Installation and Processor Specifics

SUNDB86x Only

To insure successful operation of the SUNDB86x products, the following items should be considered:

1. DOS 3.1 or later is required.

2. In order for SHUTDOWN and ROLLOUT to work best, ANSI screen device drivers should be available to the operating system. Although some systems incorporate the ANSI device drivers as an integral part of their operating system, most IBM PCS and compatibles require that they be loaded through the 'CONFIG.SYS' system file. Refer to the DOS User's Guide for your system to determine if the ANSI drivers need to be loaded on your system and how it is accomplished. If ANSI drivers are not available, then the SHUTDOWN and ROLLOUT command line passed to DOS is limited to 15 characters.

3. DOS allows a maximum of 20 File Handles to be open concurrently per process (of which it allocates 5 for its own use). The FILES= command in CONFIG.SYS only expands the maximum number for the system, not per process. SUNDBSYS for SUNDB86A and SUNDB86M allows up to 248 file handle entries. However, the actual File Handle limit is defined as the lesser of a:) the FILES= value or b:) any limit imposed by the network in use, less the 5 that are allocated by MS-DOS. Therefore, it is important to both include the FILES= command (recommended at 50) in your CONFIG.SYS and to use caution when designing the application so that the maximum number File Handles permitted to be concurrently open is not exceeded. (Important note: Each AFILE and IFILE requires two (2) File Handles, one for the text file and one for the key file.)

4. Multi-access/multi-user file sharing is accomplished through the DOS SHARE command. This is the only technique that insures both transportability across platforms and compatibility with most NetBIOS compliant systems. Therefore, the SHARE command must be run on each terminal/workstation if any file is updated through multiple key files or by more than one user simultaneously. When SUNDBSYx is loaded, it displays a warning message if the SHARE command has not been previously loaded.

See Also: Compiler and Runtime Options