Apricot's MS-DOS 5.0 : SO47905
See Also
IPB 1029 - IPB 1032 - IPB 1035 - IPB 1037 - IPB 1042
IPB 1045 - IPB 2060 - IPB 2084 - IPB 2086
- IPB 2118
MS-DOS 5.0 will be initially shipped in Upgrade form; Apricot will
supply two high density disks, an 'MS-DOS User Guide and Reference Manual' and an 'Apricot
MS-DOS 5.0 Supplement'. Apricot add a number of additional drivers as well as modifying
both the system files and the installation routine.
Apricot Modifications to System Files:
- Facility added to boot from drive B:
- HDLight routine added to flash the front panel light on Adaptec SCSI
based machines
- INT FC handler added
Apricot Added Utilities:
| ABACKUP.EXE |
Apricot backup program. |
| ARESTORE.EXE |
Apricot restore program. |
| AVERIFY.EXE |
Apricot archive verification program. |
| AAEMM.SYS |
Expanded memory driver, gives full LIM 3.2 or partial LIM 4.0 support.
This driver will not co-exist with himem.sys. |
| AHA1540.SYS |
Device driver for Adaptec SCSI machines. |
| AMODE.EXE |
Program to set various parameters on Apricot specific equipment.
Includes drive head parking, internal tape drive support and VGA compatibility. |
| APRA20.SYS |
Allows DOS to correctly detect the presence of the A20 handler on Qi
600 systems. This must be the first DEVICE= line in the config.sys file. |
| APRUMB.SYS |
A device driver to give Upper Memory Block (UMB) support to load
Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) utilities into the 640KB to 1MB area of memory. If you
require himem.sys to be loaded, then it must appear before this driver. Requires, on AT
systems, BIOS to be set to Fast, or on MCA systems, ROM BIOS Shadowing set to Enabled and
Split RAM Use set to Shadow. |
| KP.EXE |
Apricot keyboard password locking program. |
| MOUSE.SYS |
Enhanced mouse driver for both AT and MCA systems. |
| VDDVGA.386 |
For use with Apricot High Res Windows 3.0 drivers. Requires system.ini
to have the line display=vddvga.386, this driver is not installed but needs to be manually
copied from disk 1 into your \windows\system directory. If this is not installed Windows
will give the message 'Cannot run Windows because of video device conflict;'. |
| WHAT.EXE |
Apricot utility to display the version number of other Apricot
Utilities. |
Suggested Configurations:
With a greater than 1MB system that does not require Expanded (LIM
specification) memory, we would suggest using aprumb.sys and himem.sys if you require it.
You may then load drivers into the 640KB to 1MB area. If you do not want to run Windows 3
in high resolution with Apricot on-board drivers and you are using only colour video, you
can also include the mono video area to give you more UMB space. This is done by adding
the switch i=b000-b800 against the aprumb.sys line. If you have an Adaptec SCSI, a Western
Digital Ethernet card, or any other expansion board that uses addresses between 640KB and
1MB you will have to use the x=ssss-eeee switch to exclude that memory area (where ssss is
the start address and eeee is the end address in Hexadecimal).
With a 1MB system, or a system requiring Expanded (LIM specification)
memory (not using Apricot on-board Ethernet), we would suggest the use of emm386.exe. With
the noems switch emm386.exe provides UMB support only; without it, it converts Extended
memory into Expanded (LIM specification) memory. Again using the i=b000-b800 switch, the
mono video area can be included, however this will clash with high resolution Windows 3
drivers or monochrome applications. The Exclude switch is also the same as with the
aprumb.sys driver.
If you are using a system that requires both Expanded (LIM
specification) memory and the use of on-board Ethernet, then Apricot supply aemm.sys. This
driver converts extended memory into expanded; either partial LIM 4.0 specification, or
with the /3 switch added, full LIM 3.2 specification. This driver, however, will not
co-exist with the himem.sys driver required for UMB support and Windows 3.
Further known conflicts:
- It seems that Qi 386-25 (Qi 600 or Qi PCi) machines hang if they are
fitted with ROM BIOS version less than 1.02.21.
- Early model Qi 300 machines, with a model number less than 43000, may
hang when using emm386.exe. Apricot suggests the use of aprumb.sys or aemm.sys.
- The standard installation inserts the line 'files=10' in the config.sys
file. This number must be increased if running Windows 3, as more than 10 files are opened
to access screen fonts etc. Other old config.sys and autoexec.bat entries should be copied
from your previous configuration.
The Advantages of DOS 5.0:
The main advantage of MS-DOS 5.0 over earlier versions is the ability to
high load its system files as well as TSRs and device drivers. On a stand alone system, it
is possible to have over 620KB of free base memory; this is especially useful when loading
network stacks or lots of TSRs. Further enhancements are cosmetic; 50 lines per screen
available via the mode command, on-line help for MS-DOS commands, improved DOS shell
program, Quick Basic bundled free, full screen text editor, etc.
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