ID:LN LANtastic Network Operating System
Quarterdeck Technical Note
by Myke Keefe

Artisoft
Artisoft Plaza
575 E. River Road
Tucson, AZ  85704
(602) 293-6363

We have tested the LANtastic starter package with DESQview 
versions 2.2, 2.3 and QEMM-386 versions 4.2-5.1.  The LAN starter 
kit consists of two 2 Mbps LAN adapters, cable, & terminators and a 
system disk with version 3.02 of LANtastic NOS. 

Installation was rather easy, and the instructions in the manual 
are complete.  If you are installing this system on a 386 and are 
using QEMM-386 or other memory manager, you must exclude the LAN 
adapter ROM address space, D800-DFFF.  See page 196 of the 
LANtastic NOS user guide for more information.

The new 10MB Ethernet adapters do not use any ROM or RAM 
addresses so no exclusions are necessary. 

     LANBIOS.EXE is the program that activates the network 
     adapter in your PC.  It uses 2K and can be loaded high.

     REDIR.EXE is the networking software.  Each PC node on the 
     network must run this. It uses 11K and can be loaded high. 

     SERVER.EXE is an additional program that enables the PC 
     running it to be accessed as a file server in addition to 
     being a workstation.  It takes about 30-50 K and in most 
     cases can also be loaded high.

LANtastic uses DOS's SHARE.EXE to provide basic file protection and 
locking.  Non-network versions of software can be run by only one 
user at a time.  Some users have suggested:

                      SHARE /F:4096 /L:200
in AUTOEXEC.BAT.


               RUNNING DESQview on LANtastic NOS

DESQview should be run from a local disk or from a unique 
directory on the server. Initial installation of DV will take 350-
400K of disk space.  

You may want to try using the DESQview parameter, /DT (DOS 
Terminate).  This tells DESQview to pass any calls to terminate a 
program directly to DOS, instead of having DESQview itself 
perform the termination.  Some DOS utilities (such as SHARE.EXE) and 
networks may not be able to keep track of programs if DOS doesn't 
see terminations.

The network drivers (LANBIOS.EXE, REDIR.EXE) should be run before 
invoking DESQview.  Loading them in a DV window is difficult at 
best, and will severely degrade the performance of the network.

NET and Lanpup can be run in DESQview to access network features 
like Mail and Chat.  If you use Lanpup, you should run it in 
Stand Alone mode (/S) inside of DESQview, not before it or else 
multitasking will stop while LANPUP messages remain on the 
screen.

NET uses around 20K and LANPUP uses about 5K and both write 
directly to the screen.  The "Writes directly to screen" option 
should be set to Y for these programs to prevent bleed through. 


                 DESQview on a LANtastic Server
 
In order to use DV and LANtastic together you may save yourself 
some work by not installing the server option of LANtastic.  
There is a conflict that MAY or MAY NOT show itself if the SERVER 
program has been loaded. 

Even though the servers in LANtastic are not dedicated, DESQview 
should not be run on a PC designated as a server with LANtastic 
NOS versions 3.02 and earlier.  Programs run in DESQview are 
allowed to access DOS but the LANtastic Server wants exclusive 
access to DOS at certian times and will attempt to prevent access 
to DOS.  It is this condition that may cause problems.

Symptoms include computer lock-up, access denied, or computer re-
boots. It most readily shows up when running 2 or more 
applications under DV that access data/programs across the net. 
(Working locally seems to work ok.) 

If you must be set up as a SERVER, and are experiencing these 
problems you can work around this by setting the SHARE CPU WHEN 
IN FOREGROUND to N and RUNS IN BACKGROUND to N in Change Program 
for applications that access DOS in a manner that causes crashes.  

For more information about Changing a Program's information, 
please see chapter 7 of the DV Manual and the grey DV upgrade 
pamplet.

This will allow you to switch between programs, but will not run 
these programs in background.  

Another option is to setup your LANtastic Network with a PC 
dedicated as a server and only run DV on a non-server.

Quarterdeck is currently investigating to see if a modified 
version of server.exe will be able to tell DV not to multi-task 
during critical operations performed by the server.  


        Copyright (C) 1991 by Quarterdeck Office Systems
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