Autocad 10 crashes

Hi,

These days I've had to (temporarily) travel some years back in time
and work with some dwg files created with Autocad 10, running on a DOS
windows on a Windows 95 machine.
Everything is OK except that every five minutes or so Autocad 10
crashes with an error like this:
General error reading drive E
A value (or default) for FCBS= or FILES= in CONFIG.SYS may be too low.
Abort, Retry?

And then it shuts down, but gives me the chance to save changes
before. Sometimes it complains about other drive letters such as "I",
and not only "E", like in this example.
Anyway, the hard drive of the "Windows 95" machine where it's running
has only one partition: "C" and it's not networked. Furthermore, my
CONFIG.SYS file contains the following:
BUFFERS=25
FILES=255
device=c:\windows\himem.sys
device=c:\windows\emm386.exe
dos=umb,high

Is there anything to tune on Windows 95 and/or old Autocad10 to make
it run error-free ?

Thank you,

Fernando Ronci
E-mail:

 

Leggo dal nick che sei italiano, ma per netiquette rispondero' nel mio
scalcinato inglese:

1st, you need to control Autocad to be started in REAL DOS mode, pressing F8
at bootup, just after BIOS screen. Choise on boot menu is: "prompt dei
comandi con supporto di rete", then navigate on disk to find and launch
acad.bat (better if it exist, it have sure other ambient settings inside) or
acad.exe file .
To be in exact directory in witch acad it's installed it's really better to
correct acad exe working. If you also start Autocad from win95 in genuine
real mode it's ok (you need to control link properties (the acad icon you
corrently use to launch it from 95) just right-cicking it & choicing "esegui
in modalità reale". This affect rebooting system with DOS kernel only. Not
attempt to execute Autocad in proteceted mode: this affect non-execution of
code or crash of app.

Ok. If you already execute in real mode acad and have troubles, you need to
modify realmode config.sys file. It's located on root (c:\).
You can edit in DOS mode, but i suggest to backup old file:

COPY C:\CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.BAK
EDIT C:\CONFIG.SYS

Pay attention, win95 swaps config filenames if its in protected/real mode
execution, you need to edit the real mode config (can be a different file!),
booting in realmode or switching to it from 95 interface.

After you checked the correct execution mode, let's control again your
config.sys. If it's the same uplisted, i suggest this changes:
File control blocks (FCBS) need to be set at right value, to permit to
Autocad to handle data files. I don't rmemeber what's the right number :try
this or increase it, if Acad dont works better. I hope you have at least 16
(better 32) Mb of RAM on this machine, and a generous free disk space (i
empirically calculate free disk space=4*size of file dwg at least) to swap,
if the file are big.
I suggest to "rem" (make inactive comment line) himem, emm386 and umb dos
loader. This can be the first cause of conflict of yous sw. Autocad 10 was
manage DIRECTLY upper blocks of memory (over 1 Mb or 640 Kb, i don't rmember
exactly) and don't need /want other extended/expanded memory managers.
After the job you can rename the backuped old config.bak to config.sys
(after deleting or renaming the new for ex. config.cad) and use normally
the DOS configuration startup file, having the OS loaded in upper blocks.


BUFFERS=40
FILES=255
FCBS=40
REM device=c:\windows\himem.sys
REM device=c:\windows\emm386.exe
REM dos=umb,high

De nada: ma dovevi fare un' operazione di riesumazione di vecchi DWG? Ti
sarà sembrato di tornare al Precambriano, col caro buon vecchio 10.
GdLk

Oss

 

Why? R10 files will open in any later version of AutoCAD.
___

 

Mh. Are you sure?
Sometimes i tried to convert old drawings (2d plans and 3dmesh models
perfectly readables in R11) with R14. Well, in some cases that drawings was
appear deadly corrupted and not audit sensitive.
Also i remember that some simple dwgs created in LT 98 (declared acad R 13
or 14 -i don't remember- fully compatible) was not open in Acad 2002. Same
trouble.
The problem (i think) it's in the different structure of header in the
file. It can be resolved only with dxf export, or (paradox) exporting the
file via other app (coreldraw, archicad, ecc).

Strange, a program wich have 250 Mb of installation space, don't keep a tiny
old file format filter? Laws of trade...

Oss

 

All I can say is that we've been using AutoCAD since R9 (and even have a
handful of v.2.6 files) and have never had a problem opening files from
older versions on any release up through 2000i.
___

 

Are there any shape files, hatch patterns, etc. in the drawing that
somehow reference to an old network hard drive? You could try the
Audit command as well.

Kelvin