Use and settings of hardware devices under DOS

With the popularization and application of computers, computer functions become more and more powerful and hardware devices become more and more powerful to meet people's needs, such as ISA, PCI sound card, modem, USB hard drive, mouse, and so on, and a variety of brands. So how should we use and set these devices in DOS?

In fact, many hardware devices do not need to install any drivers in DOS.Program, As long as the hardware or BIOS is set up, such as the keyboard, General hard disk and support for the PCL (printer control language) printer. It is very easy to use a printer that supports PCL in DOS, because the printer is connected to the parallel port (LPT), so LPT1 or PRN is usually the printer port. For example, copy c: \ config. sys LPT1 command (of course, print c: \ config. sys command) c: \ config. the contents in the SYS file are printed by the printer. Is it very convenient? Of course, to print out better effects (such as fonts and images) in some dos application procedures, we also need dedicated printer drivers, select the appropriate printer from printer settings in these applications.

A modem is similar to a printer. A modem is a required device for dial-up Internet access on a computer. It can be divided into two categories: built-in devices and external devices. An external modem is usually connected to a computer's serial port (COM), such as com2. The traditional built-in modem can also automatically virtualize the serial port, so it is not much different from the external modem. There are a large number of modem-related communication programs in DOS. For example, if the modem is connected to com3, use com3 when using these programs. If you want to test the modem with a simple command under DOS, Echo atdt12345> com3 can be used (assuming that the modem is connected to com3), then it will dial (12345 ), it is also very convenient to use. However, with the development of hardware, many new non-traditional modem devices have emerged. These new types of modem do not have hardware controllers and need to be virtualized using software, so they are called software modems or winmodem. In the past, most of the demodulation devices of the ISA interface were traditional hardware modems, while many of the demodulation devices of the PCI interface were software modems. Compared with a hardware modem, a software modem has a lower cost because it does not have a hardware controller, but its performance is naturally inferior and the driver is required to run. Therefore, the corresponding driver must be loaded in DOS for use. However, because these modems are mainly designed for Win9x, most of them do not have dos drivers, so they cannot be used in pure dos, however, there are many modems that can be used in the DOS window of Win9x through virtual.

let's talk about the mouse and optical drive that we often use. Since the mouse and the optical drive have been widely used for a long time, DOS comes with their own drivers or extensions, such as mouse and mscdex. However, mscdex also needs the built-in driver of the optical drive. However, with the development of DOS, these programs have become increasingly unavailable and there are already good alternatives, such as the latest and Best mouse driver cute mouse (ctmouse ). Ctmouse is a very practical mouse driver that is still under development. Compared with the built-in DoS or other mouse drivers, ctmouse has unparalleled advantages, such as high speed, memory usage is very small (only 3.3 K), the versatility is very strong, and there are a variety of language display (no Chinese at present, but if you like it, I can go to Chinese) and other advantages, therefore, I strongly recommend that you download the software in "dos. There are also a lot of General Optical Drive programs under DOS, such as oakcdrom in the DOS boot disk that comes with Win98. But the best thing is the ptsatapi in the "Driver program. sys or VIDE-CDD.SYS, because it has a fast speed, memory usage is small (only occupy 2 K and 5 K, respectively, while the oakcdrom needs to occupy more than 30 K, the other occupies more ), versatility is very strong (can drive a variety of brands of non-USB CD-ROM/CD-R/CD-RW/DVD-ROM/DVD-R, I tried the optical drive with it without a drive failure ). The specific installation method is in config. sys first uses the device (high) command to load the drive, and then in autoexec. attach the optical drive extension mscdex to bat. EXE, such as LH mscdex/D: cdrom1/S/K. However, if you want the system to automatically install the settings of the optical drive and do not want to manually configure it, you can run the VIDE-CDD.SYS self-contained full screen installer, this will feel the installation is very loose. To save memory, you can also use cloaking with mscdex to greatly reduce the memory usage of mscdex. You can see the "memory configuration under DOS" and "config. command and configuration of the Sys File to obtain the specific configuration. For the USB mouse and optical drive, see the following section.

now that computers have entered the multimedia era, sound and images are indispensable. Therefore, sound cards are very important. So how do I use the sound card in DOS? The most important thing to use a sound card in DOS is to set the environment variable blster to a correct value, such as set blster = a220 i7 D1 H6 P330 T6, where a indicates the hardware address, I indicates the interrupt number, D indicates the low-end DMA, h indicates the high-end DMA, P indicates the mpu401 address, and t indicates the sound card type. Generally, a is 220, And I has 5 and 7 possibilities. P is often 330, and T corresponds to the type of your sound card (T1 indicates Sb 1.0, t2 indicates Sb 1.5, T3 indicates Sb 2.0, T4 indicates Sb pro of earlier versions and its compatibility, such as ess688, T5 indicates Sb pro of later versions, T6 indicates Sb 16 and its compatibility, such as Sb awe and sb pci ). For the ISA sound card, you can use the automatically set value. For example, the default value of the ess688 sound card is a220 I5 D1 T4. You can also use the preset setting program such as esscfg to reset it. For the PCI sound card, some may use the Sb-link technology, and most others may use their own driver virtual ISA sound card for use, such as Sb PCI, Sb audigy, Sb live !, Drivers of PCI sound cards such as C-media 8738 and SIS 7018 can be downloaded from drivers, sound cards such as Yamaha and aopen can also use their own drivers to enable PCI sound cards in pure dos, or be used in Windows dos windows. To set the parameters of the PCI sound card, you can use the built-in setup program, such as Sb live! The driver of the sound card contains the sbecfg command or edits its configuration file, such as the sbpci. ini file in the driver of Sb PCI.

The next step is the NIC and the video card. Nic is a special case. Each network environment requires its own NIC Driver. Because the vast majority of ISA NICs are ne2000 compatible, you can use the driver of the ne2000 Nic and download it from "DOS software. There are many folders in the disk that comes with the NIC, which are independent drivers for each network environment, such as the Microsoft network client (msclient) or the ndis2 folder) and LAN Manager NIC driver. The nwclient or dosodi folder is the NIC Driver for NetWare. Take Netware lite as an example. To start the IPX/SPX protocol, you must first load LSL. com, and then the nic odi driver. For example, the sis900 Nic is sis900.com. After loading, run ipxodi. com. For the msclient, the driver for the sis900 Nic is sis900.dos, which is automatically loaded when the network is started. Of course, the NIC still has a standard driver for DOS over the Internet, that is, the packet driver of the NIC. The specific usage method shows the "dos offline networking Method" in this topic ". For graphics cards, unlike windows, DOS does not require a dedicated driver to display high-color or even true-color text and images, but there is a display extension driver, for example, SciTech display doctor, a VESA 3.0 display driver, can be downloaded from "DOS software.

Then there is the use of the USB hardware device. Many people think that USB devices cannot be used in DOS, but they do not. The new BIOS has the "USB for dos" function, and many USB driver programs under DOS, such as Duse and usb_cd, can be downloaded from "DOS software. Taking Duse as an example, this is a DOS driver for general USB storage devices, including USB hard drives, optical drives, and soft drives. Many people use it to drive their own USB devices, such as USB CD-RW; OHCI/uhci is not OHCI/uhci type USB mouse driver; USB _ CD is a separate USB drive driver; USB 4dos allows you to use various USB devices (such as USB printers and USB Digital Cameras) under DOS. However, I have no USB device, so I have never used it. You are welcome to use them and tell me the results. Thank you!

in recent years, there have been many new hardware, which can be fully used in DOS. Taking ATX power supply as an example, some software in DOS can be used to implement soft shutdown, such as shutdown and poweroff commands, which can be downloaded from "DOS software. There are many advantages to using these software to implement soft shutdown in DOS. For example, when using a batch processing file, you can specify to automatically shut down after running a program or at a specified time, it can also implement functions such as "remote call" in the network, with many benefits. This shows the powerful functions of DOS. If you like DOS, join the "dos development" column to develop new DOS software, so that DOS can continue to grow!