DOS 5.0

[HENRY KISOR (SYSOP)]

  I have just successfully installed the DOS 5.0 Upgrade on my
Toshiba T-1200XE. Went smoothly, and I've been playing with some of the
new functions. Everything I have on the hard disk -- XyWrite,
WordPerfect 5.1, Qmodem, speller, thesaurus, Gofer, a couple of others
-- seem to work fine.
  I gained 61K of RAM by telling DOS to load part of itself into high
memory above 640K. (I had to reconfigure the T-1200XE's memory above
640K into 64K of extended memory and 256K of expanded memory in order
to provide the bit of extended memory DOS 5.0 needs.)
  It may only be my imagination, but everything seems to work
noticeably faster, as if the computer had been goosed from 12 mHz to 16
mHz.
  Note: I said I thought the Upgrade was available only on 5 1/4"
disks at Egghead so far. That may be so, but I installed the Upgrade
onto my T-1200XE by copying the contents of each 5 1/4" disk to a 3 1/2"
disk, *disk for disk*. This is because each of the 5 1/4" disks has a
volume label that I think the Setup program looks for. I used Norton's
VL (Volume Label) to put a new DISK   1, DISK   2, etc. label on
each of the 3 1/2" 720K disks. They worked fine in the 3 1/2" drive
of my T-1200XE.
  There are quite a few new features in DOS 5.0 that I haven't tested
yet -- UNDELETE, UNFORMAT, the new EDIT program that replaces the awful
EDLIN, quick format, task-switching, command-line history, a faster
QBASIC interpreter, etc.
   Each command now has online help; i.e., typing DIR /? gives you a
screenful of switches that can be used with the DIR command. Saves
having to lug a DOS manual or trot around with a laptop.