PSB No: S-0167
Page: 4 of 7
to be displayed in a terminal window (or at the command line). Type h and the
system will start the shutdown procedure, safely unmounting the active file
systems. Wait until you see the message:
It's safe to turn off the computer.
and then power the system down. Typing r to restart is the equivalent of Ctrl-
Alt-Del in DOS - Mach ignores the Ctrl-Alt-Del keystroke sequence.
Q.
Okay, what happens if the system is NOT shut down correctly - say
there's a power outage?
A.
When power is restored, the system will come up in a "dirty" condition - file
links and pointers will be disorganized and the file system will be in an
unknown state. At a certain point in the boot process, Mach displays the
message "checking disks...". At this point, it will run the program
fsck
(for
f
ile
s
ystem
c
hec
k
). This is similar to the DOS CHKDSK command, but much more
thorough. Depending on the size of the drive and the condition of the file
system,
fsck
can take up to 15 to 20 minutes to complete. When it has
repaired the file system, it will automatically restart the system.
Q.
I see there's an icon for a
MS-DOS_6
disk - can I run my DOS and
Windows programs from NeXTSTEP?
A.
With release 3.1, no. NeXT will be releasing an optional third-party package
called SoftPC
®
, which is a DOS simulator. This will allow you to run DOS and
Windows applications from the NeXTSTEP Workspace, including drag-and-
drop capability between all applications. SoftPC should be available later this
year.
Q.
Then why is the DOS partition accessible at all?
A.
Certain files can be accessed from both OS environments. The most common
type of file is a straight ASCII text file. (Note, however, that DOS and Mach
use different end-of-line, or EOL, characters - DOS uses CR/LF where Mach
uses LF alone.) Other examples would be applications that exist for both
environments and share a common file format - WordPerfect is such an
application. From NeXTSTEP, you can either access eligible DOS files from
the DOS partition or copy them into a folder (directory) in the Mach partition.
You can also copy eligible NeXTSTEP files to the DOS partition for later
manipulation from DOS. You cannot, however, access the Mach partition from
DOS, due to the differences in the file systems.
