OS Compatability with the PC Card

If you have additions / modifications to this information then please email me at web@ultrasnd.demon.co.uk.

Introduction

The PC card was originaly designed to provide DOS and Windows compatability but it is capable of much more.

You can go direct to the are you are interested in using one of the links below.

• DOS
• Window 3.1 & 3.11
• Windows 95
• OS/2
• Linux
• Windows NT

PC DOS

The PC card comes supplied with IBM PC DOS with which it seems to be compatible, although Aleph 1 recommend adding the /NOMOVEXBDA option to theEMM386 device line in config.sys, especially for versions 1.99 or later.

Aleph 1 are also aware of some networking problems with some software and PCDOS, which are remedied by changing back to MSDOS (This is generally the network software being badly written, as opposed to explicit faults in PCDOS, but is worth knowing about).

MS DOS

There are no apparent problems with using MS DOS.

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There seem to be no obvious problems with either version of windows.

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Windows 95 runs on the PC card with no special installation options required, and no stripey/miscoloured icon problems from v1.993 onwards. The only outstanding items are proper installers for Video, Sound & CDROM and will be supplied for testing very shortly (expected end Feb).

Win 95 requires more memory than Win 3.1 to avoid severe disc thrashing with the amount decreasing quite remarkably once more than 10MB has been allocated.

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At present it is not possible to use OS/2 as the required drivers are not available. But work on OS/2 drivers is currently expected to be started by a third party in March 96. An announcement will be made when they are available for testing.

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It is possible to use Linux on the PC card although some modifications need to be made to Linux to get it to work. Permission has been given for the Linux drivers to be released, but they are for an old version of Linux and the author is now busy with RiscBSD, thus a third party is now updating them to the current Linux version (also starting in March 96).

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Aleph One do not wish to officially support NT, but are happy for drivers to be written and made available on a 'use at own risk' basis. They are currently looking for people willing to write these drivers. They will give aid to any volunteer programmers.

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