🚀 go-pugleaf

Over the last year I have slowly been moving my PC work to Windows.
I finally decided it was time to start doing my telecomputing from
Windows as well.  Over the last 10 years I have used a variety of
packages.  I remember paying a few dollars for an early version of
PC-Talk, and have used many different freeware, and shareware packages.
I thought it was time to actually try a commercial comm package, so
I had the company I work for order "Crosstalk for Windows".

I was really a little excited to be getting a commercial package.
So you can imagine my disapointment when Crosstalk refused to install
because there "wasn't enough available space" on my hard disk.

I have a 120 Mb disk running Stacker 2.0, which has over 56Mb available.
I guessed it was getting confused either with Stacker or an overflow
on an int and not realizing I had enough space (not uncommon under
earlier DOS's).  So I called the DCA technical help line.  

In a short period a helpful woman came on the line (good support here).
After explaining I couldn't install it with 56Mb free (under Stacker),
the woman conferred with someone else.

She informed me that not only wouldn't Crosstalk install on a disk with
Stacker running, but if I succeeded in running Crosstalk, and tried
to write to a Stack'ed disk, Crosstalk would destroy the hard disk's data.

I suppose I should be pleased.  After all, Crosstalk failing to install
could be considered a feature, since it prevented me from destroying
my hard disk.  (Gee thanks <sarcasm implied>)  And their technical
support was fast and really pin-pointed the problem (Crosstalk would
have destroyed my hard disk).

On the other hand ...

I'm really getting tired of software products which go around the
OS for the sake of performance (which I assume Crosstalk does).
MS-Dos itself doesn't go around the low-level OS, even though
if anyone could do it Microsoft would be able to.  Even Windows
doesn't go around the low-level stuff (except the well-documented
swapfile).  Why does a communications package have to do this
end-run???  And then doesn't document it.  Disk-stacking programs
may be newer than Crosstalk, but they are getting widespread
(with DR DOS including one).

The think which worries me, is what about all the people who had
Crosstalk installed before they got Stacker (or a similar program).
DCA's technical support didn't say whether Crosstalk just destroyed
Stack'ed disks on a whim or whether they did it consistently.

After using quite a few PD and shareware packages over the years, many
of them lacked one feature or another, and they were not all easy to
use.  However none of them failed to work, none of them failed to
do what I really needed, and none of them threatened to destroy my
hard disk!  This is what I get from commercial software?

Anyway, take this as a warning, all ye who Stack.

John R. Mellby
jmellby@iluvatar.dseg.ti.com