Rich's RamblingsI sit here trying to write something interesting for this month's column without trying to be old fashioned or out of step. I have been thinking about all the Windows95 hype and such over the past two weeks. I have seen several newspaper ads from competitors in the online and operating systems areas. Most of these don't talk as much about how great their system or OS is but about the deficiencies and drawbacks of Microsoft's offerings.by Rich Schinnell
Even the newsgroups on the Internet are full of people venting themselves. They are dumping on anyone who is working at trying to get their machine up on Windows95 instead of doing productive work. They join a newsgroup dedicated to some particular subject, and then dump on everyone. Like in the PCBoard newsgroup, they tell everyone to sell their PCBoard BBS software and buy some other BBS software. Same in the Win95 newsgroup; they tell everyone to throw away their PC and buy a Macintosh. What a waste of bandwidth. Not that the Macintosh isn't a good machine and operating system. But who in their right mind would even consider throwing away a couple of thousand dollars just to please someone else? Instead of trying to help people, they vent on them. Thank God that we don't allow that on the MIX, even though we have many who use OS/2 Warp, Unix, DOS, and Windows95. Most of our members respect other members' choices and try to help them get working. Users Helping Users.
What is all this coming to? I see more and more disparaging commercials instead of upbeat ones that talk about the neat new things that they are offering. Not that Microsoft's Windows95 is all the great things all rolled into one, but most of the criticism sounds like sour grapes to me. (I don't own Microsoft stock.) MS does know how to market, and if you believe their critics--who seem to be worried that MS will soon control the world--I don't think so.
DOS still lives and will be around for a long time. There are probably 50 million computers that only run DOS and maybe Windows 3.1. That's a heck of a good market. If some of these companies would concentrate on this market for some new interesting products, they might be better off. Everyone is not going out and buying a new Pentium. Some people are more than satisfied to get their work done on a DOS machine.
Why upgrade or spend money if what you are using is doing the job? Many feel that they are evidently lower on the totem pole if they don't have the latest. I sometimes think it is a "mine is better than yours" syndrome. I see it in messages and conversations wherever the dweebs/nerds/techies get together to trade stories on computers and free DOS RAM.
I get a big kick out of some bragging that by using QEMM, 386MAX, or MemMaker, they have over 640K of DOS memory free. I always ask them: What do you do with it?
I understand that some of the games do require you to free up a lot of system RAM, but some of this gets ridiculous. Using the LoadHigh and Device High features built into DOS, over 98 percent of the users will have more than enough DOS memory for their programs.
While I'm at it, let's talk about troubles with computers. Many evenings, I get phone calls from members with computer problems. I enjoy helping most of them, but some seem destined to try to pack six pounds of sand in a five pound bag. Trying to conduct brain sur-gery by telephone is an interesting experience.
Just to set the stage. I had one member who insisted on installing Stacker on his hard disk; he had just purchased a 540MB hard disk and had only used about 60MB for programs and data. The reason was that his friends all used Stacker, and swore that it was fast and worked great. Besides, it gave them so much more hard disks space. Then he had gone out and bought QEMM, as a memory management tool. Great idea, but there's another waste of money for this person. It's as though some people feel that they just have to have something, even though they don't know why. The lemmings disorder. <G>
My advice, and the way that I have helped some of these members get up and operating, was to recommend to him that they clean up his hard disk and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). If you are having problems with your computer, then basic troubleshooting techniques dictate that you get back to a real basic configuration, such as the following for your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
Step 1. Copy your existing AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to a subdirectory for archival purposes.
CD\Step 2. Create new CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
MD TESTFILES
COPY AUTOEXEC.BAT \TESTFILES
COPY CONFIG.SYS \TESTFILES
COPY CON CONFIG.SYSThese two new files will allow you to reboot your computer and still have the necessary files to be able to test. Print out your old AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files and start by adding the lines to your new CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Remember to start with your CONFIG.SYS and see what works. If you make too many changes to these files at the same time, you will never know which change made the difference.
BUFFERS=30
FILES=25
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS
DOS=HIGH,UMB
<Press F6 key and then press Enter>COPY CON AUTOEXEC.BAT
PROMPT $P$G
PATH C:\;C:\DOS
<Press f6 key and then press Enter>
The other alternative is to leave your existing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files in place and start remarking out lines, one at a time, to see what is causing the problems. You can do this by placing the three letters REM at the beginning of CONFIG.SYS lines, and a : (colon) in front of lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT. You might have to copy a hard disk manager file to your A: drive so that you can properly use your hard disk. But look through your CONFIG.SYS file for these sorts of requirements.
Please clean up your hard disk, I have found machines with old DOS files laying around in obscure subdirectories. To find out whether you have any old copies of COMMAND.COM laying around you can type
DIR COMMAND.COM/S
from the root directory, and the DIR command will search all your subdirectories for copies of COMMAND.COM. It should find one in your root directory and one in your DOS subdirectory. And make sure the files are identical in size and date. If you see any others in subdirectories that are older, get rid of them.
Rich Schinnell is the president of Capital PC, retired from the USN and his second job. He's now on his third career as a consultant along with lots of volunteering for CPCUG. He enjoys helping people with their computer problems. He can be reached at home in the evenings at (301) 949-9292 from 6-9PM, and the Internet at schinnel@cpcug.org.
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