Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-02 Thread tom ehlert
Liam, > On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 at 20:02, Bret Johnson wrote: >> >> Actually, no it's not. It's fairly easy with System Commander. And AFAIK, >> System Commander is the only multi-boot manager that works this way >> (manipulating the boot files instead of manipulating disks or partitions). >>

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-02 Thread Liam Proven
On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 at 20:02, Bret Johnson wrote: > > Actually, no it's not. It's fairly easy with System Commander. And AFAIK, > System Commander is the only multi-boot manager that works this way > (manipulating the boot files instead of manipulating disks or partitions). > Both approaches

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Bret Johnson
I normally don't use DOS < 3.3 myself, either. But I do have programs that claim to work with DOS 3.0 or 3.1 so I want to make sure they actually work where they claim to. I guess hardly anybody really uses DOS < 3.3 any more, except maybe the few people who still have working PC/XT/Jr

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Jerome Shidel
> On Mar 1, 2022, at 3:29 PM, tom ehlert wrote: > [..] > I'm still surprised the > > ECHO Off | VGoToXY Up | VEcho /N /E > > line doesn't work, but as I don't care about MSDOS 3.x anyway I will > be able to live with that > > Tom +1 I don’t spend much time using MS-DOS 1 & 2 or any

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread tom ehlert
> if I wrote > anything I think it would be something that actually tries to > manipulate the ECHO state (if that's even possible without a WHOLE lot of > work). 1'st) you still get the output of your ECHOSTATE OFF program on screen, which started the whole discussion. 2'nd) there is no

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Bret Johnson
> There is one other thing to try via v8power tools. Instead of using > vgotoxy up | vecho /n /e, there is another combination to do it as > well. > > echo off | vgotoxy up | vdelete > > Anyhow, vdelete is a far simpler program than vecho. You may even > have better compatibility results. I'll

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread tom ehlert
>> Multi-booting all those OSes off a single partition is very *VERY* >> much a hard way of doing this. > Actually, no it's not. It's fairly easy with System Commander. +1 while I didn't use System Commander, *ALL* of us were booting multiple systems from the same disk (and possibly also

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Bret Johnson
> Multi-booting all those OSes off a single partition is very *VERY* > much a hard way of doing this. Actually, no it's not. It's fairly easy with System Commander. And AFAIK, System Commander is the only multi-boot manager that works this way (manipulating the boot files instead of

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Jerome Shidel
Hi, > If I run either TEST1.BAT or TEST2.BAT with MS-DOS 3.0, 3.1, or 3.2, it > crashes. That is definitely possible. Since the earliest version of DOS I really only every used was MS 3.3, I never have worried about pre-3.3 compatibility. > If I run them with MS-DOS 3.3 or 4.01 the session

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread Liam Proven
On Sat, 26 Feb 2022 at 02:57, Bret Johnson wrote: > > I have a large set of DOS environments I use for testing. Basically, I have > a bunch of different versions of DOS that I can boot to (MS-DOS, PC-DOS, > FreeDOS, DR-DOS, from versions 3.0 to the latest of each). DOS versions 1 & > 2 were

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-03-01 Thread tom ehlert
Bret, > 3. Just let the problem happen and "fix" the screen afterwords Jerome's approach is probably the only sensible solution, like >> echo off | vgotoxy up | vecho /n /e > This to me seems like a solution that could actually do what I'm > wanting to accomplish. I may experiment with that

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-28 Thread Jerome Shidel
Hi Bret, > On Feb 28, 2022, at 6:42 PM, Bret Johnson wrote: > > This to me seems like a solution that could actually do what I'm wanting to > accomplish. I may experiment with that and see what happens. As you note, > there may be compatibility issues with some DOS versions (V8 power tools

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-28 Thread Bret Johnson
Thanks everybody for the input! Lots of interesting suggestions/ideas. I think the proposed solutions generally fall into four categories: 1. Always use ECHO OFF without the @ and don't worry about it 2. Try to fix the problem before it happens 3. Just let the problem happen and "fix" the

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-27 Thread tom ehlert
>> in addition, neither I nor you know if 'CTTY NUL' works on MSDOS 3.0 > The original requirement was MSDOS <3.30. > I tested with MSDOS 3.21 and it worked. > Test with MSDOS 3.0 was okay too. correcting myself, CTTY NUL probably always worked, from MSDOS 1.0, as MSDOS was supposed (I never

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-27 Thread Robert Riebisch
Hi tom, >> Once you have debugged ALL your batch files you can place `CTTY >> NUL' before the command(s) and `CTTY CON' after to avoid output to screen. > > > excellent idea. > > now you have exchanged the annoying > > echo off > > for the much better > > CTTY NUL Indeed. > in

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-27 Thread tom ehlert
Hallo Herr Bob Pryor, am Sonntag, 27. Februar 2022 um 06:44 schrieben Sie: > Once you have debugged ALL your batch files you can place `CTTY > NUL' before the command(s) and `CTTY CON' after to avoid output to screen. excellent idea. now you have exchanged the annoying echo off for the

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Bob Pryor
Once you have debugged ALL your batch files you can place `CTTY NUL' before the command(s) and `CTTY CON' after to avoid output to screen. See below to find how to chain/call another batch file. Place the 'CTTY CON' first so you don't forget! You need to be sure there are no interactive

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Robert Riebisch
Hi Travis, > I don't know if paragon still offers PTS dos for sale or not, but since > it is one of the few commercial dos clones that comes with source, it > may be worth asking them if you're interested. I've had my version for > many years, and I'm always paranoid of loosing my source

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread userbeitrag
On 26 Feb 2022, 02:54, Bret Johnson wrote: I've tried creating an ECHO environment variable. With older versions of DOS: SET ECHO=ECHO OFF and with newer versions of DOS: SET ECHO=@ECHO OFF then at the beginning of all batch files I put a: %ECHO% That works with older versions of

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Travis Siegel
It seems trying to redirect the echo off command (at least under windows in a cmd prompt) does indeed create the echoed test on the screen because of the STDERR being directed to the screen as stated above.  Regular echo commands however do redirect just fine I'm fairly certain though that

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Joao Silva
Hello Have you tested with a command with @ ex:. @dir ? On Sat, Feb 26, 2022 at 1:57 AM Bret Johnson wrote: > This question is more about DOS in general than specifically about > FreeDOS. But, there are enough experienced and creative users around > FreeDOS that someone may be able to help

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Jerome Shidel
Oh, one more thing... It could also possibly be a one-liner, like so: echo off | vgotoxy up | vecho /n /e But, it will display all of that before erasure. Also, I have no idea if there would be compatibility issues under some DOS platforms or their different versions. But, it works fine in

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Travis Siegel
On 2/26/2022 9:14 AM, Mateusz Viste wrote: On 26/02/2022 15:09, Travis Siegel wrote: Barring those solutions, you could always redirect the @echo off line to null, which would prevent it from displaying on the screen. It would not, since the error message is output to stderr. That's not

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Jerome Shidel
Well, I guess I’ll put in two cents worth of a non-standard solution… If you don’t want to have the “echo off” on the screen and don’t want to clear the screen either, you can do it using two utilities in V8Power tools (available and provided with FreeDOS). It would look something this… ——

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Mateusz Viste
On 26/02/2022 15:09, Travis Siegel wrote: Barring those solutions, you could always redirect the @echo off line to null, which would prevent it from displaying on the screen. It would not, since the error message is output to stderr. Mateusz ___

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Travis Siegel
Why not use the @echo off syntax, then simply use the cls command to clear the screen before moving on to the later pieces of the autoexec.  It then won't show the @echo off command onthe screen. The caveat of course is that all driver messages also get erased, but that may or may not be an

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread Jim Hall
Hi Bret The simplest solution is to use ECHO OFF without the @ at the start of your BAT file. That will work everywhere. If you don't like seeing this line on the screen at boot, you could run CLS after that. I suppose another way to solve this is with a simple tool that detects the DOS version.

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-26 Thread tom ehlert
Hallo Herr Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user, am Samstag, 26. Februar 2022 um 03:47 schrieben Sie: > Would it be feasible to throw together an "@ECHO.COM" application > which would manually execute a normal "ECHO OFF" line if the DOS > version is below 3.3 and simply terminate otherwise? The

Re: [Freedos-user] ECHO vs @ECHO

2022-02-25 Thread Mercury Thirteen via Freedos-user
Would it be feasible to throw together an "@ECHO.COM" application which would manually execute a normal "ECHO OFF" line if the DOS version is below 3.3 and simply terminate otherwise? The only caveat to this is that I''m not 100% certain that a command executed from within a .COM file from