Welcome back to the Adventure!
This is Adam and today we are configuring 4DOS.
We will dive into the options right after this.
[Play intro] 4DOS has the same features as some programs
we have been using already.
For example, the command history options in DOSKEY are included in 4dos.
So let’s reconfigure our system so 4dos does the heavy lifting.
To access the options, we type option from the prompt
[c:\option] We will start here in the startup options.
“Resident in UMB is how we can load 4dos high.
As long as we have DOS=UMB or DOS=HIGH,UMB in our config.sys file we can set this option
to yes.
There are additional options for selecting a region of upper memory.
You can select regions one through eight.
For now, I will select yes for automatic handling.
The stack size option we will leave alone for now.
I covered Stacks in a previous episode there will be a card linking to that video.
At this time we do not need to increase the stack size but should we encounter stack overflow
errors we will revisit this setting in the future
The swapping variables we will leave alone for now.
Similar to the swap file in later versions of windows we can direct 4dos to use space
in EMS, XMS, a RAM Drive, or a path of the hard drive.
For now I will leave it blank for automatic handling
The buffers set the amount of memory allocated for the functions listed.
The default parameters will be more than plenty for our purposes
4start and 4exit are interesting to me.
4dos can execute its own version of the autoexec.bat file.
This parameter is just to define the path for the batch file.
Currently I am not using one but in the future we may.
Especially the 4exit.
When we exit 4dos it will run that batch file to terminate memory resident programs for
example Last on the startup settings we have the autoexec.bat
file path and an additional field for parameters.
We could add variables to autoexec.bat like %1 and %2 then pass parameters for those variables
using this setting.
I have a video that covers variables in batch files.
A card should pop up any moment now Next up we have the display settings.
We will leave ANSI to auto.
If we wanted to use a non-standard ANSI driver we would need to select the yes option as
4dos may not properly detect the driver.
The text dimensions are for the number of lines and columns we want displayed on the
screen.
I will leave that at it’s default Last in this applet we can change the background
and foreground color for text input and output.
I will change the output foreground to bright yellow.
Now we have some command line options to go through.
The editing section is where we can define the behavior when editing text.
My preference in Insert so I will change that now
Then we have filename completion options.
We can have hidden file names autocompleted and we can filter the file types to autocomplete
with specific commands For example if we only want to autocomplete .txt, .bat, and .sys
files with the edit command we can type in Edit:txt bat sys
Next we have the command history settings.
Starting with the minimum saved characters.
I am going to leave this at 0 which will save everything but we could set it to something
like 4 and that will not save any three letter commands like if we just typed DIR or we change
drives like d: Then we have copy to end and move to end options.
If we recall a command from history having these options selected will either copy or
move the command to the end of the history list.
Otherwise the command will retain its original position in the list
The wrap option applies to scrolling through the history list.
If wrap is selected the list will be circular.
If deselected you could not scroll from the first entry to the last entry.
For Duplicates selecting off means duplicate commands will be saved in the history.
Fist will save the first entry when a duplicate is encountered.
Last will save the new entry when a duplicate is encountered
Last but not least for the command line options is the extended directory search.
I won’t go into too much detail here because this setting deserves an episode of its own.
Selecting 0 is the same way DOS handles changing directories, manually navigating through the
directory tree.
The remaining options depend on a directory tree database.
1 will take you to a directory or subdirectory that is an exact match for the directory name.
2 will result in a directory that begins with the search term and 3 results in a directory
that contains the search term Let’s move to the Windows options.
We will sometimes get popup windows in 4dos as in the case of an extended directory search
that has more than one result.
We would get a popup with the options to select from.
With these settings we can change the background and foreground colors of the popups and the
position.
I will leave these at default for now.
Then we have the mouse option.
This is to tell 4dos if a mouse is available to popup windows.
I will leave this on automatic Here we have the option 1 settings.
From the top we have descriptions.
Turning this off will tell 4dos not to update the description file when using commands like
copy, delete, move, or rename.
I will leave this enabled Maximum length controls the length of descriptions.
This impacts the DESCRIBE command which is used to create, modify, or delete file and
subdirectory descriptions The special charters we should pay attention
to.
The separator is the character to use when entering multiple commands at the command
line.
This replaces the angle brackets and pipe symbol for this function.
The escape charter can also be user defined and replaces the default escape character
used by DOS.
This is used for ANSI commands and printer functions
The parameter character is used with batch files parameters.
Like setting a variable to %3& means to execute the third parameters and all parameters after
that.
The decimal and thousands settings are for how numbers are displayed like using the VER
command to show the version of DOS or the MEM command to check memory usage.
These can stay on Auto.
Next we have the beep settings.
From here you can change the length of beeps when holding down keys on the keyboard for
example.
I will leave this set to 2 Then we have the Time settings.
I prefer a 24-hour clock so I will leave this alone as well.
Now we have some miscellaneous options.
By default names of files will be in lower case letter.
If you prefer the traditional DOS style of upper case letters then mark the Force Upper
Case option here.
Default batch echo if enabled will echo all commands in a batch file unless you specify
@echo off.
Deselecting this option will have echo off unless you specify echo on
Protect Redirected Output Files when enabled prevents file output redirections from overwriting
existing files.
I would like this feature on.
Anything to prevent accidental data loss is a plus in my book
Search on short file names changes the behavior of searching in 4dos.
Unchecked, disables searching short file names and should be used when 4dos is running under
windows 95, 98, or ME because 8.3 filenames are treated the same as long file names under
those versions of Windows.
To remain consistent with the Search behavior of COMMAND.COM this should be checked if you
are running DOS Support Unix Path Separators literally just
allows you to enter forward and back slashes in the command line without them being treated
as command switches.
I will not be using that feature at this time Here are some more miscellaneous options.
The logging section allows you to toggle logging of commands, errors, history, and sent the
location of the log files.
EVAL min and max changes the number of decimal places that will be displayed when using the
Eval Command.
The EVAL command is used to evaluate an arithmetic expression.
I will leave this alone for now The help options are used to change the behavior
of the help menu.
For example you can use the /E switch to make the escape key go back to the help table of
contents opposed to backing up through recently viewed topics.
The REXX path setting is used to define what program 4dos should use to execute bat files.
This is primarily used when running 4dos with PC DOS
The installation patch is exactly that.
The directory path for where 4dos was installed.
This is used for launching things like the help system.
Last but not least we have our command settings.
CopyPrompt will prompt you before overwriting a file when using the copy or move commands.
I approve of this.
Let’s enable it Colors we looked at in the previous episode.
We can define the colors of text for various things in the command prompt.
For example in a directory listing executable files will display in Magenta
The List settings are used for the list command.
We can change the background and foreground colors for the text and status bar.
We can also select a printer fr the list command to print to
Finally we have the select options.
We can change the background and foreground colors for the text and status bar when using
the select command That concludes our tour of the 4dos options.
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