Document # 1406
DR DOS 6.0 COMPATIBILITY WITH LANTASTIC NETWORK
SKN 
12-13-91

Description:

DR DOS 6.0 and LANtastic 4.0 have been tested together by both
Digital Research and Artisoft, and were found to be extensively
compatible. Customers with earlier versions of either DR DOS or
LANtastic may achieve partial functionality when running the two
products together, however such functionality is coincidental
and is not supported by either Digital Research or Artisoft. 
Customers who have earlier products and who experience problems
should upgrade LANtastic or DR DOS as necessary.

Testing of DR DOS 6.0 and LANtastic 4.0 revealed only a small
number of minor configuration issues, which are as follows:

1.  SUPER PC KWIK 
Super PC Kwik advanced disk reads and writes should be disabled
on LANtastic because the Super PC Kwik scheduler conflicts with
the LANtastic scheduler causing machines to hang.  To avoid this
problem on a machine running SERVER, use the Super PC Kwik
switches /D- /H- to disable advanced disk reads and writes.
Normal caching is still active when these switches are used.

Note that you do not need to disable advanced disk writes on a
node which is not running SERVER.

As is true of most server/cache combinations, Super PC Kwik
cannot cache redirected network drives.

2.  WINDOWS 3.0 IN ENHANCED MODE
To run Windows 3.0 in enhanced mode using the DR DOS 6.0
EMM386.SYS memory manager, customers need to use an Artisoft
LANTASTI.386 driver dated 08-16-91 or newer.  Customers with
older LANTASTI.386 files can obtain a current one from Artisoft
Technical Support.

3.  LANPUP UTILITY
Network redirections will work properly under DR DOS 6.0,
however the LANPUP terminate and stay resident utility will not
display the redirection properly.

4.  DR DOS 6.0 DISK UTILITIES
Certain DR DOS 6.0 disk utilities are intentionally designed for
use only on local drives and will return an error message if run
on a redirected (network) drive or on a machine running the
SERVER program.  These utilities are summarized below:



Utility            On SERVER?     On network drive?
-------            ----------     -----------------



CHKDSK                  N               N

DELPURGE                N               N

DELWATCH             	N 		N

DISKMAP                 Y               N

DISKOPT                 N               N

FDISK                   N               N

FORMAT                  Y               N

PASSWORD                Y*              N

RECOVER                 N               N

UNDELETE                Y               N

UNFORMAT                N               N

* Files on a server protected by PASSWORD cannot be accessed
from LAN workstations, even when the correct password is
provided.  They may, however, be accessed at the server on its
own physical drive.

5.  SUPERSTOR
One LANtastic 4.0 test system was run with a DR DOS 6.0 server
whose hard drive had been prepared using the SuperSTOR disk
compression utility.  All nodes on the network, even non-DR DOS
nodes, could access data on the SuperSTOR drive.   Efforts were
made to exercise the test system heavily, however customers
should consider use of SuperSTOR partitions on LANtastic servers
as "at their own risk" at the current time and use standard
precautions such as frequent backups of essential data.   We
also strongly recommend that customers read DR DOS Technical Tip
# 1200 before creating or using a SuperSTOR drive.

6.  RARE QUICKBASIC PROBLEM 
The initial shipments of DR DOS 6.0 had a rare problem in which
server pathing was not handled correctly by a Microsoft
Quickbasic application under LANtastic 4.0.  This problem was
reported by only a single user in the field and was very
difficult to reproduce even in our testing laboratories so is
unlikely to be seen by most customers.  The problem relates to
the "double backslash" \\ before the server name, and has been
corrected.  Customers who see the problem, and who have DR DOS
files dated prior to 12/91, should contact Digital Research
technical support for updated files.

7.  TASKMAX
LANtastic software should be loaded before TASKMAX is invoked.
This permits all TASKMAX task sessions to access the network.

8.  INTERNATIONALIZATION ISSUES
(Country, Keyboard, Codepage, and Graftabl)
The U.S. version of LANtastic will run only with the default
(U.S.) DR DOS 6.0 country and keyboard.  DR DOS 6.0 customers
who require alternate country support, codepage, or graftabl
support should contact Artisoft for an international version of
LANtastic 4.0.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Artisoft provides a similar but more extensive document on DR
DOS 6.0 compatibility with LANtastic 4.0.  This document, which
details the hardware and network cards tested, can be obtained
from Artisoft's technical support bulletin board at (602)
293-0065 or from the Artisoft forum on CompuServe.