S y s t e m

O p t i o n

E d i t o r




________________________________________________________________



System Option Editor Version 2.0

by: William E. Allen



Copyright, 1988,89 by The EZ-SoftWare Company

P.O. Box 834, Howell, Michigan 48843



System Option Editor Version 2.0
by William E. Allen [70150,547]
Copyright 1988,89 by EZ-SoftWare, P.O. Box 834, Howell, MI 48843




"FAIRWARE"

System Option Editor version 2.0, is what I call "FairWare". If
you find this program, valuable, and useful, please consider
supporting it by sending whatever you feel it is worth to you
(but not more than $20.00) to William E. Allen P.O. Box 834
Howell, Michigan 48843.


DISTRIBUTION

The programs are copyrighted, but you are hereby granted permis-
sion to make and distribute copies for personal, non-commercial
use. Use them yourself, give copies to friends and co-workers, or
distribute them for a cost-based fee (of $10.00 or less) as part
of a user's group or bulletin board service. If you wish to
distribute these programs in connection with any other product,
or for use in commercial applications, please contact us for a
license agreement. All of the files that make up this product
must be distribute together, in an UNMODIFIED form.

The files you should have on the diskette, or in the archive are:

SYSOPTED.EXE Executable program

SYSOPTED.DAT Help message file.

SYSOPTED.DOC This documentation.

SYSOPTED.REG A registration form; COPY SYSOPTED.REG PRN



INTRODUCTION

SysOptEd works by customizing your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, and/or your
CONFIG.SYS file to let you decide which startup programs to run,
and which device drivers to load when you boot your computer. You
are given 26 options, A through Z, to choose from and you can use
any of the options in any way you wish. Of course you don't need
to use them all.

To use SysOptEd, you create two new files based on your
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files. These new files, AUTOEXEC.OPT
and CONFIG.OPT, contain all of the statements you would ever want
to include. Any lines that you want based on options set with
SysOptEd are prefaced with option letter(s). You can choose to
have these optional lines included if the associated option is
on, or if it is off. You can combine your options, using boolean
logic.




A SIMPLE EXAMPLE

Let's say you normally use SideKick, but sometimes you want to
use Ventura Publishing. VP tells you not to run SK, so you want
to reboot your machine without it.

Here is what you might do:

Rename AUTOEXEC.BAT to AUTOEXEC.OPT and modify it as follows.
Lets say that your AUTOEXEC.BAT file has the following lines:

PATH C:\;C:\DOS
PROMPT $P$G
CD \SK
SK
CD \
CLS

Change it to look like this:

PATH C:\;C:\DOS
PROMPT $P$G
S CD \SK
S SK
CD \
CLS

Now that you've created your AUTOEXEC.OPT file, use SysOptEd to
generate the proper AUTOEXEC.BAT file. To load the program, type
"SYSOPTED", press Enter, and follow the instructions on the
screen. Press F1 to read the context sensitive help screens. They
contain all the information you'll need to know to successfully
operate SysOptEd. When you have made your option choices, press
either F3 or F4 and SysOptEd will update your AUTOEXEC.BAT and/or
CONFIG.SYS files. If you press F4, SysOPtEd will offer to reboot
your computer so your new choices will take effect.

If you choose the S option (presumably for Sidekick in our
example), all six lines would be included in your AUTOEXEC.BAT.
If you set the S option off, only the four lines not prefaced
with the S would be included.



AUTOEXEC.OPT AND CONFIG.OPT

Here are the simple rules you need to know to create your
AUTOEXEC.OPT and CONFIG.OPT files.

Begin each line with your option letter(s) starting in the first
position (i.e. column 1). Use upper case option letters if you
want the line included when the option is on, and use lower case
if you want the line included when the option is off. If you want
a line to always be included, leave at least one blank or tab in
front of it. (The leading white space will be removed when the
line is generated into your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS file.)

You can list as many option letters as you want. Separate them
with the vertical bar (|) if you want to logically OR the options
or separate them with an ampersand (&) if you want to logically
AND the options. Don't leave any space, or other characters,
between them. The line:

A|B echo A or B selected

will be included if either option A OR option B is on, and The
line:

A&B echo A and B selected

will be included only if both A AND B are on. Here is another
example:

A&b|C echo (A AND NOT B) OR C is selected

Please be careful when you experiment. If you press F3 or F4 when
you exit SysOptEd, it will write new AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS
files in the root directory of the drive where it found the *.OPT
files. Pressing F4 will ask if you want to reboot. You can press
ESC to exit SysOptEd without updating your files. Of course you
can safely experiment by temporarily using a drive other than
your boot drive.



A COMPLETE EXAMPLE

Here is a complete example of SysOptEd based on my own AUTOEXEC
and CONFIG files. I use the exact same copy of AUTOEXEC.OPT and
CONFIG.OPT on my IBM PS/2 Model 70 at work, where we use the IBM
Token Ring network, as I do on my old IBM/AT at home. These two
systems are vastly different, yet, using SysOptEd, I only have to
worry about keeping one set of system files up to date.

First, here is how I have my options set up in SysOptEd:

A: N: IBM Token Ring Network
B: Print Buffer O: 3270 API
C: Disk Cache P: Turbo Debug 386
D: DESQview Q:
E: Expanded Memory R: RAM Disk
F: 3.5" Floppy Driver S: Serial Printer
G: T: Tape Backup/Restore
H: U:
I: V:
J: W: Windows
K: Keyboard Mod X: 80386 CPU
L: Y:
M: Mouse Z:

Here is what my AUTOEXEC.OPT file looks like:

@echo off
cls
echo AUTOEXEC: 03/22/89
cd \System
SysOptEd /A
T ASPRUN.BAT
K KBMOD
S MODE31 LPT2=COM2
S Mode31 COM2:9600,N,8,1,P
C&X C:\PCKwik\SUPERPCK /s:1024 /t:16 /o+ /q+ /p-
C&x C:\PCKwik\SUPERPCK /em /t:8 /o+ /q+ /p-
C&B C:\PCKwik\PCKSPL /k- /x:3,3 /o:5 /v- /q- /p-
C cls
N cd \Net
N NET start rdr ALLEN /srv:3 /asg:16 /nbs:512
N Signon /N=ALLEN
N&O O:\3270\PSCAPI
N cd \System
N cls
M&X C:\DV\LoadHI C:\Mouse\MOUSE.COM
M&x C:\Mouse\MOUSE
M set Mse=REM
m set Mse=C:\Mouse\MOUSE
R set Tmp=G:
N set Pth=C:\;C:\DOS;C:\NET
n set Pth=C:\;C:\DOS
path %Pth%
prompt $p
D DESQview.BAT
W Windows.BAT
cd \
cls

And finally, here is what my CONFIG.OPT file looks like:

Files=32
c Buffers=16
C Buffers=4
N Lastdrive=Z
Stacks=0,0
Shell=C:\DOS\Command.com C:\DOS /p /e:256
P&X Device=C:\TD\TDH386.sys
D&x Device=C:\DV\QExt.sys
E&X&N Device=C:\DV\QEMM.sys ram frame=c000 exclude=da00-dfff
E&X&n Device=C:\DV\QEMM.sys ram frame=c000
E&x Device=C:\System\EMM.sys AT D000 258 MC
F Device=C:\System\FDC14.sys /d:1
R&C Device=C:\PCKwik\PCKRamD.sys /s:2560
R&c Device=C:\DOS\VDisk.sys 3008 512 64 /e:2
N Device=C:\NET\DxmA0Mod.sys
N Device=C:\NET\DxmC0Mod.sys
N Device=C:\NET\DxmT0Mod.sys

As you can see, I have a lot of flexibility. Of particular note,
take a look at my CONFIG.OPT file. You'll see that I'm using
QuarterDeck's QEMM.SYS on my 386 system (X) when I ask for
expanded memory (E), and I generate the line differently
depending on whether or not I'm loading the network (N). Also
notice that when I ask for a ram disk (R) I use Multisoft's fine
PC-Kwik device driver, but if I am not loading the PC-Kwik disk
cache (C) I use VDISK instead. And notice how I change the
buffers statement depending on the disk cacheing too.

In my AUTOEXEC.OPT file I set an environment variable, %Mse%,
depending on whether I load the mouse driver globally (M), or not
(m). If I load the driver globally, I set Mse=REM, and if it is
not loaded, I set Mse=C:\Mouse\Mouse. Now I can use a batch file
something like this:

%Mse%
cd \Whatever
Program that uses the mouse
%Mse% off

to run my programs that use the mouse. They work whether I load
the mouse drive globally or not.



LOCATION OF FILES

SysOptEd will look first in the current directory and then follow
your PATH to locate your AUTOEXEC.OPT and CONFIG.OPT files. The
AUTOEXEC.BAT and/or CONFIG.SYS files are always written to the
root directory of the drive where SysOptEd finds AUTOEXEC.OPT and
CONFIG.OPT. If no AUTOEXEC.OPT file is found, your AUTOEXEC.BAT
file will not be updated or created. Similarly, if no CONFIG.OPT
file is found, SysOptEd does not update or create a CONFIG.SYS
file. In other words, you can use SysOptEd for one or the other
if you wish. You don't have to use it for both your AUTOEXEC.BAT
and CONFIG.SYS if you don't want to.



COMMAND-LINE PARAMETERS

Here are some command-line parameters you can use instead of
SysOptEd's interactive mode. This is handy if you want to make a
batch file to set your system up in a certain way.

X+ (X can be any letter A..Z) followed by a plus sign to turn
an option on.

X- Turn option X off.


X* Toggles option X.

/S Saves current options, making them the defaults just like
"S" from the option menu.

/L Loads current default options.

/C Clear all options.

/A (for autoexec) command-line parameter will make the
program start up conditionally, depending on the state of
the CapsLock key. Make "SysOptEd /A" the first statement
in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and you can change system
options whenever you boot up by pressing the CapsLock key
quickly after you hear the post (Power-On-Self-Test)
"beep".

/R Reboot the system with the new options.


I use the command line when I run my tape backup software, ASP.
ASP doesn't seem to get along with any TSR programs loaded, so I
run it by starting a batch file called ASP.BAT. It looks
something like this:

SysOptEd /C T+ /R

SysOptEd, clears all of my options (/C), selects option T (T+),
and then reboots (/R). This generates an AUTOEXEC.BAT with a few
lines I always include, followed by a call to another batch file
called ASPRUN.BAT. ASPRUN.BAT looks something like this:

@echo off
cd \Tools
ASP
cd \System
SysOptEd /L /R

When my backups are finished, the batch file calls SysOptEd to
reload my default options (/L), and reboot the computer.



SOME OTHER INFORMATION

* SysOptEd stores your option descriptions and current choices
in a file called SYSOPT.DAT. It will first look in the current
directory, and then in the directories listed in your PATH for
the file. If it does not locate SYSOPT.DAT, it will create it
in the current directory. The date and time stamp on this file
will not change after it is created, even when you change
options, although the archive bit will be set to reflect that
the file has been updated.

* When SysOptEd creates your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files,
it sets their date and time stamp the same as the correspond-
ing .OPT file.

* SysOptEd recognizes certain environments, such as DESQview and
Software Carousel.

When running under DESQview, it will not allow you to reboot
the system when you press F4. Instead, it displays a message
and ends. It is also well-behaved in the DESQview environment,
writing to a DESQview shadow buffer instead of directly to the
screen.

SysOptEd, when running in a Software Carousel partition, will
pass the reboot request to Carousel, and Carousel will display
its usual "Are you sure?" message for confirmation.

* When SysOptEd generates a line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file that
contains the characters ".BAT", it will not generate any
more lines after that. It assumes that line calls another
batch file and will not return.


Please send comments to: Bill Allen, CompuServe ID [70150,547],
or to EZ-SoftWare at the address above.

Thank You.