DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender - Documentation: User's Reference [Configuration]

DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender - User's Reference

4.0 - DOS/32 Advanced - Configuration

DOS/32 Advanced can be configured in two different ways. Either can it be configured by a special environment variable, DOS32A, that can be defined in autoexec.bat file, or by the SUNSYS Setup Utility program, ss.exe, which is provided with DOS/32 Advanced and is located in the .\BINW directory.

To define DOS/32 Advanced environment variable you need to edit your autoexec.bat file and add the following line: SET DOS32A=. Please note that the configuration defined in the environment should be considered as "global", ie it affects all the programs that use DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender, as opposed to manual configuration of DOS/32A executables with SUNSYS Setup Utility, which is called "local" because it requires manual configuration of each program which uses DOS/32 Advanced.

The following is a list of options which can be added directly after the equal sign:

Option	Description
/QUIET	Disables console output and sound generation on run-time errors. No warnings will be reported, only fatal and run-time errors will be displayed on the screen. Also disables the copyright banner which is otherwise displayed on DOS Extender's startup. This option is equivalent to /PRINT:OFF and /SOUND:OFF options put together.
/PRINT:X	where switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) Disables console output. No warnings will be reported, only fatal and run-time errors will be displayed on the screen. This option also disables the copyright banner, displayed on the screen otherwise.
/SOUND:X	where switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) Disables sound generation on run-time errors.
/EXTMEM:NNNN	where NNNN is the number of KB of extended memory that will be allocated by DOS/32 Advanced at startup and made available for program's use Defines how much extended memory DOS/32 Advanced will allocate and make available for application's use. No more than NNNN KB will be allocated, so for example if you have 16 MB of extended memory in your machine and want that DOS/32 Advanced programs will use only 12 MB, leaving the rest (4 MB) of the memory for other programs, you can set the value NNNN to 12288 (12*1024). To make DOS/32 Advanced allocate no extended memory at all set the NNNN value to 0. Note that when DOS/32 Advanced reads the NNNN number, it will automatically update the limit number of the Page Tables that will be allocated under the VCPI system.
/DOSBUF:NNNN	where NNNN is the number of KB of conventional (DOS) memory that will be reserved by DOS/32 Advanced for its internal DOS Transfer Buffer Defines the size of the DOS Transfer Buffer that will be used by DOS/32 Advanced when it transferring data from conventional (DOS) memory to extended memory and back, where it can be reached by the real mode DOS functions. The number NNNN must be in range from 4KB to 64KB.
/DPMITST:X	where switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) Defines the order of VCPI/DPMI detection. When turned on, the DOS Extender will look for a DPMI host first. Note that by default DOS/32 Advanced will always look for a VCPI server first.
/RESTORE:X	where switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) Defines whether the real mode interrupts are to be restored when a protected mode program returns to DOS. All 256 interrupt vectors will be restored when this option is turned on. Note that by default DOS/32 Advanced will always restore the real mode interrupts.
/NULLP[:X]	where optional switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) Defines whether the Null-Pointer Protection is to be installed. When a protected mode program writes to the addresses at the beginning of the memory, an error will be reported. Note that by default DOS/32 Advanced will not install Null-Pointer Protection. Also note that you do not have to specify the ON (or 1) switch for the Null-Pointer Protection to be turned on. However, if you wish to disable the Null-Pointer Protection for all DOS/32 Advanced programs that are configured to install it, you must specify the OFF (or 0) switch after the colon sign.
/VERBOSE[:X]	where optional switch X can be ON, OFF, 1 (=ON), 0 (=OFF) This option, when turned on, will tell the DOS Extender to show verbose information about system, memory and programs that the DOS Extender executes.
/NOWARN[:NNNN]	where NNNN is a valid warning number This option allows you to separately disable specific warnings. Note that this option does not disable copyright banner shown at DOS Extender's startup.
/NOC	Disables the copyright banner only. The warning messages are still displayed on the screen.

Examples:

1) SET DOS32A=/QUIET /EXTMEM:4096 /DOSBUF:16 /RESTORE:OFF

- disable warnings and sound generation
- allocate no more than 4096KB (=4MB) of extended memory
- set DOS Transfer Buffer size to 16KB
- do not restore real mode interrupts on exit

2) SET DOS32A=/PRINT:0 /EXTMEM:0 /NULLP

- disable warnings
- allocate no extended memory
- install Null-Pointer protection

3) SET DOS32A= DPMITST:1 RESTORE:1 SOUND:1 DOSBUF:76

- enable check for DPMI host first
- enable restoring of real mode interrupts on exit
- enable sound generation on run-time errors
- invalid number 76 (out of range), option is ignored!

Notes:

a) Options defined by the environment variable DOS32A in the autoexec.bat will take effect after you reboot your computer.

b) All the programs that use DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender will be configured according to the DOS32A environment variable, no matter on which drive or in which directory they are placed, unless you reconfigure them manually with SUNSYS Setup Utility program to not to read the environment, or the environment variable DOS32A is removed from the autoexec.bat file and the machine is rebooted.

c) Each DOS/32 Advanced application can be configured manually with SUNSYS Setup Utility program, but that configuration will be overridden by the options defined in the DOS32A environment variable, since each time a DOS/32 Advanced application is started, it will read the built-in configuration header first, and environment variable DOS32A second.

The second way to configure DOS/32 Advanced programs is to use the SUNSYS Setup Utility program ss.exe . Please refer to SUNSYS Setup Utility documentation for information about how to use SUNSYS Setup Utility program.