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Re: Edhel finds DOS 3.3 speed-up (was DOS 3.3 versions)
Neil Parker (nparker@cie-2.uoregon.edu) wrote:
: > In fact, ProntoDOS and variants like ESDOS][ are not 100% DOS 3.3
: >compatible. For even a minor tweak to Standard DOS, you can be sure that
: >there is some program somewhere which will bomb due to the change. Just
: >adding a "Free Sectors" display to CATALOG ruined compatibility with some
: >fancy HELLO program-launchers.
: Indeed. I have first-hand experience with this. A few years ago I wrote
: my own DOS speed-up patch (it works like ProntoDOS, bypassing the file
: manager bottleneck), which I still use frequently. It's been quite
: reliable so far, but I have had one problem--it's not compatible with the
: language-card version of GPLE. It seems GPLE wants to put its language-
: card-switching code in the same free space that I took over for my speed
: patch. Fortunately I discovered the incompatibility before it had a chance
: to corrupt any files.
Interesting that you should bring up this particular point...a
particularly interesting bug I have seen in ProntoDOS involves programs
which store themselves in the language card...specifically, both GPLE.LC
and the Big Mac Macro Assembler (the really really really old version of
Merlin-8). All of the DOS functions work just fine, EXCEPT for CATALOG.
When you try to do a CATALOG after loading GPLE or Big Mac, you get the
header, and nothing else; i.e.:
]CATALOG
PRONTO-DOS 254 FS=85
]
on a disk known to contain lots of stuff. Once I tried to run down the
problem and I think I determined it was in the Free Space
routine...shutting off that option solved the problem...but I am not
completely sure.
]Dave Althoff, ][.
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