[Freedos-user] re: RE: Not loading high: Display, Nlsfunc, Keyb, Lbacache

[Eric A. <er...@co...>]

Hi John,

Display not loading high -> how much high memory do you have free?
Maybe not enough for display...

Nlsfunc not loading -> only the devel/unstable kernels support nlsfunc,
and you need nlsfunc only for the chcp command. If you load one codepage
and font at boot time and do not plan to change that later, you do not
need nlsfunc (you can always change fonts with the MODE command, but that
will not update the date/time/number formats of DOS or the alphabetic
sorting settings to those of the selected country).

Fdos.org/kernel not linked -> probably because this has no "version".
It is only the "daily fresh automated compile". It would help a lot if
we could do the daring step take a random day and call the kernel and
shell version of that day 2036 and 0.84pl1, for example. Please try to
support that movement and motivate people to follow it... ;-).

cmdxms.head -> fine. this is 186+, working xms swap, working loadhigh,
version 0.84preview, daily compile. The head.english version would
require an extra step for install, simply use the cmdxms.head which is
English anyway. The head.nls is the collection of all languages, takes
an extra install step but you can use the language of your choice.

Note that you only need display when you want to use another font.
If the default US ASCII font of your VGA BIOS is okay for you, then
you do not have to load display. European users often use display
to have a font with more accented chars and the Euro sign, while
other users can for example use display to load Cyrillic fonts.


> Not only for the Loadhigh problem, but also for several others I've =
> reported, Eric Auer suggested updating KERNEL,SYS, COMMAND.COM and =
> EMM386/HIMEM,EXE.  (He speculated that the Service Release 2 version of =
> FreeCOM might be a crippled version that does not support LH.)
> 
> As far as I can tell SR2 already includes the most recent version of =
> EMM386 (v2.08, 11/28/2005).  I'll assume that HIMEM from SR2 (ver 3.12) =
> is also the most recent.
> 
> SR2 initially installed these:
> KERNEL version 1.1.35w Build 2035w-unstable, 11/30/2005
> FreeCOM 0.84-pre XMS_Swap, 11/25/05
> 
> I updated to these:
> KERNEL version 1.1.35 Build 2035b-cvs, 4/18/2006
> FreeCOM 0.84-pre XMS_Swap, 4/18/2006
> After the update I found that KEYB and LBACACHE were now successfully =
> loading high.
> 
> However, DISPLAY still loads in conventional memory... 
> Also, NLSFUNC does not show up at all in the MEM /C/P report...
> neither NLSFUNC nor COUNTRY,SYS show up in MEM /C.
> 
> http://freedos.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/freedos-lsm.cgi?q=d&a=base    
> ... has old versions of the base components - probably from SR 1.
>
> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5109  
> ... offers the same old versions of FreeCOM and the kernel.
> 
> Eric Auer gave me the critical tip that the best place to locate kernel =
> updates is at www.fdos.org\kernel, and that page attempts to be end-user =
> friendly by offering single links to the latest stable releases of the =
> kernel, FreeCOM and SYS.  But the FreeCOM link yields a download of 0.82 =
> pl 3 XMS_Swap dated 12/10/2003.
> 
> the README there indicated I should download COMMAND.COM, but that =
> is an 80086 version.  I finally downloaded cmdxms.HEAD,zip for 80186+, =
> but without complete assurance that this was the right choice.