NOVELL TECHNICAL INFORMATION DOCUMENT DOCUMENT PROCESSING INFO: THIS DOCUMENT REPLACES FYI-M-1406 TITLE: DR DOS 6.0 COMPATIBILITY WITH LANTASTIC DOCUMENT ID: TID800043 DOCUMENT REVISION: A DATE: 16AUG94 AUTHOR: CEREKSON;CEREKSON ALERT STATUS: Yellow DISTRIBUTION: Public INFORMATION TYPE: Symptom Solution README FOR: NA NOVELL PRODUCT CLASS: Desktop Products NOVELL PRODUCT and VERSION: DR DOS 6.0 CATEGORY: Kernel ABSTRACT: NA ----------------------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- SYMPTOM DR DOS 6.0 and LANtastic 4.0 have been tested together by both Novell and Artisoft, and were found to be compatible. Customers with versions of either DR DOS prior to 6.0 or LANtastic prior to 4.0 may achieve partial functionality when running the two products together. However, such functionality is coincidental and is not supported by either Novell or Artisoft. Customers who have earlier products and who experience problems should upgrade LANtastic or DR DOS as necessary. SOLUTION Testing of DR DOS 6.0 and LANtastic 4.0 revealed only a small number of minor configuration issues: 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 driver from Artisoft Technical Support. 3. LANPUP UTILITY Network redirections 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 it 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 Novell 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. 9. NET PRINT, NET EXPAND, & NET DIR These commands will fail on DR DOS 6.0. Call the Lantastic BBS (602-293-0065) for the patch called DRXCIP.EXE, a self extracting archive file. 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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Any trademarks referenced in this document are the property of their respective owners. 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