DOS WS6 Page Preview under W98

[Jim]

Hi, folks; I'm a long, long time WordStar user, and I'm very glad to find this forum. ?Here's an example of why.
 ? Invoking page preview (^OP) in WS6 on any of my Windows computers yields a black screen with the message: "Must have graphics display to run Preview/Press any key etc."   ?
 ? ?Could somebody kindly tell me how to get page preview to run under DOS-under-windows?
    See?  There's almost no place on the internet I can ask a question like that.
 ? ?P.S. I almost always run my DOS stuff stand-alone, i.e., by restarting in DOS. ?
 ? ?P.P.S. This leads to a potentially interesting discussion re the at least three different ways to run DOS programs under windows, no? ?
 ? ? Thanks in advance for your advice.

[Forum Admin]

If you boot into DOS and run exactly the same WS I take it that it works then?

Cheers
Mike

[Jim]

? ? No.
     I invariably reboot to DOS to run WordStar, because I've got a pretty customized AUTOEXEC and CONFIG for that purpose -- CAPS LOCK <> CNTRL, Norton NCD directory change, Am. Heritage Dictionary hotkeys, etc., i.e., a very sleek writing machine entirely transparent to my thought; with, I might add, an entirely black screen with cyan letters and but a single line of WordStar info at the top of the screen. ?But of course Windows always tries to reisist this kind of behavior, and in any case it's always lurking. ? ? ? ?
 ? ? I can't get DOS WS6 page display to work under any circumstances on any windows machine, including my CADD monster (real nice display) and how I access DOS seems to make no difference.  Que pasa?  It appears that WordStar thinks it's running on something of sub-page-display quality, probably because whatever monitors are around these days postdate its understanding of them.  Is there a way to trick the poor dear into displaying its pages?
   ?
 ? ?

[deedee]

Hi Jim,

Print Preview has some specific issues which you might want to check. For some reason, it doesn't think you have a graphics capability. Is there anything you can think of that might make it think that?

Preview can't run with two windows open, unless you have at least 80Kb (~5 pages) of EMS memory available. Are you running WS using upper memory or standard memory?

Preview needs 512Kb of standard memory available when it runs. Are your memory-resident programs leaving enough memory for WS's preview?

Yours on the keyboard,
deedee

[Jim]

Hmm. ?Thanks, deedee. ?I've just booted the machine here with the largest memory (132M) into DOS, started WS, and queried memory usage (? from the classic menu). ?It's showing only 67k unused memory. ?This would be under the DOS kernel, of course. ?Could this be the problem? ?If so, how to trick it into accessing more? ?

[Mycroft]

You should have a total of almost 609K under the kernal (looking under WS 7 it shows 325K in use by Wordstar and 274K free).  On your command window/icon, do you have the memory for the window set to load as much as possible into high memory?  Do you ahve as many of the memory items set to auto as possible? (i.e. Windows memory these days, but what the heck)

[deedee]

Hi Jim,

Mycroft is right in showing a lot more memory than you're showing. I get similar numbers to his when I check my WS (I'm using WS7d under win98se and Linux dosemu).

Look in your config.sys -- are you using the upper memory (i.e., dos=high,umb, and so forth)? What about in WS itself? Have you set the extended and expanded memory to be used in WSCHANGE? I believe mine is set to 16Kb each. WS itself can use a lot of standard memory. However, it will allow you to use the upper memory, and that will take some of the burden off your standard memory.

In addition, can you manage with fewer memory resident apps running? Am I wrong is assuming that your American Heritage dictionary is running memory-resident? Norton also tends to put things memory-resident. Do you need them to always be available?

These are just some suggestions.

deedee

[PGAGA]

Monday 03 March 2003

Just in case this is not a memory problem:

One gets the same error if the FontID.ctl file has the wrong line  for CRT_TYPE=

The generic line is

CRT_TYPE=

Phil

[Jim]

Thanks for the interesting replies.
 ? As to memory usage, I can't seem to find extended & expanded memory selections in wschange for WS6. Where are they? ?
 ? I do have DOS loaded high. ?
 ? But it's also true that I'm running a lot of stuff memory- resident: Norton's DOS utilities, yes, but more hoggishly the Am. Heritage Dictionary as well as WordStar's dictionary, thesaurus, and spell checker, not to mention memory for footnotes, unerase, and so forth. ?All of this stuff is very useful and I'm not willing to give it up. ?
 ? ?On the one full-bore DOS machine I still run, I've got a progaram called Netroom looking after memory, and there's rarely a problem. ?Netroom simply makes lots of decisions for the user, about how and where to park the OS, display, TSRs etc, a great program. ?But I'm fearful of running it out of the DOS config.sys on a WIN98 machine. ?Getting into DOS probably wouldn't be a problem; but getting back into Windows almost certainly would be. ?If I had a machine I wasn't all that worried about, and three days to mess with it, the experiment might prove interesting. ? ?
 ? ?I do have Windows controlling memory automatically; but I don't think Windows is all that present when you reboot to the DOS prompt. ? ? ?
 ? ?Which brings up one of my original points: there are definitely more than one set of Config and Autoexec files on your typical Windows 98 machine, depending on how much control you try to exert over it. ?The most successful control I've obtained over running DOS under windows comes from rebooting to DOS, with a Config and Autoexec that I've compiled from old DOS configurations -- i.e., by eliminating WIN98 as much as possible. ?Running WordStar via the Windows Run/WS path gets another set of results, involving writing custom config/autoexec files for that specific program; running DOS as if it were a program, via the DOS icon in the windows program menu, also with custom boot files, as if it were itself a program (which or course it is), yields yet a third result. ?And, of course, Windows itself has its own config and autoexec files, with which, by the way, mine seem to be getting mixed up.
 ? ? ?(You know, I used to know a lot about computers; I programed in assembler, Turbo Pascal, Basic and even Fortran -- with punch cards! -- , and so forth. ?But getting stuff going satisfactorily with Microsoft in the picture is a pain in the derriere.) ? ?
 ? ? ?Leaving memory aside, I'm interested in this FONTID.CTL file. ?I've opened it with EDIT (yes, I know, I could have used WS /N). ?The command line reads
 ? ? ?CRT_TYPE=TLIVGA6.WGD
which means nothing to me, and it's hard to believe it means anything to WordStar, since the 17" "View&View" monitor (the price was right) it's addressing postdates WS6 by, what, fifteen years? ?Twenty?
 ? ? ?Up above that line, in the many commented-out lines, it says I can select a display from a list of "Nonautoselected" items, via CRT_TYPE=X, where X is a number from 1-24. ?Should I jsut pick one that says it's a graphic display, e.g. "6 = 640x480 IBM Video Graphics Adapter (16 color)", and see what happens? ?
      Thanks again for the interesting responses.  
 ? ? ?
 ? ?

[Jim]

Success!  
Deleting the autoselection from the FONTID.CTL file worked!  The spec line now reads
CRT_TYPE=
i.e., it's blank.  
Thanks so much!

[deedee]

Well, Jim, I'm glad to hear you solved your problem without having to give up anything in the way you work.

You mentioned a couple of things which you couldn't find or weren't sure about, so I'll just put them here for closure.

When you "restart" the computer in MS-DOS mode, mswindows is not present at all. You are really in DOS. So having a properly configured config.sys and autoexec.bat is critical. The files that mswindows actually uses are the config.sys and autoexec.bat located on the root directory C:. If the file is config.dos or autoexec.old or whatever other ones you may find there or in other directories, they are not being used. It really is C:\config.sys and C:\autoexec.bat, precisely.

If you open a DOS window while in win98, you're in mswindows. However, it also uses the config.sys and autoexec.bat that is located in C:. The difference is that if those files don't exist on your box, win98 creates them. But, it changes the extensions, puts them in a different directory, and hides them. This was because win98, when it came out, was touted as not using DOS. So MS didn't want anyone to see that in fact it was a DOS-based system.

The other issue you raised is where to find the upper memory settings in WSCHANGE. I use WS7d, but I think they are in the same place in WS6 as well.

C (Computer Menu), C (Memory Usage Menu #1), 2 (Memory Usage Menu #2), G (EMS Usage) and J (XMS Usage) -- the numbers are in Kb. I have both set at 16.

deedee  

[Jim]

Hi deedee; thanks for your reply.
   The memory switches to which you refer, G & J, exist only in WS7, not in WS6.  I know this for sure because, although I run WS6, I actually have a copy of WS7 which I've never installed.  WSCHANGE is one of the things that was evolving toward the end there, I guess.  
    Before you expostulate, let me point out that the DOS memory manager I was running on all DOS machines, NETROOM, made it very easy for programs like WS6 to find all the memory they needed to do anything they wanted.  The other reason I never got into WS7 was that, by the time I got a copy of it, there was no manual available, and I was never certain how to import into WS7 all the patches I had running in WS6, and to this day I don't feel compelled to spend the time it would take to get WS7 looking like WS6 and have it running smoothly too.  THis is as much as to say that, having been around for a while, I'm forever running up against the question of how many iterations of software a single human brain is capable of digesting.  As my dad was dying last year, 86 years old, our running joke had it that the first thing they were going to make him do in hell was learn Windows 98.  
      This, from a guy who remembered accompanying his uncle, a South Carolina country doctor, on his rounds in a horse-drawn buggy.
         Anyway, I seek clarity re misc. autoexec.bats and config.syses on Windows machines, and I appreciate your edification.  I was aware that Microsoft was and is always playing games about how this stuff appears to work; but there are six (6) autoexec.somethingorothers in my C:/ directory, and five (5) config.somethingorothers.  The autoexec subscripts include .1, .bak, .bat (aha!), .DOS (huh?), .sis, and .tmp.  Ditto config subscripts with the exception of .bat.  

        
        

[PGAGA]

Wednesday, March 05, 2003

> TLIVGA6.WGD

The above is for a video card that has not been marketed in years.  My 486 had TLI graphics chip.  You were telling WS6 to find a video display that was not there.

You can seach the net and see if some of the old WGD files might improve things on your system.  I use an old Cirrus driver on my Pentium 166 system.

The memory settings are in WS6, but  never worked properly.  I actually tested them with WS6e to discover this.

Phil

[deedee]

Hi Jim,

Don't worry. I'm not going to say you should get WS7, if WS6 is working for you. I never used WS6, but made the jump from 5.5 to 7a. By then, the last one was 7d and fixed the bugs in 7a, so I went ahead and bought it. 7d did not come with manuals. However, 7a did. So, I do have a full set of manuals for WS7.

>our running joke had it that the first thing they were going to make him do in hell was learn Windows 98.  

Oh gosh, now we know the real meaning of perpetual torment  .

I'm not sure what put all those different configs and autoexecs on win98. I, too, have 1, bak, dos, old and so forth as extensions. I expect that different programs I added, changed the autoexec.bat or config.sys, and each one had a different way of saving the previous version. I believe the ones with the dos extension were put there by win98. I've met a lot of people who thought they were the ones that were used by win98 and dos7, but that's not so.

I am sure that it is c:\autoexec.bat and c:\config.sys, which are the ones you need to keep correct. I've gotten rid of the others on occasion, but some come back (like bad pennies, I guess :-/).

deedee

[Jim]

I have no idea how that video ID got in that file, as I don't recognize it from the 486 machine that I still have, which runs an Orchid card.  It is true, however, that on both the CRT machines I've changed the FONTID line on, whille (happily) the page display now comes up, it looks amazingly crummy.  On an HP laptop, it looks fine.  I think there's a way to tweak the way the way the DOS display looks, but I can't remember it.
    As to the config and autoexec questions, I read some place that Windows will overwrite certain config and autoexec files under certain circumstances, replacing them with its own, but I can't remember what they are.  I have a huge book called Secrets of Windows, and another fat one on DOS 6.22, and when I get time, I'll look this problem up and post it here.