Q. Dear Mr. Know-It-All,
Why are some of the device statements in OS/2's CONFIG.SYS called
BASEDEV?
A.
BASEDEV "base device drivers" are loaded while the OS/2 kernel is
loading and are used by the kernel to perform I/O during the kernel load
(they remain resident and may be used later as well).
DEVICE "installable device drivers" are loaded after the kernel has
loaded.
Because BASEDEV's don't have a fully functioning OS/2 kernel to
use when they load, the CONFIG.SYS line they appear on must specify only a
filename, without a path.
The specified file is first searched for in the root directory, and then in
the \OS2 or \OS2\BOOT directory, depending on your version of OS/2.
The BASEDEV file may not be in any other directory.
Further, the BASEDEV filename's extension is important.
First, all .SYS BASEDEVs are loaded, then .BID, .VSD, .TSD, .ADD, .I13, .FLT,
and .DMD, in that order.
Other extensions are invalid and are not loaded.
If more than one BASEDEV have the same extension, they are loaded in the
sequence in which they appear in CONFIG.SYS.
These extension load sequences are not arbitrary.
For example, .FLT drivers are "filter" drivers and are loaded after
.ADD adapter device drivers but before .DMD device manager drivers.
Such a filter driver would, for example, be used to encrypt the data on a disk
drive --- the device manager (on the application program side) would see
unencrypted data, while the adapter driver (on the physical hardware side)
would see encrypted data.
.FLT drivers are also used to convert your CD-ROM drive, which does not have
cylinders, to a cylindered format that looks like a hard drive.
Q. Dear Mr. Know-It-All,
How can I go to any of the computers in our office (we're running Warp
4) and tell when it was booted up?
A.
The easy way is to look at when the swap file was created.
To do this manually in Warp 4, and assuming you haven't moved your swap
file from its default location, start at the desktop and go to Connections
and then Drives.
Double click on your OS/2 drive and then open the OS/2 directory (click
just once on the "+").
Now double click on System.
This displays all of the files in the System directory.
To see creation times, select View at the top of the window and click on
Details view.
Next click once on SWAPPER.DAT (to highlight it for easy reading) and use the
bottom horizontal scroll bar to reveal the Creation Date and Creation Time
values.
Note that you can't just open an OS/2 window and run DIR SWAPPER.DAT
/S.
DIR reports the last update time, not the creation time.
Mr. Know-It-All lives in Southern California.
The Southern California OS/2 User Group
P.O. Box 26904
Santa Ana, CA 92799-6904, USA
Copyright 1998 the Southern California OS/2 User Group. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED.
SCOUG is a trademark of the Southern California OS/2 User Group.
OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International
Business Machines Corporation.
All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.
