🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991May13.215237.4309@d.cs.okstate.edu> mmccorm@d.cs.okstate.edu  
(McCormick Martin) writes:
> 
> From: halpern@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (David Halpern)
> I've recently installed dos4.0 on my pc and everytime I boot I guet this
> warning message telling me to install share for large media.  I should also
> add that I have a 286pc with  20MB and 40MB hard drives.  Why am I getting
> this message and what should I do to stop getting it ?

SHARE's purpose is two-fold:  First, it handles file locking for shared access.   
Someone else on this group has already posted about that.  If you judged by  
SHARE's name alone, you might think that that is all it does.  However, SHARE's  
main purpose is to keep a MS-DOS ver 1.0 stupidity from trashing your disk.

You see, old MS-DOS versions required applications to use what is known as an  
FCB or File Control Block.  Because of this requirement for old versions of  
DOS, some applications still around today use FCBs instead of a newer method,  
File Handles.

FCBs access only the first 32MB of your hard drive succesfully, while File  
Handles have much greater range.  A side affect of FCBs' limitation is this: If  
you used an FCB to access, say the 40 millionth byte on your hard drive, you  
would actually get the 40M - 32M limit = 8 millionth byte.  i.e., the pointer  
"wraps around"

SHARE translates all FCB calls into File Handle calls.

To properly load SHARE, place the file SHARE.EXE in your root directory of your  
boot-up disk.  Don't put any lines about in your config.sys or autoexec.bat!  I  
know this seems wrong, but bear with me:  

When DOS first loads, before even checking for a config.sys, it checks for big  
media.  If it finds it, it _immediately_ checks for SHARE.EXE in the root  
directory. (i.e., C:\SHARE.EXE)  If it finds SHARE it loads it right then.  The  
reason that it is not loaded with config.sys (although it can be...) is this:

Imagine you have the following config.sys:
1: DEVICE=C:OLDTHING.SYS
2: INSTALL SHARE.EXE

Further imagine that OLDTHING uses FCBs.  Now imagine what happens if OLDTHING  
starts out using FCBs and then SHARE comes along and buts in.  Now imagine a  
hard drive full of worhtless random bytes.

Anyway, I hope you use SHARE, but I feel that I should warn you: Some people  
(not me, by the way) have had trouble using SHARE with things like DesqView,  
etc.,  Others blame the problem on FASTOPEN, which I must agree with.  The 4.0  
FASTOPEN is Buggy with a capital 'B'.

SHARE is doing a fine job on my system, and has been for over a year. I use  
4DOS, which is more robust than COMMAND.COM in many respects, so perhaps that  
is where my luck has come from....

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