README.TXT August 21, 1994 Price list and Shareware registration information is at the end of this file. Support Policy -------------- You receive free support for COMpanion for three months after your first contact with Oxford House Software. Support is offered via mail or through CompuServe ID 72603,3215. * * * WARNING * * * --------------------- COMserve is designed to recognize OS/2, DESQview and Windows multitasking platforms running the DOS file system only. Please do not try to make COMserve run with any other multitasking programs or with other file systems, as doing so could damage files on your disk. Last Minute Updates for COMpanion DOS Personal Network Version 1.2 ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Follow these steps to install COMpanion from Shareware source: a. Copy COMPAN.ZIP to an empty directory of your choice (C:\CDPN is program default). b. Enter PKUNZIP -D COMPANxx.ZIP to unzip files and retain the directory structure. Requires PKUNZIP 1.10+. c. In order to use the INSTALL program to copy files to another directory you should now delete COMPANxx.ZIP. d. Run the INSTALL program. See Update 7 below. 2. A text form of the COMpanion User's Guide is available in DOC\COMPAN.TXT. 3. The window size required for COMserve is now 26K for DESQview 2.6. 4. Creating a central server PC for up to four PCs requires DESQview 2.26+. Support for write access to drives on the DESQview server requires Stacker 2.0+. Due to problems with various configurations of DESQview, Stacker and your memory manager, you may not have write access to drives on the DESQview server unless you use DESQview 2.6+ and Stacker 4.0+. 5. Windows File Manager error message "Error Copying File...Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected" may indicate an unstable connection between PCs if the disk is not full or write-protected. Make sure connectors are firmly attached. 6. When viewing the "Change COM Port Setup" window in COMsetup, a '-' following a COM port address indicates a CRC error has occurred. COMpanion retries three times before generating a file transfer error. 7. If you run INSTALL from the same directory you select to copy files to, the copy step will be skipped. You can then take advantage of subsequent installation steps. Please note that INSTALL will not change a line in a system file that it previously added. 8. When using DR DOS 3.x, the standard COMDEV driver will get "not ready" error messages trying to read from remote drives. Please use the minimum configuration COMDEV driver in the directory MINICOM. You will not have the advantage of speed gains from data compression. COMpanion DOS Personal Network (tm) Quick Start Guide INTRODUCTION The COMpanion DOS Personal Network is ideal for use in a home or small office with two to five PCs. COMpanion is easy to set up using the COM ports already on your PC, though the server PC may require additional COM ports to support multiple PCs. Use COMpanion to share a data base or application software, for transferring files rather than using floppy disks, and to share printers without requiring additional hardware. COMpanion runs under MS-DOS (r) and PC-DOS (r) versions 2.0+ and DR DOS (r) 3+. With COMpanion and a null modem cable you can use your PC to access data and run programs on up to four other computers. By printing to LPT3, you may access the printer on a remote PC. You will need to connect one COM port on your PC to each other computer you want to access. Although you can use any null modem connector, unless you use the COMpanion serial port connectors, called EBD null modem connectors, your transfers will be half as fast. Your PC is called the "client." This is the PC where you will enter commands to access remote drives and printers on the "server" PC. Client PCs require the COMpanion disk driver COMDEV.SYS to be loaded by a DEVICE line in the CONFIG.SYS file. Server PCs need only the COMpanion server program COMSERVE.COM. Since the COMpanion server ties up the PC it is running on, you may use the multitasking program DESQview (tm) version 2.26+ to run the server in the background. This will allow up to four PCs to access the drives and printers on the DESQview PC while you continue to run other tasks. If you use multitasking, the drives on the DESQview PC will at first appear to be read only to client PCs that access them. In order for client PCs to gain write access to the server drives, you must install the Stacker (r) disk compression software on the DESQview PC. Only one PC may have write access to a drive at any one time, including the DESQview PC. Client PCs may grab write access to a server drive by issuing the COMgrab command. Client PCs free drives for write access by other users with the COMfree command. On the DESQview PC, use the DRVLOCK program to lock a drive for writing on the DESQview PC. Use DRVFREE to free a locked drive. Although you may run DESQview on two PCs and run the server on both, you cannot transmit data simultaneously between the same two PCs, even if you use separate COM ports. If you do get an error, simply reissue the command on one PC. When it finishes, the other PC can reissue its command. INSTALLING COMPANION The easiest way to install COMpanion is to run the INSTALL program on the COMpanion floppy. You will be prompted step by step for setup of the COMpanion program on your PC. You do not have to modify CONFIG.SYS on any PC you will use only as a server. In this case, you may skip the Update CONFIG.SYS step. You may also install COMpanion manually if you like, since the files on the COMpanion floppy are not compressed. COMSETUP SETUP PROGRAM Use COMSETUP.COM to configure the COMpanion disk and printer drivers. Through COMSETUP you select mappings from logical drives on your PC to drives on remote PCs, select remote printer options, and change the settings of non-standard DOS COM port addresses. When you finish making your changes, you can save the settings to a disk file, which you can then invoke as a setup file (see COMSETUP SETUP FILES below). COMpanion Quick Start Guide -- Page 2 COMSETUP INFORMATION WINDOW The information window that pops up when you specify COMsetup shows the current drive mapping and status of COMpanion drives. The COMpanion disk driver must be loaded by a DEVICE line in your CONFIG.SYS in order to use COMsetup. The "active" column will contain yes, no or no/x. When yes is reported, COMserve has responded from the remote PC. no/x is reported when feedback is received from the specified COM port. The "COM" column indicates the COM port assigned for the remote drive. This will be a value from 1 to 4. When a COM port selected is not a valid 8250-compatible UART, an asterisk (*) is displayed next to the COM port. The "type" column indicates the type of drive mapped to on the server PC. From the server PC, you may use the program DRIVEMAP to view drive information. The "access" column indicates the type of access allowed on this drive. Values are none, read or write. Write access allows both reading and writing. COMSETUP INFORMATION WINDOW OPTIONS Along the bottom of the information window are 5 options. ESC Exit COMsetup. F1 The Change Drive Setup window allows you to select the remote drive to access from each of up to four local COMpanion drives on your PC (a to z). Select which COM port to use for each drive (1 to 4). F2 The Change Remote Printer Settings window for LPT3 allows you to select which COM port to send remote print to (COM1 to COM4), and which line printer to use on the remote PC (LPT1 to LPT3). F3 The Change COM Port Setup window allows you to change the base address of a COM port if it is not a standard DOS value. This might occur for some add-on serial ports. Enter the four-digit hex value of the base address. COM time-out is the maximum time to wait for remote commands to complete. This value may need to be changed if you get "drive not ready" errors. Values 1 to 9 are that many seconds. A value of 0 uses 16 seconds. F4 The Save Setup to Disk File window prompts you to enter a file name to save the current COMpanion disk drive settings in. See the COMSETUP SETUP FILES below. CTRL-R CTRL-R will retest COM ports for the presence of a COMpanion server and update the information displayed. COMSETUP SPECIAL FUNCTIONS COMsetup is also used to provide several functions that are supplied as batch files on the COMpanion floppy. You may enter these commands from the DOS prompt, or you may specify COMsetup followed by the keyword in parentheses at the end of each command. COMFIND Brings up the information window and shows the status of COM ports in the active column, whether the COMDEV driver is loaded or not (COMFIND). COMERR Generates a table of DOS error messages and description of COMpanion-related messages to the screen (DOSERR). COMpanion Quick Start Guide -- Page 3 COMFREE d Free the remote Stacker drive mapped to drive d (FREE). COMGRAB d Grab the remote Stacker drive mapped to drive d for write access (GRAB). COMINFO Generates current status of COMpanion disk driver to the screen without popping up a menu (INFO). COMRESET Resets all COMpanion drives (RESET). COMRESET d Reset COMapnion drive d (RESET d). COMSETV Starts up COMsetup using video BIOS calls to do screen I/O. This is slower, but may be necessary on some systems (VBIOS). COMSETUP SETUP FILES COMsetup can change the COMpanion settings to values contained in a previously saved setup file. For example, COMSETUP C:\CDPN\INITCOM is the default line generated by the COMpanion INSTALL program. The complete path must be specified for the setup file unless it is in the current directory. DEVICE DRIVER INSTALLATION COMDEV.SYS contains the COMpanion disk and printer drivers. It must be installed by a line in your CONFIG.SYS on any PC that will be used as a client. There are two optional arguments for the DEVICE command line. DEVICE=d:path\COMDEV.SYS drive-count load-LPT3 d: the drive where COMDEV.SYS can be found path the path to COMDEV.SYS drive-count number of remote drives to allocate (1 to 4) if not specified, one drive is allocated load-LPT3 Y or N for yes or no if not specified, remote printer driver is loaded For example, DEVICE=C:\CDPN\COMDEV.SYS 2 will allocate 2 remote drives and load the remote printer driver. DEVICE=C:\CDPN\COMDEV.SYS N will allocate one remote drive and suppress loading the remote printer driver. COMSERVE SERVER PROGRAM COMSERVE.COM is the COMpanion server program. Simply enter COMSERVE on the DOS command line and press ENTER. COMSERVE recognizes the following optional arguments. COMSERVE COMx=hhhh x COM port number 1 to 4 if not specified, COM1 is used hhhh four hex digits representing the base address for this COM port; if not specified, standard DOS value is used For example, COMSERVE COM1=0638 will start the COMpanion server on COM1, with base address of 0638 hex. COMSERVE COM2 will start the server on COM2, using the standard DOS base address. COMpanion Quick Start Guide -- Page 4 OTHER COMPANION PROGRAMS The following programs are for use on the DESQview server PC to provide the DESQview user with control over drives and printers. DRIVEMAP displays information about the drives on the PC. When run under DESQview, DRIVEMAP indicates the write ownership of Stacker drives, reflecting COMgrab and DRVLOCK commands that have been issued. Run DRIVEMAP after booting up from a system lockup to reset Stacker drives to their writable state. DRVFREE releases a Stacker drive that was locked with the DRVLOCK command. Specify the local drive letter to free on the command line. DRVLOCK locks a Stacker drive for exclusive write access from the DESQview server PC. This will disable the use of COMgrab by any PCs attached to the server. Specify the local drive letter to lock on the command line. Use the DRVFREE command to allow other PCs to grab the drive for writing. PRTFREE frees a printer that was locked with the PRTLOCK command. Specify the printer to free on the command line (LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3). PRTLOCK locks a printer for exclusive use on the DESQview server PC. This will disable the use of the specified printer by any PCs attached to the server. Specify the printer to lock on the command line (LPT1, LPT2 or LPT3). Use the PRTFREE commmand when finished printing to allow other PCs to use the printer. COMpanion DOS Personal Network is a trademark of Oxford House Software. Other product names mentioned in this text may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and are hereby acknowledged. COMpanion Price List Good through March 31, 1995 Please allow up to two weeks for delivery. Delivery to destinations inside California requires additional 7.25% tax on purchase price. COMpanion DOS Personal Network Version 1.2 -- $50 plus $8 shipping/handling Delivery outside California............................$58.00 Delivery inside California, incl. $3.63 tax............$61.63 Includes printed User's Guide, 3.5" and 5.25" installation floppies, COM Finder, Flipping Cable, 1 9-pin and 1 25-pin EBD connector, 50' phone cable, inline coupler and mailer for connector exchange. License to connect up to five PCs in one network. Please register through CompuServe Shareware Forum, or send check to Oxford House Software. EBD connector -- $7 plus $1.50 shipping and handling Delivery outside California............................$8.50 Delivery inside California, incl. $.51 tax.............$9.01 Please specify 9-pin or 25-pin. phone cable terminated with RJ-11 connectors 50' -- $5 plus $4 shipping and handling Delivery outside California............................$9.00 Delivery inside California, incl. $.36 tax.............$9.36 100' -- $9 plus $5 shipping and handling Delivery outside California............................$14.00 Delivery inside California, incl. $.65 tax.............$14.65 200' -- $16 plus $8 shipping and handling Delivery outside California............................$24.00 Delivery inside California, incl. $1.16 tax............$25.16 Unless you are registering the COMpanion package through the CompuServe Shareware Forum, please send order requests along with a check made out to Oxford House Software to: Oxford House Software 160 Oxford Way Santa Cruz, CA 95060