The use and setup of hardware devices under DOS _dos/bat

Because of the popularity and application of computer increasingly in-depth, in order to meet the needs of people, the computer's function with its development has become more and more powerful, more and more hardware equipment, such as from the original ISA and PCI sound card, modem wait for the current USB hard disk, mouse, etc., and brand a variety. So, how should we use and set these devices in DOS?

In fact, there are many hardware devices in DOS do not need to install any driver, as long as the hardware or the BIOS set up to use, such as the keyboard, ordinary hard disk and support PCL (printer Control language) printers. It is easy to use a PCL-enabled printer in DOS because the printer is connected to a parallel port (LPT), so the LPT1 or PRN is usually the printer port. Like copy C:\CONFIG. SYS LPT1 Command (you can, of course, use the print C:\CONFIG directly.) SYS command), you can C:\CONFIG the. The contents of the Sys file are printed out with the printer. You see, is not very convenient? Of course, to print out better effects (such as fonts, images, etc.) in some DOS applications, you need a special printer driver to select the appropriate printer in the printer settings in those applications.

Similar to a printer is a modem. Modem is a computer dial-up access to the necessary equipment, divided into built-in and external two major categories. External modems are usually connected to the computer's serial port (communication port COM), such as COM2. Traditional built-in modems can also be automated virtual serial ports, so there is little difference between the use of external modems. There are a lot of modem-related communication programs under DOS, and if the modem is connected to the COM3, use the COM3 when using these programs. If you want to test your modem with a simple command in DOS, use the echo atdt12345>com3 (assuming the modem is connected to the COM3), and it Dials (12345) and is handy. However, with the development of hardware, a number of non-traditional new modems have emerged. These new modems do not have hardware controllers and need software virtualization, so they are called software modems, or Winmodem. The modems for the original ISA interface are mostly traditional hardware modems, while the modems for the PCI interface are many software modems. Software modems and hardware modems, because there is no hardware controller, so the cost is lower, but the performance is naturally less, and require a driver to run. Therefore, you must load the appropriate driver in DOS to use. But because these modems are mainly designed for Win9x, most of them do not have a DOS driver, so they cannot be used in pure DOS, but there are many modems that can be used by virtual Windows under the Win9x DOS window.

Talk about the mouse and optical drive that you often use. Because the mouse and the optical drive are widely used earlier, DOS takes their drivers or extenders, such as mouse and MSCDEX, but MSCDEX also requires a self-contained driver for the optical drive. However, with the development of DOS, these programs are becoming more and more impractical, and now there are good alternatives, such as the latest and best mouse driver cute Mouse (ctmouse). Ctmouse is a very useful mouse driver that is still under development and has unparalleled advantages over DOS or other mouse drivers, such as very fast, Memory is very small (3.3K), versatility is very strong, as well as a variety of language display (no Chinese, but if you like the words I can go to the Chinese) and so on, so I strongly recommend that you use, can be downloaded in the "DOS software." DOS under the General CD-ROM program also has a lot, such as Win98 from the DOS boot disk oakcdrom. But the best is the "driver" in the Ptsatapi.sys or Vide-cdd.sys, because it has a fast, memory footprint small (respectively only occupy 2K and 5K, and Oakcdrom need to account for more than 30 K, others accounted for more), Versatility is very strong (can drive various brands of non-USB CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-ROM/DVD-R/DVD-RW, I tried the optical drive with it without a drive failure). The specific installation method is to load the CD drive with the device (high) command in Config.sys before AUTOEXEC. BAT to load the CD-ROM extension program MSCDEX.EXE, such as: LH mscdex/d:cdrom1/s/k. However, if you want the system to install the optical drive automatically without the manual configuration, you can run the Full screen Setup program that came with Vide-cdd.sys, which makes it easy to install. In order to save memory, can also be cloaking and MSCDEX, this can greatly reduce the memory footprint of MSCDEX, we see this column in the "DOS memory Configuration" and "CONFIG." SYS file to obtain a specific configuration. As for the USB mouse and optical drive, see below.

Now the computer has entered the multimedia era, so sound and image are indispensable, therefore, sound card is very important. So how do you use a sound card under DOS? The most important point of using a sound card in DOS is to set the BLASTER environment variable to the correct value, such as set blaster=a220 I7 D1 H6 P330, where a represents the hardware address, I represents the interrupt number, and D indicates that the low-end T6 represents high-end DMA, P represents the address of the MPU401, and T represents the sound card type. A usually 220,i is 5 and 72 possible, p is often 330,t is corresponding to the type of your sound card (T1 said SB 1.0,t2 said SB 1.5,t3 said Sb. 2.0,T4 to represent the low version of SB Pro and its compatibility, such as ESS688, T5 express the high version of SB PRO,T6 represents SB 16 and its compatibility, such as SB awe and SB PCI etc.). For an ISA sound card, you usually use the automatically set value, such as the default value of the ESS688 sound card is A220 I5 D1 T4, you can also use your own setup program such as esscfg Reset; for PCI sound cards, some can use sb-link technology, Most of the others can be used with the driver virtual ISA sound card to use, such as SB pci,sb audigy,sb Live!,c-media 8738,sis 7018, such as a PCI sound card driver can be downloaded in the driver, A sound card such as Yamaha and AOpen can also be used with its own driver to implement a PCI sound card in pure DOS, or to use it in Windows dos Windows. To set parameters for a PCI sound card, you can use your own setup program, such as the SBECFG command in the driver for SB live! sound card, or edit its profile, such as the Sbpci.ini file in the driver for SB's PCI.

Next is the NIC and the video card. The situation of the network card is very special, and each networking environment needs its own NIC driver. For the ISA network card, because the majority is NE2000 compatible, you can use the driver of NE2000 network card, can download in "DOS software". There are many folders on the disk with the NIC, separate drivers for each network environment, such as the NIC driver for Microsoft Network Client (msclient) and LAN Manager on the MSClient or NDIS2 folder. The NIC driver for NetWare is on the Nwclient or Dosodi folder. For example, NetWare Lite, to start the ipx/spx protocol, you need to first load the lsl.com, then the network card ODI driver, such as SIS900 network card is sis900.com, after loading and then run ipxodi.com. The driver for the MSCLIENT,SIS900 network adapter is Sis900.dos, which is automatically loaded when the network starts. Of course, the NIC still has a standard for DOS on the internet driver, that is the NIC's packet driver. Its specific use of the method, visible in this column "DOS under the network method." For graphics cards, unlike windows,dos do not need a special driver can display high color and even true color text and images, but there are display expansion drivers, such as VESA 3.0 display Driver SciTech displays doctor, can be downloaded in the "DOS software."

Then there is the use of USB hardware devices. Many people think that USB devices cannot be used under DOS, but they are not. The new BIOS in the "USB for DOS" feature, there are many DOS under the USB device drivers, such as DUSE,USB_CD, can be downloaded in the "DOS software." Take Duse as an example, this is a DOS under the universal USB storage device driver, including USB hard disk, optical drive, floppy drive and so on, many people use it to drive their own USB devices, such as the USB CD-RW, OHCI/UHCI are respectively ohci/ UHCI type USB mouse driver, USB_CD is a separate USB drive driver, and Usb4dos provides DOS to use a variety of USB devices (such as USB printer, USB digital camera, etc.) functions. But I don't have a USB device, so I haven't used it yet. Welcome everybody to use them, and will use the result to tell me, thanks!

There have been a lot of new hardware in recent years, and it's completely available in DOS. For example, ATX power supply, some software under DOS can be used to implement soft shutdown, such as shutdown, Poweroff and other commands, can be downloaded in the "DOS software." DOS using these software to achieve soft shutdown has a lot of benefits, such as in batch files can be specified after running a program or at a specified time automatically shutdown, but also to achieve the network in the "remote recall" and other functions, the benefits abound. This shows the powerful DOS function. If you like DOS, it is better to participate in the "DOS development" column to develop a new DOS software, together let DOS continue to grow and develop!