Document 1617
OS/2 and DR DOS Compatibility
06/05/92

                       Novell Desktop Systems Group

General Notes

DR DOS 6.0 and OS/2 are compatible and will work well together. It is the
full features of DR DOS 6.0 that will be covered in this document and not
the general compatibility. OS/2 is a separate operating system and uses a
separate shell to operate DOS applications. Many of the features in DR
DOS can be operated in both operating systems, where some can only work
while booted under DR DOS. Other features may not be utilized because of
conflicts with OS/2, and any use of these features should be done with
extreme caution.


DR DOS Features

Delwatch-    Will not operate in a DOS shell under OS/2.

Delpurge-    Will not operate in a DOS shell under OS/2.

Diskmap-     No errors detected working in either environment.

Diskopt-     Will come up but not run in an OS/2 environment.  No effect
             on OS/2 files when run in the DR DOS environment.

Password -   Shows incorrect version of operating system in an OS/2
             environment.  Files and directories currently having
             passwords are not secured.

Script-      Shows incorrect version of operating system in an OS/2
             environment.

Security-    If Security is enabled OS/2 WILL NOT boot under any
             circumstance. Security should not be used.

SuperSTOR -  Extended partitions of the hard disk can be compressed with
             SSTOR.EXE while booted under DR DOS 6.0.  These partitions
             can not be read by OS/2 and the driver can not be loaded in
             the OS/2 CONFIG.SYS file, so any applications on the
             compressed drive will not be accessible while operating in
             OS/2.

SuperPCK-    SuperPCK can be used under either operating system but will
             not provide any benefit while booted under OS/2.  OS/2 has
             its own cache so SuperPCK is not necessary.

Taskmax-     OS/2 is a multi-tasking environment so TASKMAX is not
             necessary.  Taskmax will not run in a DOS shell.

Viewmax-     OS/2 is a graphical interface so VIEWMAX is not necessary,
             but it will run in the DOS shell.  2(two) arrows will be
             displayed, one for OS/2 and one for VIEWMAX.  Wait until the
             viewmax arrow (there is a slight delay in movement between
             the two arrows) is placed over the desired action before
             clicking the mouse button.

Undelete-    Fails to write corrections to disk in an OS/2 environment.


Internal Commands

These commands are taken over by the OS/2 environment are no longer
internal to DR DOS.  You should refer to you OS/2 documentation for more
information on the internal commands for OS/2.

Ver-         Show OS/2 in the OS/2 environment DOS shell.


External Commands

The following commands are included with OS/2 and should be utilized when
in the OS/2 environment.

CHKDSK.COM, FORMAT.COM, MODE.COM, XCOPY.EXE, DISKCOPY.COM,
DISKCOMP.COM, REPLACE.EXE, COMP.COM, MORE.COM, PRINT.COM,
FIND.EXE, KEYB.COM, BACKUP.EXE, FDISK.COM, RECOVER.COM,
LABEL.COM, TREE.COM, SORT.EXE, UNDELETE.COM, ATTRIB.EXE,
RESTORE.EXE, EDLIN.COM, MEM.EXE

The following DR DOS external commands work with certain exceptions

Format-      Format will format disks correctly will all switches working
             correctly except for the /S to copy system files while in an
             OS/2 environment.  The system files will be copied, but the
             disk is not bootable.

Tree-        Works fine in either environment but shows different
             statistics than the OS/2 version.

Editor-      Works fine in DOS shell but has different features than EDLIN.

Mem-         Works fine in DOS shell but has different statistics than
             the OS/2 Version.

Sys-         Copies the system files for DR DOS but disk is not bootable.

Other external commands either do not work in the OS/2 environment showing
wrong OS version or function normally.  Refer to the OS/2 documentation
for features that can be utilized in OS/2 and avoid these conflicts.