DOS 5.0

[HOWARD RICE]

6-11-91
 Well this is coming to you via the EDIT command from DOS 5.0.
I saw the big ad for Egg Head sale of DOS 5.0 for $39.++ and called
to make sure they still had copies at 10:00 am. They said they had
500 copies and were not to worried. As per usual, being in a hurry
and talking with the salesperson and a customer, I forgot to check
on the disk size before leaving. On the second trip out to
Lincolnshire, I brought the dogs and we walked around the building
EggHead is in after I got my correct disk size.
 I typed SETUP and the sucker said I was about to create a floppy
version of DOS 5! The typically smart MS read my system and told me
to read the readme file for DiskManager info.
It installs easy * i f *; you do not have a disk manager or if
you do not want to change partition sizes. Which comes first, the
partition or the DOS? The readme file on DISK 3 states to remove
or change the partition with the old dos!
 I only had 3 floppies at work and decided to back everything up
before proceeding. Easy to do with my extra hard drive. I just
use the [PK -u -pr] switch and put my whole partition into a zip
file.
 I seem to have picked up about 100K of usable memory but I will
have to study the books before I try to undo my partition on my
internal drive and I may not mess with my external drive because
I would not be able to use it to work on someone else's 3x machine.


6-12-91
5.0 will not increase 8086 memory usage!

The following are just a few of the fixes offered for
 other problems in the Dos5 readme.txt.

2.14 Western Digital SCSI Hard-Disk Controller
----------------------------------------------
If you are using a Western Digital WD 7000 FASST or AT/XT SCSI
controller with hard-disk ROM version 3.35 or earlier, contact
your vendor for an upgrade before installing MS-DOS 5.0. The ROM
version number is displayed when you start your computer.

3.6 Phoenix BIOS and HIMEM.SYS
------------------------------
If your system includes a Phoenix BIOS and MS-DOS 5.0 doesn't
work correctly, try adding a /machine:1 or /machine:8 switch
to the DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS command in your CONFIG.SYS file.


7.5 SMARTDrive and Third-Party Partitions
-----------------------------------------
If your system includes a third-party disk partition and you
try to use SMARTDrive, you may receive a message stating that
you cannot load SMARTDrive.

You can force SMARTDrive to load by specifying the /p switch.
However, doing so may corrupt your hard disk if either of the
following conditions is true:
  * Your hard disk contains more than 1024 cylinders.
  * Your hard disk is not supported by the system's ROM BIOS.

If you have partitions created by using third-party
disk-partitioning software, use SMARTDrive ONLY if you are sure
your hard disk contains 1024 or fewer cylinders AND it is
supported directly by the system's ROM BIOS.


Don't get me wrong, I am not downing Dos 5.0 yet. For $39.??
it seemed like to good a deal to pass up. It even includes
Qbasic 1.0 which EDIT requires in a DOS pathed access area in
order to run. Just don't think you are going to install it and
get back to work in a few minutes.

 But Henry, they do have the 3.5" disks. Disk size is more important
for 5.0 than ever before. I quick scanned a note that 5.0 handles the
ASSIGN command differently than any older version. Point is, that you
might run into trouble if you ever have to use the UNISTALL command if
you tricked DOS into thinking A: drive was something else.