[arachne] Re: Pocket Arachne 1.85 testing

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Glenn McCorkle wrote:

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Scott,

Is that drive a Fat32 or perhaps even an NTFS ?

The reason I ask this is because it's the only reason I can think of as
to why OpenDos v7.01 is unable to see that drive C: exists and hence
is then giving the RamDrive C:


Glenn,

Thanks for the prompt reply--and the good catch. My C: drive is not NTFS or no DOS that I know of would see it, but it is FAT32.

The machine came to me running Win98 and I've never messed with the drive configuration. I just boot with
a FreeDOS floppy when I don't want to be bothered with Windows (which is most of the time on that machine). This time I
let Win98 come up and checked the drive properties. Both c: and d: are FAT32. Since I usually run MS-DOS 7.0 or
FreeDOS 0.9 (both of which see FAT32 drives) I didn't think to look for that problem.

To confirm the diagnosis I renamed autoexec.bat and config.sys on my PA185 floppy and booted up with bare OpenDOS 7.0.
Sure enough, no C: drive.

I thought about things today and decided that the cfgwiz.dgi hang might also be due to OpenDOS, maybe from RAM cram. I can
get all the way through the PA install with my two-diskette FreeDOS setup, which points away from Arachne and toward the
OS. (I usually don't, though. I've modified my install.bat file to just expand the ramdisk image, copy all of the cfg files from
my working Arachne distribution on the C: drive and then call arachne.bat. I think it might be a good idea to add a couple of
questions to your PA185 autoexec.bat and offer the user this option.)

If I'm not the only person in the world using FAT32 drives and a cable modem connection, the Pocket Arachne team has a couple of
issues to address, i.e. FAT32 drives and potentional RAM cram. The solution isn't obvious, though. When I was experimenting I found
out that OpenDOS has by far the smallest kernel/command.com combination. I'm sure that's why you chose it. (Kernel size matters a whole lot when you are working with a 1.44 MB floppy and your ramdisk image takes up 1.2 MB.) How would you feel about a two-diskette distribution of PA185 for
users who have FAT32 drives or who just want to run under a different OS? I can create it and upload it if you will point me to a good
ramdisk image creation tool.

I would like to look at the source code to help myself diagnose my wierd email problem, but I don't know where to start. (I am still learning
Arachne's architecture and the file distribution.) I would appreciate any direction you and the other developers might be able to supply.




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