ge@mcnc.org (George Entenman) (08/10/90)
Earlier this week, I posted the following query to comp.sys.ibm.pc: I am currently having a problem running Paradox under MKS Toolkit on my PC clone at home. Symptom #1: I tell Paradox where to find the MKS vi for editing PAL scripts. But when I tell it to edit a script, nothing happens: no vi. Symptom #2: Paradox is unable to escape to DOS. I believe that both symptoms result from the same problem: an inability to use the DOS environment when I'm using MKS. My config.sys sets the SHELL variable to MKS' Korn Shell clone: could that be the problem? I wish to summarize what I found out. Mark H. Weber of Unisys informed me that comp.sys.ibm.pc had been changed to comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc. I am posting my summary to the new newsgroup. I received answers from the following people: Jim Kenyon, Motor Behavior Laboratory, Div of Kinesiology, U. of Mich Andy Toy, Mortice Kern Systems Inc. Shawn Wu, Brad Lanam, Alamo, CA Mark Henderson, Tektronix, Inc. Although all of these folks correctly identified part of the problem as needing to set the COMSPEC environment variable, and two knew that MKS tends to change the DOS option character from "/" to "-" so that unix-like directory names will work, only Andy Toy had the complete solution (not a big surprise, given where he works!): Make sure that the environment variable COMSPEC is correctly set to the full pathname of command.com and that the switch character is `/' and not `-'. Some programmes invoke command.com using the wrong switch character. Did any error messages get issued for the two cases you posted? Try the following before invoking Paradox. export COMSPEC='c:\dos\command.com' # use your pathname switch / # invoke Paradox here I followed Andy's advice. When I tried to escape to DOS from Paradox, it worked! However, when I tried to escape to MKS vi, my wimpy little micro (a Zenith Z-158) ran out of memory! It has approximately 704K, but that apparently wasn't enough. The problem may be that Paradox doesn't free up memory completely, and I had started it several times before I tried to vi. Tonight I will try right after booting. Thanks, and a tip 'o the hat for everyone who replied! ########################################################################## # # # George Entenman (ge@mcnc.org) # # The Microelectronics Center of North Carolina # # P.O. Box 12889 # # Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889 # # 919/248-1953 # # # ##########################################################################