tedm@agora.rain.com (Ted Mittelstaedt) (06/23/91)
Well, it has not yet been a week and a half and there are already a huge number of false ideas swirling around DOS 5.0. After having read the manual, and installed it on a '286 & 386SX I would like to answer some questions that are being obviously asked by those who have not yet bought the distribution pkg. 1) MS-DOS & IBM-DOS are different prices at Egghead, and it is better to run one or the other on different machines. This is a myth. As most people know by know, Egghead Software is currently offering the DOS 5.0 upgrade for $39.95. BOTH MS-DOS 5.0 and PC-DOS 5.0 are included in this price, as stated numerous places in EGGHEAD flyers. In addition, although some people have said to only run IBM-DOS 5.0 on IBM machines, This is only true for machines having old ROMS. I have sucessfully run MS-DOS 3.3 on True Blue IBM PC's having roms dated October '82 and Microsoft themselves has stated in numerous press releases that "This DOS is the most compatible DOS release so far" The idea that MS-DOS 5.0 will not run on IBM boxes is silly. The only possible reason someone would want to buy IBM-DOS instead of MS-DOS is if they had a true blue under a service contract or something specifying only to cover the machine under IBM programs. 2) "I have a '286 with 384K extended memory, and therefore DOS 5.0 will not run in extended memory." Here is another myth. When installed on a '286 with 384K of extended memory, DOS 5.0 will place itself in the HMA, or the first 64K of memory starting at the 1 meg border. The rest of the extended memory can be used for something useful such as SMARTDRV.SYS's disk cache. 3) I cannot load device drivers into Upper Memory Blocks with a '286. Another myth. Microsoft specifically states that EMM386.sys will not run on a '286, however they continue on to state that any UMB memory manager that works with HIMEM.SYS will allow programs to run in UMB's. If you have a 286 with a memory card that can be configured to backfill the upper memory area (the unused portions that is) there is no reason why you cannot use the DEVICEHIGH & LOADHIGH commands in your config.sys & autoexec.bat to place programs there. 4) The Upgrade package does not contain all the dos that the "Full Distribution package" does. This is the saddest lie to hit the industry so far. The only think lacking from the upgrade package is a boot disk. However COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS, and MSDOS.SYS are the only 3 files needed to make a boot disk, and these 3 files are included in the distribution disk. The only people to benifit from this nonsense are vendors like Zenith who make their money off of selling licensed versions of the supposed "Full Distribution Release" 5) The new ANSI.SYS in DOS 5.0 is an upgraded version of the ansi.sys in 4.01 This is the biggest, fattest lie so far. There is a bug in some EGA cards that will lose the cursor when some software packages put the screen in 43 line mode. Microsoft fixed this bug by placing the Locked option in ANSI.SYS, released in DOS 4.01. Unfortunately for EGA owners, the so-called new and imporved ANSI.SYS in DOS 5.0 does not support the /L option. However, it is possible to get around this by using the SETVER command in DOS 5.0 and setting ANSI.SYS to version 4.00 tedm@agora.rain.com