DOS ain't dead - C2EAUTO Release 1

Berlin, Germany,
24.06.2021, 21:55

C2EAUTO Release 1 (Announce)

As I wrote in NOKEYB Release 1 I had the idea to expand NOKEYB into something that skips processing C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT on the Vobis Highscreen Handy Organizer palmtop PC completely. -- It's done!

C2EAUTO works by intercepting DOS functions 'create or truncate file' and 'open existing file'. It redirects any access to file C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT (but not c:\autoexec.bat or mixed-case variants) to a file of the same name on drive E:.

You can find C2EAUTO at: https://www.bttr-software.de/products/c2eauto/

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rosegondon

C:\DOS,
27.06.2021, 14:38

@ rr

C2EAUTO Release 1

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> As I wrote in NOKEYB Release 1 I had the idea to expand
> NOKEYB into something that skips processing C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT on the Vobis
> Highscreen Handy Organizer palmtop PC completely. -- It's done!
>
> C2EAUTO works by intercepting DOS functions 'create or truncate file' and
> 'open existing file'. It redirects any access to file C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT (but
> not c:\autoexec.bat or mixed-case variants) to a file of the same name on
> drive E:.
>
> You can find C2EAUTO at: https://www.bttr-software.de/products/c2eauto/

It would be great to have version in which instead of only redirecting drive letter, one could define the whole different file name (with path) in source code.
So, for example, "C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT" could be switched to "C:\SOMEFILE.ZZZ"
Note that custom extensions could be used, enabling interesting config switching tricks with "passive" (I.E. non-executable because of changed extension) batch files.
I also noted that under 4DOS case-sensitive name comparison requires changing the source code, because by default 4DOS interprets file names as lowercase.

Of course all of the above is said with assumption that C2EAUTO is used on "desktop" DOS instances, instead of targeted palmtop.

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echo g=ffff:0|debug>nul

Berlin, Germany,
27.06.2021, 17:52

@ rosegondon

C2EAUTO Release 1

Post reply

> It would be great to have version in which instead of only redirecting
> drive letter, one could define the whole different file name (with path) in
> source code.
> So, for example, "C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT" could be switched to "C:\SOMEFILE.ZZZ"
> Note that custom extensions could be used, enabling interesting config
> switching tricks with "passive" (I.E. non-executable because of changed
> extension) batch files.

Not sure about the custom extensions, but I think all the other things are already possible with MS-DOS >=6 or FreeDOS.

> I also noted that under 4DOS case-sensitive name comparison requires
> changing the source code, because by default 4DOS interprets file names as
> lowercase.

That's why the docs say: C2EAUTO redirects any access to file C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT (but not c:\autoexec.bat or mixed-case variants) to a file of the same name on drive E:.

> Of course all of the above is said with assumption that C2EAUTO is used on
> "desktop" DOS instances, instead of targeted palmtop.

Of course. But I don't have a use case for that currently. Feel free to submit a patch or use C2EAUTO source code for your own version.

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