From: ulrick@mp.cs.niu.edu (David Ulrick)
Subject: QBASIC, MS-DOS EDIT, and DV-386
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 15:11:15 GMT

Thanks to everyone who responded to my posting about running backups under
DV-386.  The gist that I'm getting is that one is probably better off backing
up a hard disk outside of DV.  One person said that they backed up only their
data directories.  Since I don't really want to keep 40-odd 1.44 Mb floppies
tied up with a backup, and I have the installation disks for much of my
software, this seems like a good technique for me.  BTW, I am a systems 
programmer; since I install software every day, doing it on my PC is no 
problem.  Of course, your mileage may vary.

On to a new subject...  DV-386 v2.4 is working really well for me now!
I'm running it under MS-DOS 5.0 on a 386-SX machine with 4 Mb of memory.
MS-Kermit 3.12 runs very nicely under DV (v3.11 locked up my machine); in
fact, I've done some downloads with it while playing games on Windows in the
foreground.  Quite impressive!  However, I had a bear of a time trying to get
some software that comes with DOS to work.  In particular, QBASIC and MS-DOS
EDIT seem to like to steal the mouse (and the ALT key, but that's another 
story) in a not-so-nice way.  Here's the scenario:

(1)  MOUSE.COM is loaded
(2)  Start DV with mouse support activated
(3)  Try Manifest, QD White Papers, Dos Services, etc..  All of them share the
     mouse quite nicely, of course.
(4)  Open QBASIC.  Press <Esc> to clear the opening dialog box.  All is well so
     far.
(5)  Press ALT to switch to the DV menu, which pops up right away.  Fine.
(6)  Switch back to QBASIC.  Try pressing ALT again.  No go, at least not
     right away.  If you're patient, you might get the DV menu one more time.
     If you do, CLOSE QBASIC!!!  You won't get another chance before locking
     the keyboard!
(7)  If you do decide to switch back to QBASIC, you'll find that the keyboard
     no longer responds.  The mouse will, though.  If you wish, you may use it
     to exit QBASIC, close your other windows, and exit DV.
(8)  Try typing something at the DOS prompt.  You can't!  You can't even type
     CTRL-ALT-DELETE to reboot, so it's Big Red Switch time.

Sounds like a keyboard problem, doesn't it?  Why do I say it's a mouse problem,
then?  Well, thanks to a couple of the QD White Papers, I managed to find a
workaround to the problem:

(1)  *Don't* load MOUSE.COM before DV.
(2)  *Don't* activate DV mouse support.
(3)  Invoke DV with the switch "/HW:74:FUV" (see MOUSEDRP.TEC in the White
     Papers for an explanation of this switch).  This will prevent the "mouse
     droppings" that would otherwise occur due to this workaround.  BTW,
     "74" happens to be the interrupt number for my mouse.  You may have a 
     different number (again, see MOUSEDRP.TEC).
(4)  Invoke QBASIC with a batch file like the following:
     @echo off
     C:\WINDOWS\MOUSE 
     QBASIC
     EXIT
     The DVP for QBASIC will need to be changed to include "N" for "Close on
     Exit?"
(5)  Mouse around in QBASIC all you want.  No problem.  Switch between windows
     at will, too.  You'll notice a bit of a delay in bringing up the DV menu
     some times, but you *won't* lose the keyboard, either.  What you *do* lose,
     sadly, is the mouse in DV.  However, the mouse will still work when you
     bring up MS Windows.  Moral:  DV does, indeed, have more control over 
     device drivers loaded in DV windows.

Please note that the above scenario and workaround also apply to MS-DOS EDIT,
which is simply another personality of QBASIC.  If there is a better way to
convince QBASIC, et. al., to work reliably in DV *without* losing the mouse in
DV itself I would like to know.  I always enjoy learning about esoteric 
switches and such :-).  I will say this, though--DV without a mouse
is a *lot* easier to use than, say, Windows or QBASIC without a mouse.  That's
a compliment, by the way!

Other than this problem, I'm quite a satisfied customer!  I really appreciate
the time and effort Quarterdeck is putting into participating in this newsgroup.
Thanks, guys!

Dave
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.tools,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc,gnu.misc.discuss