3 Configuration files in MSDOS 2.0
6 In many cases, there are installation-specific configurations
7 of the DOS that are need to be set up at boot time. It is
8 considered ugly for a user/OEM to have to re-build the DOS to
9 include special drivers or to include a particular number of
10 device drivers. The configuration file allows a user/OEM to
11 configure his system without extra work.
13 The configuration file is simply an ASCII file that has
14 certain commands for the boot task. The boot process is as
17 Disk boot sector is read. This contains enough code to
18 read the DOS and the initial BIOS.
20 This DOS and initial BIOS are read.
22 A long jump to the BIOSINIT routine is made. A variety of
23 BIOS initializations are done.
25 A long jump to the SYSINIT routine in the SYSINIT module
26 is made. This module (supplied by MICROSOFT) will
27 initialize the DOS and read the configuration file
28 CONFIG.SYS, if it exists, to perform device instalation
29 and various other user settable things. Its final task is
30 to EXEC the command interpreter, which finishes the
33 The following are a list of commands for the configuration
37 This is the number of additional sector buffers to add
38 to the system list. The effect of several BUFFERS
39 commands is to allocate a series of buffers.
42 This is the number of open files that the XENIX system
46 This installs the device driver in <filename> into the
50 If ON is specified (the default is OFF), a check for
51 ^C at the console input will be made every time the
52 system is called. ON improves the ability to abort
53 programs over previous versions of the DOS.
56 Causes the DOS to return <char> as the current switch
57 designator character when the DOS call to return the
58 switch character is made. Default is '/'.
60 AVAILDEV = <TRUE or FALSE>
61 The default is TRUE which means both /dev/<dev> and
62 <dev> will reference the device <dev>. If FALSE is
63 selected, only /dev/<dev> refers to device <dev>,
64 <dev> by itself means a file in the current directory
65 with the same name as one of the devices.
68 This begins execution of the shell (top-level command
69 processor) from <filename>.
71 A typical configuration file might look like this:
75 DEVICE = /bin/network.sys
78 SHELL = a:/bin/command.com a:/bin -p
80 The default value for BUFFERS is OEM specific in that the
81 OEM can specify the number in the BIOS. A typical value is 2,
82 the minimal value is one. The default value for FILES is
83 usually 8 (as above it may be set by OEM BIOS) , so "FILES =
84 10" actually allocates only 2 new file channels. If a number
85 less than or equal to five is specified, the command is
86 ignored. BREAK defaults to OFF, SWITCHAR to /, and AVAILDEV
87 to TRUE. NOTE that the setting of SWITCHAR may effect
88 characters used on the SHELL line (this is true of
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