This chapter describes how to build a PC to the specification you want, using SoftWindows's emulation of a real PC's memory, disks, and display.
You set up SoftWindows emulation using the functions on the SoftWindows Options menu.
These functions are described in greater detail in these sections:
After changing any of these preferences, which would correspond to a hardware change on a real PC, SoftWindows has to be restarted.
A dialog box is displayed to warn you and give you the option of canceling the change.
 | Note: If Windows 95 is running when you click OK, SoftWindows will shut down all Windows 95 applications. Windows 95 will then shut down cleanly before rebooting. |
SoftWindows allows you to set the main memory size to between 1 Mbyte and 255 Mbytes. The initial setting is 16 Mbytes, which is the minimum recommended value for running Windows 95.
The initial upper limit of the Memory dialog box is set to 32 Mbytes, but this can be set to any value up to 255 Mbytes; for more information refer to “System configuration file.”
Allocating more memory will improve the performance of Windows up to a certain point. However, allocating excessive memory may reduce the performance of your workstation and other UNIX programs.
If your application specifies that it needs expanded memory, also referred to as LIM or EMS (Lotus, Intel, Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification), you can allocate some of the memory to expanded memory using the EMM386 expanded memory emulator. For example, to use 2 Kbytes of extended memory as expanded memory include this line in the CONFIG.SYS file:
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE 2048 |
However, it is recommended that you use extended memory in preference to expanded memory wherever possible.
PCs identify the different types of disk drives using the drive letters A: to Z:.
The following table shows the significance of the different drive letters and how they are set up when you first install SoftWindows.
You use the Open Drive… function on the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu to set up and modify the floppy disk drives A: and B:, the hard disk drives C: and D:, the VFSA drives E: to Z:, and the CD–ROM drive (initially set to the first available VFSA drive for full installations, or F: for upgrade installations).
Drive | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
A: | Empty | The floppy disk drive. |
B: | Empty | Additional floppy disk drive. |
C: | $HOME/WIN95-user.hdf | The user's startup, or boot, hard disk drive, where user is the user's UNIX login ID. |
D: | Empty | Additional hard disk drive. |
E: | $HOME | Your UNIX home directory. |
G: | $SWINHOME/windows | Windows 3.1.1 shared Installation files. (Upgrade installations only). |
G: | $SWINHOME/win95 | Windows 95 setup files, if selected during installation. (Full installations only). |
H: | $HOME | Your UNIX home directory |
SoftWindows emulates PC hard disks using single files in the UNIX file system (normally system with a .hdf extension). The individual PC files within SoftWindows hard disk files are accessible only from within SoftWindows and cannot be listed using UNIX commands.
SoftWindows hard disk files can be attached to and detached from either of the PC drives C: and D: without affecting the information stored within the hard disk file.
SoftWindows will always use drive C: to start up unless a floppy disk is in an attached A: disk drive. You must therefore always have a bootable SoftWindows hard disk file attached to drive C:. This must include the Windows start-up files which are installed when the hard disk file is created.
Ensure that you have enough hard disk space for the file you are creating. You can use the UNIX df command to check this. You must have at least 180 Mbytes of free disk space available.
Choose New Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu. A dialog box appears.
Enter a name for the new hard disk file. It is recommended you give this a .hdf extension.
Choose the size by dragging the slider until the size you want is shown above the slider.
Click Empty hard disk.
Choose OK to create the hard disk file you have specified.
SoftWindows will then be restarted with the new hard disk file set up as drive D:.
If the option to install the hard disk data file was not selected during a full installation ensure that the contents of CD2 are available on a local or network drive.
Note: If you have performed an upgrade installation, Windows 3.11 will be installed instead of Windows 95. Follow the procedure for creating a new D: drive (refer to “To create a new empty D: drive”) but click Windows 95 installed instead of Empty hard disk in the New Hard Disk dialog box.
If SoftWindows cannot locate the Hard Disk data file (for example, if an option was not selected during a full installation) a dialog box appears.
Enter the path to the data file WIN95.DAT (on the second installation disk CD2) in the Data File... field.
For example, if CD2 is mounted in the /CDROM directory, enter /CDROM/WIN95.DAT.
Alternatively, click Data File... to display a dialog box.
Locate the WIN95.DAT file, click OK to return to the previous dialog box, then click OK to continue.
When the D: drive has been created choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.
Remove the Hard Disk Drive C: File Name… entry and replace it with the name of your new C: drive.
Remove the Hard Disk Drive D: File Name… entry.
Choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.
Adialog box shows the hard disk files assigned to drives C: and D:.
Type the name you require in the Hard Disk Drive C: File Name… or Hard Disk Drive D: File Name… text box.
Alternatively, click Hard Disk Drive C: File Name… or Hard Disk Drive D: File Name… to change the hard disk file used for drive C: or D:, respectively.
A dialog box lets you select the hard disk file to use.
Select the name of the file you want to use and choose OK to restart SoftWindows with the drive configuration you have specified.
If you select a SoftWindows 2.0 hard disk file, SoftWindows will upgrade it. Adialog box allows you to confirm that you wish to continue.
Choose Continue to upgrade the disk for use with SoftWindows 95, or choose Exit to cancel the operation.
| Note: Once you have upgraded a SoftWindows 2.0 hard disk file, you will be unable to use the disk with SoftWindows 2.0. If you want to continue to use the original hard disk file with SoftWindows 2.0, you should copy the file and upgrade the copy. You will then be able to continue using the original hard disk file with SoftWindows 2.0, and the copied file with SoftWindows 95. |
Choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu to show the hard disk files attached to C: and D:.
Delete the name of the hard disk file in the Hard Disk Drive D: File Name… text box.
Choose OK to restart SoftWindows with the drive configuration you have specified.
To permanently remove the hard disk file for D:, use the UNIX rm command.
The following instructions explain how to increase the size of an existing hard disk file.
Note: You must have sufficient space on your UNIX file system for this to work. These instructions assume you are running as a user with write permission to the directory containing the hard disk file.
Start SoftWindows in the usual way. For example, type the following command at the UNIX prompt:
SoftWindows95
Choose Modify Drive from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.A dialog box lets you modify a hard disk file.
Type the name of the hard disk file in the Disk File... text box or click Disk File… A dialog box lets you select the hard disk file to modify.
Locate the file you want to modify and choose OK to return to the Modify Hard Disk dialog box.
Use the slider bar in the Modify Hard Disk dialog box to set the new size for the hard disk file.
Choose OK to modify the hard disk file.
SoftWindows saves a backup copy of the original hard disk file using the prefix old. For example, a hard disk file named WIN95-user1.hdf would be saved as old.WIN95-user1.hdf.
Once you have successfully increased the size of the hard disk file, you may wish to remove the backup copy of the modified file.
SoftWindows allows you to share files between Windows/MS-DOS and UNIX by setting up selected UNIX directories as PC drives. The drives are set up using the Virtual File Sharing Architecture, and are referred to as VFSA drives.
Use the right mouse button to click My Computer in Windows 95, then choose Map Network Drive from the popup menu.
A dialog box is displayed:
Select the drive you want to map to in the Drive field.
Enter the path to the network drive in the Path field, using the following format:
\\VFSA\/hostpath
where hostpath is the full path to the UNIX directory. For example, \\VFSA\/users/fred sets up an VFSA drive pointing to the /users/fred directory.
The number of drives available is determined by the value of LASTDRIVE in the CONFIG.SYS file. The default setting, LASTDRIVE=Z, makes drives up to Z: available.
Choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.
The Open Disk Drives dialog box shows the UNIX directory assigned to the first available VFSA drive.
Click the up-arrow or down-arrow to step through the currently available VFSA drives.
In each case the text box shows the directory assigned to the selected drive.
Click the up-arrow or down-arrow to select the VFSA drive you want to change.
Type the directory you want to use into the text box, or click Directory Name….
A dialog box allows you to select the UNIX directory to use as the VFSA drive.
Locate the directory you want to use and choose OK.
Choose OK to exit from the Open Disk Drives dialog box with the drive configuration you have specified.
Windows 95 filenames are not case sensitive, so upper and lower case letters are treated as equivalent. To enable Windows 95 to distinguish between files whose UNIX names differ only in case (for example, fred.txt and FRED.TXT), you select a preferred case for each VFSA drive you set up. SoftWindows preserves file names that are in the preferred case, but maps all other files to a unique filename.
The preferred case must be one of lower, upper, or insensitive.
View the directory set up as an VFSA drive in the Open Disk Drives dialog box.
Select the required option from the Host File Names Are: pop-up menu.
The options are shown in the following table:
Table 4-2. Windows95 VFSA Drive Options
Option
Description
Lower Case
Default setting. All new lower case file names are preserved on
VFSA drives. Upper and mixed-case file names are mapped.Upper Case
All new upper case file names are preserved on VFSA drives.
Lower and mixed-case file names are mapped.Case Insensitive
File name case is irrelevant.
| Note: Case Insensitive is intended for use when assigning case-insensitive drives (such as Windows drives on PCs connected to the network) to an VFSA drive. Do not use this option for UNIX drives. |
See "Using PC files stored in UNIX" in the SoftWindows 95 for UNIX User's Guide for more information on filename mapping.
Use the right mouse button to click My Computer in Windows 95, then choose Disconnect Network Drive from the popup menu.
A dialog box is displayed.
Click the VFSA drive you want to remove.
Choose OK to disconnect the VFSA drive.
Type the following command at the C:\> prompt:
INSIGNIA\-DOS utilities:T USE (MS-DOS utility)NET USE X: dir |
where X: is the letter of the PC drive you want to assign to the UNIX directory, and dir is the full UNIX pathname of the directory (using / characters as separators).
For example, to assign J: to the directory dos in your home UNIX directory, give the command:
INSIGNIA\NET USE J: $HOME/dos |
The drive can be any letter from E: to Z: (subject to the setting of LASTDRIVE), drives A: to D: being predefined by MS–DOS. The CONFIG.SYS file on the hard disk supplied with SoftWindows sets LASTDRIVE to K.
When the NET USE command is used to configure an VFSA drive, the new configuration is immediately reflected in the Open Disk Drives dialog box, and will be saved permanently if the configuration is saved upon exiting from SoftWindows.
If you set up a hard disk with more than one MS–DOS FAT partition, and assign the first partition as drive D:, MS–DOS will use drive E: for the second partition, drive F: for the third, and so on. In this case you need to use subsequent letters for any VFSA drives you set up.
Once an VFSA drive is configured in this way you can modify it in the Open Drives dialog box. The configuration is stored in your configuration file when you exit from SoftWindows, and the VFSA drives will be set up automatically each time you run SoftWindows.
Type the following command at the C:\> prompt:
INSIGNIA\NET USE X: /D |
where X: is the letter of the PC drive you want to remove.
Type the following command at the C:\> prompt:
INSIGNIA\NET USE |
This will list the PC drive letter of each VFSA drive, and the pathname of the directory to which it has been attached. If the command is given with a drive letter, it will show the current selection for that drive.
The not sharing message indicates that the drive does not support MS-DOS file sharing and locking because the underlying UNIX file system does not support it.
PC filenames are not case sensitive, so upper and lower case letters are treated as equivalent. You can choose how files are saved to VFSA drives.
Select the required option from the Host File Names Are: pop-up menu.
The options are shown in the following table:
Table 4-3. 3.11 and MS-DOS VFSA Drive Options
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Lowercase | Default setting. All new files are saved on VFSA drives in lowercase. |
Uppercase | All new files are saved on VFSA drives in uppercase. |
Case | All new files are saved on VFSA |
Insensitive | drives in lowercase, and files on PC SCSI disks attached to the workstation can be assessed. |
You can set up SoftWindows to use the internal or external 3.5-inch floppy disk drives on your workstation as the PC drives A: and/or B: to work with PC format 3.5-inch floppy disks.
Choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.
The dialog box shows the devices assigned to the floppy disk drives A: and B:.
Type the floppy disk drive device name into the appropriate text box labeled Floppy Drive A: Device File Name or Floppy Drive B: Device File Name.
The table opposite shows the floppy disk drive device names to use.
Choose OK to reset SoftWindows with the drive configuration you have specified.
| Note: Assign each physical drive to only one SoftWindows drive letter (for example, A:). Assigning the same physical drive to multiple drive letters can cause access problems. |
Full SoftWindows 95 installations include a 32-bit CD-ROM driver for use with Windows 95. For this reason you only need to use the Microsoft CD–ROM Extensions (MSCDEX) in MS-DOS and Windows 3.11. For upgrade installations you should continue to use MSCDEX.
Choose Open Drive… from the Disk Drives cascade menu on the Options menu.
The Open Disk Drives dialog box shows the device assigned to the CD–ROM drive.
Type the CD–ROM drive device name into the CD–ROM Device File Name text box.
The most common device name is /dev/rdsk/dks0d4vol.
Ensure that the CD-ROM is not mounted in UNIX.
Note that all users should have read access to the CD–ROM device. If necessary type:
chmod +r device
To use the CD–ROM with SoftWindows refer to the SoftWindows 95 for UNIX User's Guide.
Before you can use the CD-ROM drive in Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS, ensure that CDROM.SYS has been loaded from the CONFIG.SYS file (the command is commented out by default). The USECD command executes the following command to assign the CD-ROM to drive F:.
CDEX (MS-DOS utility)MSCDEX /D:CDROM$$$ /L:F |
You can include this line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file if you want to be able to use CD-ROMs in Windows 3.11 and MS-DOS each time you run SoftWindows.
The MSCDEX command can accept the following parameters:
Table 4-4. MSCDEX Command Parameters
Parameter | Function |
|---|---|
/D: device | Specifies the device driver to be used. For SoftWindows this is CDROM$$$. |
/M: buffers | Sets the number of buffers. This should be at least 5, but a larger value (such as 20) will improve performance. |
/E: | Uses expanded memory if it is installed and available. |
/V: | Displays additional information about memory usage during initialization. |
/L: drive | Assigns the drive to the specified drive letter rather than the next available. |
SoftWindows 95 provides accelerated Windows display adapters optimized for Windows 95 and Windows 3.11 that take advantage of the host's X11 display server capabilities wherever possible. Under Windows 95, SoftWindows' display adapter also fully supports Microsoft's DirectX technology.
When Microsoft Windows is not running (that is, when the Windows desktop is not displayed, such as during Windows boot-up or while MS-DOS applications are running), SoftWindows provides emulation of a standard Super VGA display adapter.
Click the Windows 95 Start button, then choose Control Panel from the Settings menu.
Double-click the Display icon in the Control Panel to open the Display dialog box.
Choose the Settings tab to show the current display settings.
Select 16 or 256 in the Color palette field.
Choose OK to reset SoftWindows with the display settings you have chosen.
Selecting 16 leaves more colors free for use by your other applications.
| Note: With 256 colors selected you may experience color flashing when moving between SoftWindows and UNIX due to palette limitations. |
Choose Display... from the Options menu
A dialog box shows the display settings currently selected.
The Colors block displays the number of colors currently displayed, and is for information only.
Select Never if you do not want to be prompted to resize the Windows desktop.
Select Next to be prompted once, the next time you run Windows; the option will automatically change to Never once you have resized the desktop.
Select Always if you want to be prompted to resize the Windows desktop each time you run Windows.
Choose OK to reset SoftWindows with the display settings you have chosen.
The Resize Policy: pop-up menu allows you to disable resizing, or make resizing prompt you to restart SoftWindows.
The options are explained in the following table:
Option | Description |
|---|---|
Smart | The default setting. The Windows desktop is automatically resized if you resize the SoftWindows window, provided Smartcopy is running. |
None | Disables the ability to resize the SoftWindows window. |
Restart | Prompts you to restart SoftWindows if you resize the SoftWindows window. This option |
SoftWindows if you resize the SoftWindows window. This option is for use with Windows 3.11.
SoftWindows 95 emulates a VESA 2.0 standard Super Video Graphics Array (SVGA) display, which provides a resolution of 640 x 480 or 640 x 400 with 256 colors, or 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 with 16 colors. By default, SoftWindows 95 uses 1024 KB of memory for the display. To change the display memory allocation:
Choose Memory from the Options menu to open the Memory panel.
Click the button next to 512, 1024 (the default), 2048, or 4096.
After clicking OK, you will need to restart SoftWindows, and a dialog box is displayed to allow you to proceed or cancel the function.
SoftWindows uses the host workstation's audio capabilities to emulate WAVE audio devices under Windows 95 and Windows 3.11. This enables you to make full use of Microsoft's WAVE audio APIs and DirectSound technology when running Windows applications. For example, you can record and play .WAV files, and use Windows 95 sound schemes. You can also record and play MIDI files.
SoftWindows does not emulate audio devices for MS-DOS based applications, even when they are run from an MS-DOS prompt within Windows.
By default, SoftWindows uses the audio ports selected inthe Audio Control Panel on the host workstation. You can override the default ports by setting environment variables.
Set the appropriate environment variable to the value TRUE to enable an audio port.
Set the appropriate environment variable to the value FALSE or unset it to disable an audio port.
To disable an audio port, you need to use the Audio Control Panel on the host workstation.
By default, SoftWindows uses the audio ports selected in the Audio Control Panel on the host workstation. You can override the default ports by setting environment variables.
Set the appropriate environment variable to the value TRUE to enable an audio port.
Set the appropriate environmental variable to the value FALSE or unset it to disable an audio port.
You may need to ensure that only one input and output port is enabled at any time. See your workstation documentation for information on using audio ports simultaneously.
When you install SoftWindows the installation procedure automatically sets up SoftWindows, Windows, and MS–DOS for the keyboard type you specify. You will only need to change the configuration if you are changing the type of keyboard you are using or want to use the same copy of SoftWindows on workstations with different keyboards.
Some applications, such as Windows, look at the PC hardware directly rather than at the MS–DOS settings and will ignore the keyboard assignment.
Add the appropriate KEYB command, as shown in the table below, to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
For French and German keyboard types it is recommended that you also set up SoftWindows to use codepage 850 so that all the characters on these keyboards are displayed correctly. Refer to the Microsoft MS–DOS User's Guide and Reference (not supplied) for details.
Choose Keyboard… from the Options menu. A dialog box appears.
Select the appropriate keyboard mapping file, as shown in the table below.
The UNIX keyboard mapping files are provided in $SWINHOME/keyboard.
Click Start, then click Settings and Control Panel.
Double-click the Keyboard icon in the Control Panel folder. The Keyboard Properties dialog box is displayed.
Click the Language tab to display the Language panel.
Click Add…, select the combination of language and host keyboard type that you want to use from the drop-down list box, and click OK.
Click Set as Default to choose it as the default language.
Click OK.
Table 4-6. International Keyboard Mappings
Keyboard type file
KEYB command
Keyboard mapping
SGI FR
KEYB FR,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SG.kbd
SGI GR
KEYB GR,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SG.kbd
SGI UK
KEYB UK,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SG.kbd
SGI US
–
SG.kbd
KEYB FR,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SGINDYfr.kbd
KEYB GR,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SGINDYgr.kbd
SGI UK INDY
KEYB UK,850,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
SGINDYuk.kbd
SGI US INDY
–
SGINDYus.kbd
The AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files determine the configuration of MS-DOS in SoftWindows.
The following listing shows the Windows 95 AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
@echo off rem rem AUTOEXEC.BAT rem Copyright 1997 Insignia Solutions PLC. All rights reserved. rem path C:\INSIGNIA;%path%;C:\ set TEMP=C:\WINDOWS\TEMP c:\insignia\VFSAdrive rem ******************************************************************** rem ** Uncomment the following line to enable MS-DOS mouse support. ** rem c:\insignia\mouse.comVFSAdrive rem ****************************************************************** rem *********************************************************************** rem ** Uncomment the following line to enable DOS application licencing. ** rem C:\INSIGNIA\DOSLIC.EXE rem ******************************************************************* mode com1:9600,n,8,1 prompt $p$g ver nlsfunc mode con cp prep=((437 850) c:\windows\command\ega.cpi) KEYB US,437,C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\KEYBOARD.SYS chcp 437 |
The following listing shows the Windows 3.1 AUTOEXEC.BAT file :
@echo off rem rem AUTOEXEC.BAT rem Copyright 1996 Insignia Solutions PLC. All rights reserved. rem path C:\windows;c:\insignia;c:\dos path %path%;c:\novell path %path%;c:\nwclient;c:\ path %path%;c:\windows\iexplore\mail set TEMP=C:\DOS c:\insignia\VFSAdrive c:\insignia\mouse.com mode com1:9600,n,8,1 prompt $p$g ver |
The following listing shows the CONFIG.SYS file for Windows 95:
rem rem CONFIG.SYS rem Copyright 1997 Insignia Solutions PLC. All rights reserved. rem FILES=30 BUFFERS=30 device=c:\insignia\host.sys rem ********************************************************************* rem ** Uncomment the following line to enable MS-DOS CD_ROM support. ** rem device=c:\insignia\cdrom.sys rem ********************************************************************* lastdrive=z STACKS=9,256 country=001,,c:\windows\command\country.sys device=c:\windows\command\display.sys con=(ega,437,2) |
The following listing shows the CONFIG.SYS file for Windows 3.1:
CONFIG.SYS rem rem CONFIG.SYS rem Copyright 1996 Insignia Solutions PLC. All rights reserved. rem FILES=30 BUFFERS=30 device=c:\dos\himem.sys /TESTMEM:OFF device=c:\insignia\host.sys device=c:\insignia\cdrom.sys device=c:\dos\setver.exe lastdrive=z STACKS=9,256 |