Removal & reinstallation – Measurement Computing Personal488 rev.3.0 For DOS & Windows 3.Xi User Manual

Page 200

II. SOFTWARE GUIDES - 9. Driver488/SUB

9J. Utility Programs

Personal488 User’s Manual, Rev. 3.0

II-185

The

sets the primary IEEE 488 bus address of IEEE 488 interface card. Every IEEE 488 bus

device, including the controller must have a unique IEEE 488 address in the range of

(decimal)

. The default address for the interface card is

, but must be changed if any IEEE

Peripheral uses the same address. For example, the command:

IEEECOM IEEE21 /B00

sets the interface card bus address to

so that

COM1:

may be redirected to an IEEE 488 bus device

with an address of

Removal & Reinstallation

Driver488 is a special type of terminate-and-stay-resident (TSR) program that controls Power488,
Personal488, and LAN488. When

DRVR488.COM

is executed, it installs itself permanently into

memory and connects itself into DOS so that it appears to be a standard device driver that can be used
to control IEEE 488 devices. Normally, Driver488 is present in memory whenever the computer is
operating, even if it is not being used. Most computers have enough memory so that the amount taken
by Driver488 is not critical, but some very large programs need so much memory that they cannot
operate if Driver488 is installed.

It is possible to temporarily remove Driver488 by editing the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file. Once Driver488 is

installed, the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file will contain one or more lines similar to the following:

C:\IEEE488\DRVR488

These are the commands that install Driver488. They can be disabled by adding the word

REM

followed by a space, to convert them to remarks:

REM C:\IEEE488\DRVR488

When the computer is rebooted, these lines will be ignored, Driver488 will not be loaded, and the
memory that would have been used for Driver488 will now be available for other programs. If
Driver488 is needed later, the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file must be re-edited to remove the

REM

s and to re-

enable Driver488, and then the computer must be rebooted.

A more practical method involves the creation of a separate batch file that holds the

DRVR488

commands. When Driver488 is installed, the

DRVR488

commands are placed in the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file. By moving these commands to a separate batch file, it is possible to avoid installing Driver488
before it is needed. To create a separate batch file, first copy

AUTOEXEC.BAT

to a new file, perhaps

DRIVER.BAT

. Then edit the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file, deleting the

DRVR488

commands, and edit

DRIVER.BAT

, leaving only the

DRVR488

commands. When the system is rebooted, Driver488 will no

longer be installed because the

AUTOEXEC.BAT

file no longer contains the DRVR488 commands.

However, whenever Driver488 is needed, it can be installed by typing

DRIVER

which will execute the

DRVR488

commands in the

DRIVER.BAT

file. Once Driver488 has been installed, it will remain

installed until the system is rebooted.

MARKDRVR & REMDRVR

Using the techniques described above, it is possible to install Driver488 only when it is needed.
However, it is still necessary to reboot the computer to remove Driver488. The

MARKDRVR

and

REMDRVR

utilities allow Driver488 and other TSR programs, such as

Sidekick

and

Superkey

, to be

installed and removed at will, without rebooting.

Before installing the TSR program, the

MARKDRVR

command should be used to “snapshot” the system

state:

C:> MARKDRVR comment
C:> C:\IEEE488\DRVR488

The

MARKDRVR

command is followed by an optional

comment

of up to 119 character that is normally

used to note which TSR programs are about to be installed. When the above command is executed it
saves internal system information including the interrupt vectors, the device driver chain, and the free
memory pointer. This information, along with the specified comment, is saved for use by

REMDRVR