key" "ctrl-alt-delete". Is there a program like that out there? > Or is this just fundamentally incompatible with the nature of DOS? The program CTRLALT.ARC which can be found in the directory <MSDOS.SYSUTL> of SIMTEL does just that plus more. Be warned however that the program crashes within DesqView. -- Arjen Merckens [AMBASE@RUG.NL]