Leonard Erickson wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:



 RJT> I do have version 8 (?) on hand and don't like it,  won't use 
 RJT> it.  The thing created some sort of huge pile of hidden files,  
 RJT> and when I moved it from one place to another it stopped 
 RJT> working.  I don't need that kind of nonsense. 

 LE> Odd. I don't recall too much of that, except for things like NCD,
 LE> where it's building "tables" so it doesn't have to rescann the
 LE> whole drive every time you start it.

I don't remember what it was that did that...

 RJT> Which was which the way you did it?  I used 9 for com1 because maybe I
 RJT> was gonna use a serial mouse,  and 25 for com2,  which is where the
 RJT> modem plugs in.  I can't remember why it was I decided it had to go
 RJT> that way,  but I've been running it that way for ages.  Probably some
 RJT> early software issue or something. 

 LE> I don't recall. I think we went for 25 pin as COM 1 since that was
 LE> more apt to be the modem default, and the systems *had* PS/2 mouse
 LE> ports.

 RJT> I'm talking earlier stuff,  though.

 LE> Even there, COM 1 is more apt to be a default for modems, while
 LE> serial mouse drivers check COM 2 automatically after not finding it
 LE> on COM1.

I don't think the mouse driver I used would search.  But I don't even have
it installed any more,  I just don't use a mouse on this box for the most
part.

 LE>  

 LE> But since (as far as I know) there are no USB drivers for DOS
 LE> itself, you can use them without Windows. 

 RJT> And yet another way they're gonna force the issue,  or keep DOS on
 RJT> older hardware.  Oh well. 

 LE> Well, I expect USB drivers *could* be done for DOS. But the market
 LE> is pretty limited. And trying to get them to work on the sort of
 LE> older hardware that is "limited to" DOS just makes it even less
 LE> likely to get built.

Yeah,  probably.  But then,  I don't even have any USB peripherals yet,  so
for a lot of the hardware here it's not an issue nor is it likely to be any
time soon.

---