SH> When I applied a fixpack (12) to OS/2, the video drivers barfed and it
 SH> wouldn't boot. Since OS/2 is GUI based, I was screwed. 

 JdBP>> Except that, of course, OS/2 *isn't* GUI based at all.  Workplace 
 JdBP>> Shell's user interface is GUI based, but Workplace Shell is *not* 
 JdBP>> OS/2.  It's an OS/2 application, just like any other.  It merely 
 JdBP>> happens to be the OS/2 application that is first run on most machines.
 JdBP>> 
 JdBP>> It's quite easy to boot OS/2 to text-mode.  Just press ALT-F1 when 
 JdBP>> the white "ÛÛ OS/2" blob appears, and then choose the option to 
 JdBP>> boot to a command line.

 SH> Can I load Netscape? 

You've just booted to text-mode, remember.  So: Is Netscape a text-mode
program ?

( Actually, you can load Netscape, or indeed any PM program, including
PMSHELL.EXE.  PM will try to start automatically and switch into graphics mode 
to run the program.  However, the default CONFIG.SYS used when booted into
text-mode generally does not have the graphics display drivers configured --
which is of course desirable for its intended use as a text-mode fallback and
recovery position where no graphics drivers are loaded --, meaning that this
won't work unless the default config file is altered to include the
appropriate graphics display drivers.  To run graphical programs, boot to the
Maintenance Desktop, which uses a CONFIG.SYS that is configured with VGA
graphics display drivers. )

 SH> Can I multi-task?

Yes.  OS/2 *always* multitasks.  It's not something that can be turned off. 
It's a fundamental part of the operating system and is always available, even
when OS/2 is booted to text mode.

For an example of this in action, HPFSVIEW from the Graham Utilities for OS/2
is a text-mode HPFS utility.  It is, however, multithreaded.  One thread
handles the user interface, and another thread scans the HPFS volume in the
background.  It runs without problem when OS/2 is booted to text mode.

 SH> Why install the overhead of OS/2, when I could just as easily run DOS?

The question presumes two things, both of which are in fact false.  It
presumes that OS/2 has some encumbering "overhead", and it presumes that DOS
is "just as easy".  In fact, the converse is true.  It is *DOS* that has the
encumbrances, and these can cause quite significant difficulties.  An example
of this is Partition Magic version 3.0, which has both OS/2 and DOS versions
of the utility.  The DOS PQMAGICD.EXE program uses the BIOS, and suffers from
the 1024 cylinder problem.  It prints an error when attempting to manipulate
partitions on large hard discs that are beyond the 7.87GiB line as a result. 
The OS/2 PQMAGICT.EXE program, on the other hand, is a text-mode OS/2 program. 
 Since OS/2 does not have a 1024 cylinder problem once it is fully running,
PQMAGICT can access any size hard disc drive.  The upshot of which is that the 
OS/2 PQMAGICT program can in fact handle drives that the DOS PQMAGICD program
cannot.

Not only are there many native OS/2 recovery and maintenance tools (The Graham 
Utilities for OS/2, The Gammatech Utilities for OS/2, PARTLIST from the OS/2
Command Line Utilities, even FDISK and CHKDSK), they also tend to be *better*, 
since they do not suffer from the memory, single-tasking, and disc size
limitations of DOS and the BIOS that hamper such tools on DOS.

 SH> Tell me how to multitask without any PM activity loaded.

The question is founded on the incorrect premise that without PM OS/2 isn't
multitasking.  It is, of course, and so the question is nonsense.

I suspect that what you are *actually* asking is how to have *multiple display 
sessions*.  That is nothing to do with multitasking whatsoever.  To have
multiple display sessions, one requires some program to act as the Session
Manager in order to manage them.  When OS/2 Warp is booted to the graphical
desktop, Workplace Shell, amongst many other functions, acts as the Session
Manager.  When OS/2 Warp is booted to text mode, no Session Manager is run in
the default configuration.

The answer is, therefore, to run a Session Manager, of course.  MSHELL is a
text-mode session manager, and so (if memory serves) is TSHELL.  Indeed, in
the days of OS/2 1.0 this is how OS/2 worked right out of the box.  Microsoft
dropped the text-mode session manager from OS/2 in favour of a graphical
session manager when it introduced Presentation Manager in OS/2 1.1, but
text-mode session managers are still available for OS/2 and still work.

 ¯ JdeBP ®

--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
2401/0