TSX-32 Version 6.00 Release Notes Copyright (c) 1999. S&H Computer Systems, Inc. Table of Contents 1. Y2K compliance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. Support for Maxspeed PS8 and PS16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3. TSX-32 Windows Integration Kit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4. Virtual memory limits have been doubled . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5. SWITCH.INI style initialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 6. Colors customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7. New TSGEN setting may enable remote booting . . . . . . . . . 3 8. SET TERM/MONITOR command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 9. SET NETROUTE enhancment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 10. Support for 4 IDE drives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 11. Enhanced online help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 12. Problems Corrected in Version 6.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 i 1 1. Y2K compliance Version 6 incorporates all Y2K corrections which have been included in previous releases, and also fixes the SET DATE problem documented below. We are unaware of any pending Y2K issues with TSX and emphasize that there has never been a Y2K problem other than the date being wrong, all of which can be corrected by simply setting the date. 2. Support for Maxspeed PS8 and PS16 Version 6 includes support for the PCI Maxspeed serial boards PS8 and PS16. The description of these boards in the TSX32.GEN file is much simpler than previous serial boards since TSX queries the PCI bus and determines the boards settings. Here is an example: DEVICE=TT/HANDDEF=LHMXPS8/CONTROLLER=D UNIT=1/NAME="PS8 #1" UNIT=2/NAME="PS8 #2" UNIT=3/NAME="PS8 #3" UNIT=4/NAME="PS8 #4" UNIT=5/NAME="PS8 #5" UNIT=6/NAME="PS8 #6" UNIT=7/NAME="PS8 #7" UNIT=8/NAME="PS8 #8" The PS16 board is specified as two consecutive PS8 boards, just as the SS-16 was specified as two consecutive SS-8 boards. 3. TSX-32 Windows Integration Kit The standard TSX-32 networking distribution now includes the TSX-32 Windows Integration kit. This file, TSXW010.EXE, is a self extracting archive file for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4.0. It is a multi purpose installer, including the network server for Windows, TSX-TERM for Windows, the TSX-Online Graphical Client, as well as implementations of some TSX-32 utilties for windows (including DIR, DIFF, and DUMP). The network server for Windows permits your Windows computers to participate in TSX-32 networks. Computers running the network server for Windows will appear to be TSX-32 nodes to your TSX-32 systems. This means you will be able to copy files to and from your TSX system, back up your Windows system to TSX, open files on the Windows system from TSX applications, and more. Customers wishing to experiment with this should call for a temporary key. Licensing for this product is similar to TSX-Term in that a single TSX-32 license supports an unlimited number of remote Windows computers. 2 The Windows version of TSX-Term uses the network to permit TSX-Term terminal sessions to be run from a Windows computer. No licensing is required in addition to the standard TSX-Term license to use the Windows version of TSX-Term for connecting to TSX-32. However, if you are dissapointed with the telnet program you use under Windows, consider registering TSX-Term on your Windows computer to take advantage of TSX-Term's excellent ANSI support in its new telnet mode. The Windows port of Edit-32 contains extensive online help and features a menu bar containing most editor functions. Edit-32 for the Windows operating system is registered on a per-PC basis. Registration for the editor also unlocks the TSX utilities such as DIR, DUMP, and DIFF which have been ported to Windows. 4. Virtual memory limits have been doubled The maximum virtual memory available to a job, which is controlled by the setting MAXP0MEM, has been doubled. 5. SWITCH.INI style initialization The default behavior of all TSX-32 utilities which permit command qualifiers can now be set using an initialization file. The format of this file is similar to the Windows 3.11 WIN.INI or the TOPS-10 SWITCH.INI file. This file can also be used to control the appearance of full screen utilities such as TSAUTH, FMAN, PMAN, and SYSOP. To engage the processing of this initialization file you must create the file and assign the logical name TSX_UINIT to the file. For example, if the name of your initialization file is C:\DAN\SWITCH.INI, place this command in your login command file: ASSIGN C:\\DAN\\SWITCH.INI TSX_UINIT The initialization file is a plain text file divided into sections denoted with headers enclosed in square brackets. Any time a program such as COPY, DELETE, TYPE, and EVENT prepare to process their command line they check for presence of TSX_UINIT: and, if found, search for a section matching their name. If they find such a section records within it beginning with a "/" character are appended to the command line. For example, if your SWITCH.INI file contains: [EVENT] /TIME/DATE 3 the EVENT program will behave as if you had typed EVENT/TIME/DATE. 6. Colors customization The appearance of full screen utilities is controlled by a section in the "SWITCH.INI" file named COLORS. This can be used to change the attributes used by programs like PMAN, JMAN, and even the HOST program file transfer window, all of which may be difficult to read on some monitors. Use of this section requires an understanding of how the window functions work, and is beyond the scope of these release notes. However, this information is available by typing HELP COLORS. 7. New TSGEN setting may enable remote booting Version 6 features a new TSGEN parameter, REBOOT0, which may solve the failure of the BOOT command to successfully reboot some computers. To try it include this command in TSX32.GEN: SET REBOOT0 = 1 Regen, reboot, and see if the BOOT command now works. Note: this parameter ends in the digit 0. This causes the kernel mode debugger to be invoked and to execute the command: DD 4 Some of you may find that other debug commands, such as BOOT, work while DD 4 does not. If so you can specify which command is fed into the kernel mode debugger by the BOOT command by setting the REBOOTCMD gen parameter, as in: SET REBOOTCMD = "BOOT" 8. SET TERM/MONITOR command It is now possible to enable or disable terminal monitoring, used by the TUTOR and SPY programs, on your current line using the SET TERM/MONITOR and SET TERM/NOMONITOR commands. When SET TERM/NOMONITOR is in effect, nobody can TUTOR your line or spy on it regardless of the setting of the TMONENABLE gen parameter or any privilege. This command has been added to ensure privacy while running sensitive programs such as payroll software. 4 It is not possible to use the /MONITOR and /NOMONITOR qualifiers to change the settings of any line other than your own timesharing line. Hence, while SET TERM/MONITOR and SET TERM/NOMONITOR work, commands such as SET TTD1:/MONITOR do not. 9. SET NETROUTE enhancment A /subnet qualifier has been added to the SET NETROUTE command. 10. Support for 4 IDE drives Version 6 support 4 IDE drives. This can be controlled with the /ADAPTER and /CHANNEL qualifiers. Specify /ADAPTER=0 for the primary IDE and /ADAPTER=1 for the secondary IDE. Specify /CHANNEL=0 for a master drive and /CHANNEL=1 for a slave. You can omit these qualifiers if you place the DEVICE=DH statements in the following order: Primary Master Primary Slave Secondary Master Secondary Slave 11. Enhanced online help We have added a number of TSX-Onlinen programs, such as SMTPTOSS and SMTPSCAN, toi the online help. Such utilities do not normally require that information be passed in through the command line but various qualifiers for special circumstances. 12. Problems Corrected in Version 6.00 1. A system crash with the message "flkdeq: pbr_numlock bad" could occur if two sibling forked jobs did record locking on channels connected to the same file that they inherited from the parent job. 2. ATTRIB/CREATION_DATE did not set the time stamp on a file if the date portion of the time/date matched the file even though the time did not. 3. RESTORE got into a loop reporting errors when hitting end of data on a tape drive. 4. Message "Negotiating transfer rate" came out at the console changing the currently selected unit for systems with multi console adapters 5 5. RESTORE did not handle the case when there was a node name specified in the original BACKUP command, and also a node name specified for output in the RESTORE command. 6. When TSX detected zero pages the message saying 0 total pages was overwritten the message "If system hangs check IRQ on disk". Now, TSX will produce a fatal error warning you that no memory has been detected. 7. BBS users of FTP could not use file specification syntax which contained a leading '\' since this implied the real root and BBS users are restricted to their base directory. 8. The FTP server could not be used with Internet Explorer version 5. IE5 sends some truly interesting CD commands to an FTP server, which we understand causes trouble with several FTP servers. We have made various "acommodations" to these incoming commands. 9. The JMAN program had a problem displaying the list of files currently open by a process. 10. FTP crashed if a command in the NETRC.NET file had an argument which was over 100 characters long. This limit has been increased to 200. 11. BACKUP did not produce a meaningful error message when there was an error opening an output save set. Instead, the message read "?MSG-E-NOSUCHMSG, No message exists with code 201F0004.".