traiger@oxy.edu (Saul Traiger) (06/11/91)
I just pulled the following bulletin off the Toshiba BBS
conerning Toshiba laptops and DOS 5.0
14
LIMITATIONS OF THE (GENERIC) MS-DOS 5.0 UPGRADE PACKAGE
_______________________________________________________
The MS-DOS 5.0 Retail Upgrade Package was announced on 6/11/91.
The following is a list of known limitations that users of
Toshiba PCs will encounter when they attempt to use the DOS 5.0
retail package on their system. The following should help answer
most questions regarding the use of the retail version of MS-DOS
5.0 on Toshiba PCs.
All of these problems will be corrected on Toshiba MS-DOS 5.0.
o EMM386 and RESUME not compatible : The EMM386 driver allows
DOS 5.0 to simulate Expanded (EMS) memory on machines using
a 386 processor. It also allows TSRs and device drivers to
loaded into high memory thus freeing up conventional memory
for applications. The current driver from Microsoft is not
compatible with RESUME mode on the T3100SX and T2000SX. This
causes the machine to to hang after a power down/up cycle.
The user has to press the hard reset button in order to remove
the machine from this state.
o EMM386 disables the PopUp Window : If the EMM386 driver is
loaded, then the Fn-PopUp key combination does not allow the
PopUp Window to be displayed. Therefore the user is unable
the view the current battery status or change any of the
battery saving features.
o DOS Shell task switcher does not preserve the Gray Scale map :
The DOS 5.0 Shell allows task switching. If the user has
several tasks active, using VCHAD to adjust the gray scales
for a given session will cause the gray scales for other tasks
will be corrupted. Toshiba MS-DOS 5.0 will contain a TSR which
will preserve the gray scales for each active session.
o HardRAM is not recognized : MS-DOS 5.0 will not recognize
HardRAM unless the user first runs FDISK on the HardRAM drive.
Toshiba DOS 5.0 will not require or allow the user to run
FDISK on HardRAM.
o IC Disk not recognized : DOS 5.0 does not recognize ROM DOS
drive. This occurs on machines with DOS 3.30 in ROM (T1000SE,
T1000XE). The SETUP10 and CHAD utilities that are stored in
ROM are not recognized by the standard Microsoft product.
o Toshiba Video modes not supported : All EGA and VGA Toshiba
machines have special video modes that are not supported by
MS-DOS 5.0.
o VCHAD, XCHAD, GSM display garbage in DOS Shell : All of the
for-mentioned gray scale managers have various problems when
the DOS Shell is configured for 43 line graphics mode.
o VCHAD and PopUp Window do not repaint the screen properly :
When the DOS Shell is set up for medium or high resolution
graphics modes, the VCHAD and PopUp Window's do not repaint
the screen properly when they exit. The screen can be
restored by forcing the DOS Shell to repaint (Shift-F5).
o Unreadable installation screens : The default gray scale
mappings sometimes produce unreadable or undesirable displays
on the LCD and Plasma machines.
o European Keyboards and Code Pages not supported : Many Toshiba
keyboards are not fully compatible with the IBM keyboards.
Therefore the European keyboards and fonts will not be supported
by the retail DOS 5.0.
o MODE command does not allow COM port(s) to be set to 19.2K baud :
Currently this only works on PS/2 computers. Toshiba will modify
MODE to allow the COM ports to be set to 19.2K baud.