BV> It worked because your M/b doesn't use the parity bits even if
 BV> they are there.

 BL> The M/b can do parity if I turn it on, but that's not what I
 BL> meant.

  (grin) After my outraged-consumer-mad-act and the new motherboard, 
I assume that they gave me a good one this time. I tried enabling 
parity with the no-parity 8MB and it failed, but who knows? 

  My mindset is that I always have to find things out for myself. I
did not believe you when you told me HERE BE THIEVES but now I know. I
thought a slope would have to get up early to trick an old engineer
who was cunning enough to count chips on a motherboard, but I now
realise that the slopes can trick me fifty ways from Sunday. And
that assumes they know what they're doing. If they're dickheads it
becomes totally random, and worse.

 BV> True. The only reason for the parity bit was that the PC was
 BV> designed when RAM was the highest cost and suffered from the
 BV> highest failure rate. The parity was simply a way for IBM to
 BV> "look" like a serious PC.

  I regret that I ignored computers for so long, and thus missed all
the early reasoning behind what exists now. I had a serious look when
IBM introduced the time-share 360? in 1972?, saw it was a toy, and
simply put PCs out of my mind until 1985.

 BL> What does IFSHLP.SYS do?

 BV> Windows actually has an "installable" file system. This has
 BV> been there since version 1.0. Well, it has always been able to
 BV> support an installable file system but Microsoft thought that
 BV> they had better keep it secret (Don't ask...I don't know
 BV> why...Paranoid perhaps ?) Anyway, They use it in Win3.11 to
 BV> support Networking and I think it also helps with the 32-bit
 BV> stuff. I've never bothered to poke around in it to tell you the
 BV> truth. I saw it and though, "Aha...They've fucked up and need a
 BV> DOS driver to enable the Installable File System stuff that
 BV> they've been keeping secret for so long. Typical of M$. Take a
 BV> good idea and fuck it up." So, I've never bothered with it.

  Ahhh... just as well I left it alone.

 BV> The Windows installation program put it into your config.sys

 BV> I've just had a look and the "official" line is...The
 BV> IFSHLP.SYS file is used to provide real-mode support for the
 BV> IFS manager that is responsible for passing data to the
 BV> appropriate device, wether the device is installed locally or
 BV> elsewhere on the network.

 BV> Does that clear it up ? ... I thought so :)

  ROFL! Actually is does help. In between-the-lines-computer-speak
it says: "Win31 was an I/O stuffup, DOS is better, so this helps a
bit..." 

Regards,
Bob


___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
@EOT:

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