Just a reminder to those folks who were thinking about upgrading to
OS/2 2.0. The $49 special upgrade offer from Windows to OS/2 2.0
expires TODAY. DOS to OS/2 upgrade special price of $99 also
expires today. Call 1-800-3-IBM-OS2 to order, or call your local
software dealer. Even if you don't yet have a 386SX machine or
better, you might as well get the software now so you'll have it
when you finally upgrade to better hardware.
I have been using OS/2 2.0 for the past three months. It's great
if you have a fast machine and enough memory (IBM says 4MB minimum,
I say 8MB minimum). K1EA is using it too. OS/2 is great for testing
DOS programs: if they crash, you just close that DOS window and
start up a new one. No need to reboot your system five times a day.
It's fun to have packet up in one window while you download
a new copy of CT in another, watch Geoclock in a third, and
print QSL labels in a forth.
CT doesn't send CW correctly when running under OS/2, so I usually
boot DOS during a contest. You can switch back and forth just by
saying BOOT /DOS or BOOT /OS2 (this is the "dual boot" feature of
OS/2).
Under OS/2, the CW sending gets garbled because, being a true
preemptive multitasking operating system, OS/2 takes time slices
away from running tasks periodically to let others get some CPU time.
Ken and I hope to figure out a way to get around this problem,
possibly with a high priority device driver.
Throw away our DOS memory extenders (QEMM, EMM386, etc.) Each VDM
(Virtual DOS Machine) sees as much Extended, Expanded, or DPMI (DOS
Protected Mode Interface) memory as you want (it's virtual memory).
It also runs Windows 3.0 software such as N6QR's VPLOT just fine (no
need to have Microsoft Windows installed).
The only DOS program I couldn't get to run in a VDM was CT386,
but Ken has a fix in the works for that problem (there was problem
with the memory routines used by the Zortech compiler).
See OS/2 review by John C. Dvorak in PC Magazine, August 1992, Page 93.
73,
Bob, N6TV
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