More on NW-DOS and PB 3.5

Lance,
Thanks for the reply. Not what I wanted to hear, but at least I
now know why I can't use those keys. I'll just have to do it the hard way, again (sigh)
P'raps I should try PBCC. I'll think about that ...
regards, Colin D.

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[Lance Edmonds]

From the info I received from R&D:

PBINST intentionally blocks the use of F11 and F12 because of new key combinations supported by PB (SHIFT-arrows, etc).

Reading between the lines it appears that the decision was made in order to ensure compatibility on the widest range of hardware that PB/DOS can run on.



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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

hi again, lance ..
yup, sure did. reason for asking again is, i did not get a satisfactory answer
then. it resurfaced as a result of the crash i just had because of nw-dos's
dpmi module, which forced me to reload pb from the original disks
and i lost my f11/f12 keys. last time, i had to put in, one at a
time, a key combo that pbinst would accept, then go looking for
that sequence in pb with a hex editor, and then change it to what
i wanted. i did that for all my f11/f12 combos, - 8 of them - and
now i have to do it again. p.i.t a, someone said recently.

my simple mind needs a straight answer here. am i supposed to be able to use those keys, or not??
have powerbasic inc locked out those combos for a reason, is it me, or is it a bug in pbinst??
someone's gotta know somewhere!
woe is now all over my keyboard.

colin d.

originally posted by lance edmonds:
interestingly, one year ago (almost exactly to the day!) a guy named "colin d" asked the exact same question...


how soon they forget!

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[Lance Edmonds]

interestingly, one year ago (almost exactly to the day!) a guy named "colin d" asked the exact same question...


how soon they forget!



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lance
powerbasic support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</a>

Thanks, Lance, I'll look forward to a solution - I hope.
Regards, Colin D.

Originally posted by Lance Edmonds:
Colin, now that you mention it, I recall that there was an issue with F11/F12... I'll search my archives when I get back to my DEV PC and I'll also ask Dave Navarro (he is temporarily unavailable right now). If my memory serves me, the issue was discussed either in this forum (some time back, possibly when we were using different BBS software), or in the Compuserve forum. I'll post what I can find.

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[Lance Edmonds]

Colin, now that you mention it, I recall that there was an issue with F11/F12... I'll search my archives when I get back to my DEV PC and I'll also ask Dave Navarro (he is temporarily unavailable right now). If my memory serves me, the issue was discussed either in this forum (some time back, possibly when we were using different BBS software), or in the Compuserve forum. I'll post what I can find.


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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

Hi Anton,
Thanks to you and Lance - hi there, Lance - for the corroboration
about DPMI, I shoulda tried that before running off at the mouth
here..

Now, this F11/F12 thing. When I run PBINST to customize PB, and
choose Editor Commands, I can edit or insert the keystrokes to
access some of PB's functions. Now, I am unable to insert any
commands using F11 or F12, with or without shift/ctrl/alt combinations.
Moreover, the situation is the same whether I am in NW-DOS, MS-DOS, or
Win98 (either in a dos window or booting straight to Dos).
The same situation existed for PB3.2, but in PB 2.x I could implement
F11 and F12 without trouble.
I wrote a quickie program snippet to return ascii codes from keystrokes,
and my F11 and F12 keys yield the correct codes, so that seems to let out
interference from resident modules or the OS.

Try this: get into PBINST, select Editor Commands, arrow down to
'Move to Block Begin' or 'Move to Block End' and press enter to
insert a new key sequence. Try F11, F12, with shift/ctrl/alt,
and see if you can get these keys to work. darned if I can.

Yet, look inside PBINST.EXE with Xtree or similar viewer, and you
can find all the F11/F12/shift/ctrl/alt combinations listed among
all the other available keys. What am I doing wrong???
Woe is still with me.
Colin D.

Originally posted by Anton Lasich:
Hi Colin

<GRIN> Yup Novell or is it Nouveau? DOS was a pain in the ..... Like Lance I gave up on it. It was SOOO dissappointing after the wonderful attempt by Digital Research ( you can still get viewmax and the gem desktop environment). WHAT were they thinking.

Problems with WordPerfect and even LetterPerfect made us eliminate it completely.

However, DR-DOS (OpenDos) is stable - relatively. EMM386 still gives problems with Dos Protected Mode I will agree but it seems to me that these problems are a result of incompatibilities. There are so many 3rd party mem and dpmi progs out there.

I actually prefer using DR-DOS as my base when in PB. I have noticed the following: you can lh pb.exe, compiling speed is apprx. 2-5 secs faster than M$ DOS. I have been tinkering with page frames (EMS) and I have had no problems at all. Only when trying to remap an area already in use or whatever - i.e. MY fault.

I would suggest that you look at the DR-DOS System Developer Kit. You can rewrite most of the stuff yourself.

As for your F11 and F12 keys - what sys drivers if any are you using?

Thanks
Anton

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Hi Colin

<GRIN> Yup Novell or is it Nouveau? DOS was a pain in the ..... Like Lance I gave up on it. It was SOOO dissappointing after the wonderful attempt by Digital Research ( you can still get viewmax and the gem desktop environment). WHAT were they thinking.

Problems with WordPerfect and even LetterPerfect made us eliminate it completely.

However, DR-DOS (OpenDos) is stable - relatively. EMM386 still gives problems with Dos Protected Mode I will agree but it seems to me that these problems are a result of incompatibilities. There are so many 3rd party mem and dpmi progs out there.

I actually prefer using DR-DOS as my base when in PB. I have noticed the following: you can lh pb.exe, compiling speed is apprx. 2-5 secs faster than M$ DOS. I have been tinkering with page frames (EMS) and I have had no problems at all. Only when trying to remap an area already in use or whatever - i.e. MY fault.

I would suggest that you look at the DR-DOS System Developer Kit. You can rewrite most of the stuff yourself.

As for your F11 and F12 keys - what sys drivers if any are you using?

Thanks
Anton

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[Lance Edmonds]

Hi Colin,

I gave up using NW-DOS 7.xx some years ago (after about the 15th patch), and remember the same problem with it's DMPI implementation. (I still have the original disks and manuals "somewhere" around here)

DPMI used to cause EMM-Exception errors with PKZIP across a Netware-lite network... a real P.I.T.A, because you could not disable it and still have a server running (if I recall correctly).

I also dont recall any issues with F11/F12 in the IDE, but my apps certainly could use F11 and F12 ok.

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

Eureka! I have found it! (but I didn't run down the street in my birthday suit
as did Archimedes.) After Anton's reply - see previous posting) I
did what I should have done first, that is start with the bare dos and add the
the extra bits in one at a time. To shorten a long story, the
offending module turned out to be Novell's Dos Protected Mode
Interface - DPMI. This module apparently is to allow multi-tasking, and is loaded
when EMM386 is loaded, and appears to be the default setup for NW-DOS.
The instability is present when DPMI is loaded, even when disabled
by using 'DPMI=OFF' on the command line, which disables DPMI but
leaves it loaded.

However, you can avoid loading it by putting 'DPMI=OFF' in Config.sys,
and then PB3.5 is quite stable.

Now, some figures on why I want to use NW-DOS over the 'other' dos.
NW-DOS makes much better use of memory for running programs in the
PB IDE, like so:
Under NW-DOS, the available memory for running programs in the PB IDE
is 276Kb, and with video memory switched in, a most useful 374Kb;
while under the 'other' dos, available memory is only 195Kb, with
no video memory available that I can find.

Now, all I need is to crack the F11/F12 problem in PBINST ...

Colin D.