W98 & Dos & Xy

[John Negus johnanegus@xxxxxxxx]

Concerning the problems of running Xy for Dos with or alongside (W95 &) W98, I know of four
possible routes to running Dos, each with its level of complexity and advantages and drawbacks:

- one is to boot the machine from either a floppy with dos on it or a Windows emergency startup
floppy. It sounds limiting but it can provide a perfectly serviceable dos.

- another is to just double-click on the Xy icon or program file while in Windows - which brings
with it the limited choice of fonts.

- a third is to create a batch (.bat) file to run Xy then, in Windows, alter its properties so that
the machine reboots in Dos before running it. From then on, one is in a standard Dos,
indistinguishable from the old ones except that you have access to all the peripherals you have in
Windows: the latter manages them behind the scenes, not even taking up any memory to do so. (To
get back to Windows, one types `win' and the machine reboots.)

- the fourth is to partition the hard disk and put Windows and Dos each on their own partition,
adding a boot manager (w95 has its own, w98 doesn't) to be able to choose between them. If one then
puts one's data files on the dos partition, either OS can access them (but you still get the
advantage of the big disks which Windows can manage but dos can't). To get back to Windows, one
simply reboots and tells the boot manager which of the OSes to run.

I know, there is no joy without pain. But the third is relatively painless to get going and works
well with Xy provided you have a printer for which Xy has a driver. It might suit people who can't
abide the w98 screen limitations. But it is better for doing long stints in Dos/Xy because
switching between Dos and Win requires rebooting. I haven't tried it on a portable but I see no
reason why it wouldn't work (provided its manufacturer hasn't made it specific to Windows). 
If anyone wants any help, I'll be glad to do whatever I can.

John

PS: Peter Cassidy's posting may make most of this irrelevant. I didn't see it till after penning
this.


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