FYI (Note: The origin of this information may be internal or external to Novell. Novell makes every effort within its means to verify this information. However, the information provided in this document is FOR YOUR INFORMATION only. Novell makes no explicit or implied claims to the validity of this information.) TITLE: OPTIMIZE and the SSTOR Drive DOCUMENT ID#: FYI-M-1204 DATE: 08-04-92 PRODUCT: DRDOS PRODUCT VERSION: 6.0 SUPERSEDES: Note: The following information was extracted from Quarterdeck Technical Note #215. Following it are some notes from technical support at Novell. GENERAL INFORMATION 1) There is a new command, CHAIN, in DR DOS. This command allows the CONFIG.SYS to pass control to another CONFIG.SYS-like file. DR DOS uses it on installation if you choose to install SUPERSTOR. OPTIMIZE does not follow this passing of control to another file. If you are using CHAIN you must combine the two (or more) CONFIG.SYS (or CONFIG.SYS-like) files into one for the duration of the OPTIMIZation process. 2) The kernel of DR DOS, SSTORDRV.SYS, and buffers load themselves high. OPTIMIZE does not take the High RAM used by self-loaders into consideration in its calculations so this can throw it off making the best configuration. See the READ.ME file from Quarterdeck for information on how best to accommodate self-high-loaders. Quarterdeck's BUFFERS.COM program works with DR DOS 6 and OPTIMIZE will automatically try to use it to load BUFFERS high. This is preferable because the memory used by BUFFERS will be included in OPTIMIZE's calculations. 3) SUPERSTOR does work with OPTIMIZE, but SUPERSTOR adds a device driver to your CONFIG.SYS called DEVSWAP.COM. The line typically reads: DEVICE=C:\DRDOS\DEVSWAP.COM DEVSWAP.COM is a non-resident program that switches the drive designations. This is a convenience if you installed SUPERSTOR on a drive that already had programs so you don't have to re-write your batch files and reconfigure your software to run from a different drive. See your DR-DOS manual for information on the use of DEVSWAP.COM. Most commonly your hard disk originally was drive C:. SUPERSTOR creates a new, compressed drive, to which the letter D: is assigned. DEVSWAP.COM switches these assignments. This will be presumed for the rest of this section of this explanation of how to use OPTIMIZE with SUPERSTOR. If you are compressing more than one physical drive you must modify this information in consideration of the compressed drives created and designations swapped. When running OPTIMIZE, DEVSWAP.COM must be remarked out or removed from the CONFIG.SYS. Also all references to drives C: in the AUTOEXEC.BAT and in the CONFIG.SYS after the DEVSWAP.COM line need to be changed to drive D:. Conversely, all references to drive D: should be changed to drive C:. The next step is to create a QEMM sub-directory on the uncompressed drive. This is typically drive D: when the DEVSWAP.COM device driver is loaded in your CONFIG.SYS. The following files need to be in the QEMM sub-directory in order to run OPTIMIZE properly: QEMM386.SYS (or QEMM.SYS if you are running QEMM 50/60 or QEMM-386 version 5.0, or QRAM.SYS if you are loading QRAM), OPTIMIZE.COM, LOADHI.SYS, LOADHI.COM, LOGOPT.COM, BUFFERS.COM (if you are using DOS 2.x or 3.x), RSTRCFG.SYS, MCA.ADL (if you are running on a Microchannel machine), and WINHIRAM.VXD if you are planning on running Windows 3.0 in enhanced mode. Once you have done this, you should reboot before running OPTIMIZE so that the drives are set up correctly. Now you will be able to run OPTIMIZE normally. After OPTIMIZE has run, you may edit your CONFIG.SYS and restore the DEVSWAP.COM line. After you do this, you must edit your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to restore the drive specifications to what they were before; e.g. change all references to drive D: to drive C: and all references to drive C: to drive D:. If SSTORDRV.SYS is being loaded high, you must change it to load low because it won't work when loaded high. Reboot again. You are now getting the most out of your conventional memory. Copyright (C) 1991 by Quarterdeck Office Systems Notes from Novell Step 3 above is only necessary if drive C: has been compressed using SuperStor. Be very careful when combining CONFIG.SYS and DCONFIG.SYS. An error in combining these files can cause the system to halt. A good way to handle this possiblity is to add a line to the beginning of the CONFIG file that allows CONFIG processing to be stopped. ?"Halt processing CONFIG? Y/N : " EXIT The EXIT command will halt all CONFIG processing thereby bypassing any errors in the file. It is mentioned in the above Quarterdeck notes but it should be mentioned again. DO NOT allow the SuperStor driver SSTORDRV.SYS to be in a LOADHI statement. If Upper Memory is available the SuperStor driver will load a portion of itself into UMBs but under no condition should the entire driver be loaded into Upper Memory. Unexpected errors can result.