MS DOS v2.0

MSDOS 2.0 RELEASE The 2.0 Release of MSDOS includes five 5 1/4 double density single sided diskettes or three 8 iinch CP/M 80 format diskettes. The software/documentation on the five inch diskettes is arranged as follows: 1. DOS distribution diskette. This diskette contains files which should be distriibuted to all users. This allows the DOS distri- bution diskette to meet the requirements of users of high level language compilers as well as users running only applications. Many compilers marketed independently through the retail channel (including those of Microsoft) assume LINK comes with the DOS, as in the case of IBM. How you choose to distrubute BASIC (contracted for separately) is up to you. 2. Assembly Language Development System diskette. This diskette contains files of interest to assembly language programmers. High level language programmers do not need these programs unless they are writing assembly language subroutines. IBM chose to unbundle this package from the DOS distribution diskette (except for DEBUG), but you do not have to do so. 3. PRINT and FORMAT diskette. This diskette contains .ASM source files which are necessary to assemble the print spooler, which you may wish to customize for greater performance. .OBJ files are also included for the FORMAT utility. 4. Skeltal BIOS and documentation diskette. This diskette contains the skeltal BIOS source code and the SYSINIT and SYSIMES object modules which must be linked with your BIOS module. The proper sequence for linking is BIOS - SYSINIT - SYSIMES. A profiler utiliity is also included on the diskette, but this is not intended for end-users. This is distributed for use by your development staff only and is not supported by Microsoft If you do decide to distribute it, it is at your own risk! 5. Documentation. Features of 2.0 are documented on this disk. The user manual contains some significant errors. Most of these are due to last minute changes to achieve a greater degree of compatibility with IBM's implementation of MS-DOS (PC DOS). This includes the use of "\" instead of "/" as the path separator, and "/" instead of "-" as the switch character. For transporting of batch files across machines, Microsoft encourages the use of "\" and "/" respectively in the U.S. market. (See DOSPATCH.TXT for how you can overide this. The user guide explains how the end-user can override this in CONFIG.SYS). Both the printer echo keys and insert mode keys have now been made to toggle. The default prompt (this may also be changed by the user with the PROMPT command) has been changed from "A:" to "A>". We apologize for any inconveniences these changes may have caused your technical publications staff. Here is what you need to do to MSDOS 2.0 to create a shipable product: (see "Making a Bootable Diskette" below) 1. BIOS. If you have developed a BIOS for the Beta Test 2.0 version You should link your BIOS module to SYSINIT.OBJ and SYSIMES.OBJ. You must modify your BIOS to accomodate the call back to the BIOS at the end of SYSINIT. If you have no need for this call, simply find a far RET and label it RE_INIT and declare it public. An example of this can be found in the skeletal BIOS. In addition please add support for the new fast console output routine as described in the device drivers document. We strongly recommend that you adapt the standard boot sector format also described in device drivers. Once again, please refer to the skeletal BIOS. If you have not yet implemented version 2.0 please read the device drivers document. Microsoft strongly recommends that machines incorporating integrated display devices with memory mapped video RAM implement some sort of terminal emulations through the use of escape sequences. The skeletal BIOS includes a sample ANSI terminal driver. 2. Please refer to DOSPATCH.TXT for possible changes you might wish to make. We strongly recommend that you not patch the switch characters for the U.S. market. Your one byte serial number will be issued upon signing the license agreement. Please patch the DOS accordingly. If you wish to serialize the DOS, this is described in DOSPATCH.TXT. Please patch the editing template definitions. Please note the addition of the Control-Z entry at the beginning of the table. Also note that the insert switches have now both been made to toggle. 3. Utilities. FORMAT must be configured for each specific system. GENFOR is a generic example of a system independent format module, but it is not recommended that this be distributed to your customers. Link in the following order: FORMAT, FORMES, (your format module). The print spooler is distributed as an executable file, which only prints during wait for keyboard input. If you wish with your implementation to steal some compute time when printing as well, you will need to customize it and reassemble. Please note that you can use a printer-ready or timer interrupt. The former is more efficient, but ties the user to a specific device. Sample code is conditionaled out for the IBM PC timer interrupt. The following problems are known to exist: 1. Macro assembler does not support the initialization of 10-byte floating point constants in 8087 emulation mode - the last two bytes are zero filled. 2. LIB has not been provided. The version which incorporates support for 2.0 path names will be completed in a couple of weeks. The 1.x version should work fine if you cannot wait. Because the library manager acts as a counterpart to the linker, we recommend that it be distributed with the DOS distribution diskette as opposed to the assembly language development system. 3. International (French, German, Japanese, and U.K.) versions will be available in several months. 4. COMMAND.ASM is currently too large to assemble on a micro. It is being broken down into separate modules so it can be asembled on a machine. Source licensees should realize that the resultant binaries from the new version will not correspond exactly to the old version. 5. If you have any further questions regarding the MSDOS 2.0 distribution please contact Don Immerwahr (OEM technical support (206) 828-8086). Sincerely yours, Chris Larson MS-DOS Product Marketing Manager (206) 828-8080 BUILDING A BOOTABLE (MSDOS FORMAT) DISKETTE 1. In implementing MSDOS on a new machine, it is highly recommended that an MSDOS machine be available for the development. Please note that utilities shipped with MSDOS 2.0 use MSDOS 2.0 system calls and WILL NOT not run under MSDOS 1.25. 2. Use your MSDOS development machine and EDLIN or a word processor package to write BOOT.ASM, your bootstrap loader BIOS.ASM and your Format module. 3. Use MASM, the Microsoft Macro-86 Assembler, to assemble these modules. LINK is then used to link together the .OBJ modules in the order specified. 4. Link creates .EXE format files which are not memory image files and contain relocation information in their headers. Since your BIOS and BOOT routines will not be loaded by the EXE loader in MSDOS, they must first be turned into memory image files by using the EXE2BIN utility. 5. The easiest thing to do is to (using your development machine) FORMAT a single sided diskette without the system. Use DEBUG to load and write your BOOT.COM bootstrap loader to the BOOT sector of that diskette. You may decide to have your bootstrap load BIOS and