From: peter@tardis.trl.OZ.AU (Peter K. Campbell)
Subject: Gunship, Autoexec, Ram Disk, PC-NFS
Summary: Anyone got them working?
Keywords: lockups, autoexec, ramdrive, nfs
Organization: Telecom Research Labs, Melbourne, Australia
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 04:13:02 GMT

As everyone knows, the best way to test out an operating system is to
run a game on it.  So, of course after installing OS/2 I tried out a
lot of intensive games (well, that's my excuse anyway :-).

Some I had problems with, e.g Ultima Underworld & Castle Wolfenstein,
but I've seen postings for these.  Some I had no problems with at
all.  Some needed the odd alteration to video notification or something
similar (e.g. Gods).

However, one has really been giving me trouble, and that is Gunship
2000.  It seems to work ok most of the time, but generally after a
few minutes it will just freeze - nothing you do to it will 
make it restart, but the rest of OS/2 works ok, & I can swap it back
and forth between full-screen DOS and the desktop ok (although it
looks weird jumping between full screen 256 colours and small window
16 colours :-).  However, if I leave it alone for a while it will start
working again, as if nothing's happened.  Then after another few
minutes exactly the same thing will occur.

Anyone know what's going on or how to fix it?  I've tried altering all
the appropriate DOS settings, and nothing seems to affect this.  I also
haven't had anything else with this problem.

_______________________________

Another problem I've found is with the autoexec.bat file.  If I launch
a DOS program from the desktop (e.g. doubleclicking the icon under the
drive program) it will run the autoexec.bat file first, BUT ONLY IF IT
IS ON THE SAME DRIVE AS THE PROGRAM.  This had me confused for ages -
I couldn't work out why Underworld on drive C always called my (DOS)
autoexec.bat, whereas Gunship on D didn't - then I got the brilliant
idea of copying autoexec.bat to d:\, and, lo & behold, then Gunship
started doing it too.

Any idea of how to stop this from occurring?

I have a 486/33 DX with 8 MB of memory, running standard seamless
640x480 desktop on a Tseng 4000 card.  Running 4DOS and 4OS2 (but,
from memory, I was getting the same problem under the standard setup).

Hard drive 100 MB partitioned into:
C - FAT 25 Mb
D - FAT 25 Mb
E - HPFS 50 Mb.

I'm running a Boot Manager (OS/2 -> E, DOS -> C), so obviously I
don't want to remove the DOS autoexec.bat from C:\.

Currently the only solutions I have are:
(1) open a 4Dos command prompt, which _doesn't_ call autoexec.bat,
    and then run the program from here;
(2) make a batch file that calls the program, and put in on D: or E:
    (which don't have the DOS autoexec.bat in the root).

_______________________________

While I'm here, I might as well ask another question.  Block devices.
They just don't work in OS/2.  Now, this isn't a problem with a disc
cacher, seeing as OS/2 has one built in.  But I'm a great fan of
RAM disks, & I haven't found a single one that works with OS/2.  I
found some obscure reference in one of the help files (can't remember
where), that gave me the impression that OS/2 has one built in
somewhere, if only you can find it.

Does anyone know if this is the case, or, if not, of a program that
will do the job?

_______________________________

Number 4 - Sun PC-NFS, version 4.  We have it installed on a lot of
machines at work, and it is pretty vital being able to access the
network with it.  I can install the drivers in OS/2, but as soon as
anything tries accessing them I get memory errors, of course.

Now, I believe that if we bought IBM's tcp/ip + networking stuff et. al.
that we could set up the machines to access our Unix boxes via this.
However, there is a fair bit of money tied up in PCNFS, and so
because of this plus a few other problems it looks like OS/2 will not
be used on our machines (the other main problem is the lack of 256+
colour driver support, which should be fixed with the shrinkwrap
release).

Does anyone know if their is some fix that allows PC-NFS to work under
OS/2, or if Sun are working on an OS/2 Upgrade?

Thanks in advance.

Peter K. Campbell
p.campbell@trl.oz.au
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