Re: Loading printer in XyWin

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Yes, for good and ill, NT, W2K, and XP no longer "sit atop" a DOS
> base. The boot is always into Win and DOS is now what is considered
> "emulated" DOS. It's still useful in the same ways it always was,
> but there are some VERY crucial differences. You CAN do something
> that looks like booting into DOS...that is, you can get a
> command-prompt before the GUI starts...but it's not "pure" DOS.
> Windoze is loaded and most of it is running.

Yeah, the emulation "Dosbox" has some definite limitations. Things
you're allowed to run, things you can do.

> Now, if you were to boot with a floppy containing DOS I believe
> you'd have access to the C: drive, but I seem to recall that there
> are problems with that technique...which I can't remember the
> details of.

The main ones that spring to mind are that real DOS won't be able to
deal with other file systems (NTFS, FAT32), and can't see anything
past 1024 cylinders or about the 8.4Gig mark on your h/d, which isn't
terribly far in terms of today's hard drives.

There were some alternate versions of DOS, like Caldera, and maybe one
used by Novell, that might have had some differences in this regard.
A W98 Emergency Boot Disk is much closer to a real DOS, and can see a
lot farther out onto the h/d, but probably only for FAT32
partitioning.


Jordan