[comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d] DOS 4.00 differences

makela@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) (05/26/89)

Even simple (?) directory listing programs have to be modified to run...

Could someone who has extensive hands-on experience on DOS 4.00 summarize the
changes made in it re version 3.30 ?

I have been told that the changes are NOT limited to breaking the 32M partition
limit, but that they also break lots of software that definitely does not go to
the disk drive direct... were all these changes necessary, or is this a case of
changes-just-for-the-heck-of-it ?  (Motto: if it ain't broken, don't fix it)

Otto J. Makela (with poetic license to kill), University of Jyvaskyla

InterNet: makela@tukki.jyu.fi, BitNet: MAKELA_OTTO_@FINJYU.BITNET
BBS: +358 41 211 562 (V.22bis/V.22/V.21, 24h/d), Phone: +358 41 613 847
Mail: Kauppakatu 1 B 18, SF-40100 Jyvaskyla, Finland, EUROPE

abcscagz@csuna.csun.edu (Jeff Boeing) (05/27/89)

In article <755@tukki.jyu.fi> makela@tukki.jyu.fi (Otto J. Makela) writes:
>Even simple (?) directory listing programs have to be modified to run...

The reason DDIR doesn't work quite right under DOS 4.00 is that it relied
on the first character of a non-file line being a space.  Under DOS 4, a
directory listing prints the space as the LAST character of the PREVIOUS
line (or some dumb thing like that), so that it looks the same but doesn't
"capture" the same.  I had to patch it with a kludge that looked for lower-
case letters in the output generated by DIR, since filenames are always in
uppercase but the "Volume ..." and "Directory of ..." lines are not.

Another major enhancement (?) to DOS 4 is that they've reworked the File
Allocation Table scheme around enough so that early versions of the Norton
Utilities (or any utility that bypasses INT 21 for disk I/O) will choke on
it.  This is to accomodate hard disks larger than 32 Megabytes.
   Also, the BIOS, operating system, and command interpreter have grown, as
have all the standard utilities, so you'll have to rush right out and buy an
even BIGGER memory board and hard drive.  (Anyone remember when the MORE
filter was about 300 bytes long?)

-- 
Jeff Boeing:  ...!csun.edu!csuna!abcscagz    (formerly tracer@stb.UUCP)
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