 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group A Beginner's Tale: Part 16 Ron Wilby |
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How Microsoft must hate DOS. They have disbanded their DOS development team, we are told, in preparation for Chicago, a sort of amalgamation of DOS and Windows, but still that damn 6.2 won't go away! There are problems with ScanDisk, and now, total disaster! A court in the US has ruled that MicroSoft must take 6.2 off the market, as DoubleSpace (yes, that again) infringes the patents of Stac Electronics. This is almost (but not quite, sob) making me feel sorry for Microsoft. You will remember that all the problems with DOS 6.0 and 6.2. have revolved around Doublespace, which IBM cleverly left out of their PC-DOS 6.1 replacing it with a Stac Electronics product.
Scandisk Fix
Unfortunately, ScanDisk didn't turn out quite the replacement for CHKDSK we all expected. What it did do, was to chew up all the data from various hard disks, all of them made by the highly-respected Conner firm. In particular, one of the disks now denuded belonged to a Melb PC member, who lost a whole year's records from his business. He was far from happy.
Microsoft has wriggled and squirmed over this, and say the "difficulty" occurs only with certain Conner IDE disk drives. Some "difficulty" when you lose a whole year's business records! The cause, says Microsoft, was that the AUTOEXEC.BAT startup file contained a line which said VERIFY-oN. Also, we hear, the problem occurs in some, not all, Conner hard disks, and that the PC Tools equivalent of ScanDisk (Diskfix) is also affected. It has been alleged that Microsoft knew about this "difficulty" but said nothing until forced to come clean when the disasters started to occur. Rather naughty, we think. The latest news is that Microsoft has made available a "fix" via online services such as Compuserve. For those of us who do not have that facility, my advice is to examine your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, removing any reference to VERIFY, or at least putting REM at the beginning of the line containing the deadly word VERIFY.
DOS 7
If you run a 386 or higher CPU, you may not be aware that DOS and most of your software are unable to use your computer's full power. What you have now is a 32-bit computer using 16-bit software and operating much more slowly than necessary.
Microsoft's next move in the area of Operating Systems is expected to be the release of a product currently codenamed Chicago, supposedly aimed at the SOHO (small office/home office) user. Chicago
will be a 32-bit operating system with a character-based (as opposed to graphics based) subset which will effectively be DOS 7. Remembering that Windows requires DOS, you could think of Chicago as Windows 4 running on an invisible 32-bit DOS operating system. You will still be able to run your current 16-bit Windows and DOS application programs. If you think Chicago sounds a bit like OS/2, you're right, although OS/2 has a much better file-management system (you can have up to 255 characters in your file names, for example). There's a lot of weeping out there about the "death of DOS," but that probably won't be enough to save it. I'm doing some of the weeping, because I decided the other day to upgrade my version of Quicken, only to be told that there is now only a Windows version available. Sorry, Quicken, I'm sticking with the old version so you didn't get my order.
DOS Dinosaur
Yes, that's me. I'm going to miss DOS. I like messing about with the startup files, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and I like the stark command line. It's quick and dirty, with emphasis on the quick. Hourglass watching and those slow screen redraws with Windows are not for me, I don't want my fast 486 reduced to the speed of my long-gone XT. There are many other problems I've heard about with Windows, so where do I go from here? To OS/2, I think. It seems to be quite superior to any Microsoft offering, both in speed and functionality. OS/2's main disadvantages are the need for lots of RAM and 35 MB of hard disk space and of course I'll have to buy a mouse (more expense).
The Age tells me that our President is also shedding some tears over the imminent death of
DOS - congratulations, Charles! But remember, all you Dedicated DOS
Dinosaurs, DOS will be around as long as people are still using it. The wailing and gnashing of teeth seem a little premature to me, but as Charles said, the icon is on the screen (writing is on the wall). Nevertheless, a future without DOS upgrades and buggy revisions like 4.01 and 6.0 does have its attractions, don't you think?
My Favourite Computer Dealer
After the long saga of trouble and strife with my system which occupied parts of last month's episode of The Tale, would you believe there was more to come. The next problem was that my "Paddy's Axe" computer refused to "boot," either from the usual C: drive or from floppy. This was because, after my recent upgrading and a new 3.5-inch A: drive, I didn't possess a "Disaster Disk." I had replaced my 5.25-inch A: drive with a 3.5-inch drive, which meant that all my boot-up
disks, panic disks and disaster disks would now only go in the B: drive, and you can't boot from B:-DOS won't have it!
Of course, all this happened on a Sunday (everything goes wrong on Sundays -
it's called Murphy's Seventh Law), but fortunately Ron Jackson of the Retirees SIG had a 3.5-inch bootable disk. So, a quick trip by car and guess what? The damn thing still wouldn't boot.
Back to the friendly dealer and then followed a frustrating week of changing everything except the outer case of "Paddy's Axe." No success, they finally had to loan me a computer so that "Beginner's Tale" and "Beginners' Bytes" could be delivered to PC Update on time. Eventually, the SME boys found the problem and my troubles are over. I am now happily enjoying the luxuries of masses of free hard disk space, a much faster hard disk response and the lovely Colorado tape backup system. This sure beats the hell out of backing up to floppies or of committing the ultimate sin of being too lazy to backup at all.
That's all for now, be back next month . .
Reprinted from the April 1994 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
