Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!super.upenn.edu!eecae!upba!qetzal!root From: root@qetzal.UUCP (Admin) Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport Subject: First impressions of Dos-Merge Keywords: 286 Dos-merge Message-ID: <852@qetzal.UUCP> Date: 15 Dec 87 07:13:32 GMT Organization: Mentor Software Inc., Thornton, Co. Lines: 92 Approved: rcw@qetzal.UUCP I'll share some first impressions of the Dos-Merge 286 product by Microport. Having been in the software biz for some time, I get too close to the product in a hurry, and forget to tell the world how easy or difficult a particular product is to install and learn to use. UPS brought DosMerge this morning about 10 a.m. Anxious to get it to work, the shrinkwrap was soon in a pile on the floor. The manual looks daunting, about two inches of material to read. Fortunately, the installation chapter is nicely organized into the following sections: Installing Merge 286, Merge System Administration, Using Dos from the Unix Shell, Combining DOS and UNIX, Tailoring the DOS Environment, Installing and removing Dos Applications, Merge 286 Messages, and an Index. All in all, a surprisingly user-oriented document. As opposed to some of the earlier incarnations of the System V/AT Unix, I was able to follow along and install the product successfully without a preliminary read-through. As a practice, I don't suggest doing this, but I had just backed up all of my filesystems the night before. (The manual recommends you do that too before installation). In order to install Dos-Merge, you must already own a copy of PC-DOS. I used an off-the-shelf copy of IBM DOS 3.2. Dos-Merge only works with version 3.1 or 3.2 of DOS. In terms of "Generic Doses," your mileage may vary. I would be hesitant to be too creative with generic DOSes. Dos-Merge is only guaranteed to work on an IBM machine with an IBM bios, and a Televideo machine. I used an IMS clone with Phoenix Bios. If you have an unusual Bios or an early version of Phoenix, (earlier than version 2.7), the manual suggests you upgrade. This product seems to rely very heavily upon the proper operation of the BIOS, so I suggest their advice be heeded. Installation is pretty simple. Insert the distribution diskette and type "installit" when logged in as root. The files are loaded into the directories /usr/lib/merge and /usr/dbin. A few new files also appear in /etc, /usr/bin, and /bin. A bourne shell script, /usr /lib/merge/dosinstall, guides you through installation, and creates a "snap disk". This snap disk is originally a 1.2 meg diskette formatted with the dos command, format a: /s. This diskette is used to build an "image file" from the DOS proprietary software. The dosinstall shell script installs the kernel in the / directory, and renames your old kernel to unix.premerge. You then reboot the machine OFF THE FLOPPY to complete installation. Reboot the machine once more off the hard disk, and installation is complete. Fortunately this shell script handles floppy read failures. Because of a bug in the 2.3 release, accesses to the floppy drive don't always succeed, and indeed it failed a couple of times on my machine. The shell script told me of the failure, and I pushed "retry" until the installation finally succeeded. I ordinarily run my IMS at 10 mhz. Unfortunately, Dos-Merge cannot handle higher speeds, and double panics occur. This is something of a disappointment, but at least this limitation is documented in the release notes. Another negative - DOS does not seem to work from a remote terminal, but haven't tried the "CTTY" command yet. The traditional _ cursor is now reserved for DOS, and a non-blinking block cursor is used for Unix. If you like block cursors, I suppose it's ok, but I think it should be an option. On the bright side, the implementation seems quite seamless. I was surprised that my Logimouse driver worked, even more surprised that Microsoft windows worked, and absolutely astounded that Procomm worked. I am very impressed that I don't have to repartition my disks - all of the DOS files are loaded directly from the unix file system! You can, however, create a dos partition to use that primordial software that still requires a key disk if necessary. Accessing dos is trivial - you just type "dos". If you want to allocate a system resource, say com1 for example, you type "dos +acom1" and that resource becomes available to DOS. Apparently this is how the contention of resources issues is resolved in Dos-Merge. Well, that's about all there was too it. Installation of this product was the simplest thing I've ever done on Microport, and I have battled lots of hardware and software. As a salesman type, I'm looking forward to keeping my records in a database such as dbase III. I've always used Unix, and am glad I held out for this product. I'll keep you posted (:-). { Robert White } -- //////////////////286 Moderator -- comp.unix.microport\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Email to microport@uwspan for info on the newsgroup comp.unix.microport. otherwise mail to microport@uwspan with a Subject containing one of: 386 286 Bug Source Merge or "Send Buglist" (rutgers!uwvax!uwspan!microport)