Harry Potter wrote on 2022-01-29, 21:58:

I have an old DOS laptop at my mother's house with which I like to play, and I sometimes like to program on it. Now, I would like to run two or more programs at once on it so I can share data and refer to one thing while working on another project. What program do I use to do that? Where online can I get it?

My first ideas to meet this requirement are (in no particular order, any tool should do):

• taskmax/taskmgr provided by DR-DOS 5.0 - Novell DOS 7.0
• dosshell provided by MS-DOS 5.0 (and on the supplemental disk for MS-DOS 6.x)
• Windows 3.1 in standard mode for task switching or 386 enhanced mode for multitasking
• Quarterdeck DesqVIEW

I don't have access to taskmax or taskmgr.

DOSShell isn't good enough. I found it online, but it was said to require all programs to fit in Conventional memory.

I have Windows 3.1 but want to do it from DOS mode.

I found DesqVIEW, but it's too large. 🙁

Harry Potter wrote on 2022-01-30, 12:00:

I have Windows 3.1 but want to do it from DOS mode.

What does "DOS mode" mean to you then? Windows 3.x isn't an operating system, it's just an application running on top of DOS, as are all the other DOS task switchers that are available (unless you use some DOS variant with task switching built-in). It would be useful if you could explain why Windows 3.x is not a good solution for you since possibly other solutions we suggest might not be either.

I found DesqVIEW, but it's too large. 🙁

In what way - do you have constrained disk space or RAM?

Here are some other options which may or may not meet your requirements:

• PC-Tools from Central Point Software, which might also be too large for a full install if you have constrained disk space, but it might be possible to use only the task switcher CPTASK.COM and a few support files, I'm not sure.
• IBM TopView, which I don't know much about except that it is relatively old so should have very minimal requirements.
• Maybe you could find old shareware tools on http://cd.textfiles.com

DOSShell isn't good enough. I found it online, but it was said to require all programs to fit in Conventional memory.

I don't think this is true. I did a search for "DOSSWAP" on the TechNet September 1997 CD since I remembered that filename and found this:

Task Swapper in MS-DOS Shell wrote:

... Task Swapper (DOSSWAP.EXE) swaps files to a temporary directory when they are put on the Active Task List. When a particular […]
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...
Task Swapper (DOSSWAP.EXE) swaps files to a temporary directory when they
are put on the Active Task List. When a particular task is selected, it is
swapped from the temporary directory into memory. For this reason, you
should not delete any files from the temporary directory until Task Swapper
is disabled and you have exited Shell.

When Task Swapper is activated, it automatically occupies approximately
35.4K of conventional memory, even if no tasks are added to the Active Task
List.

Up to 13 tasks can be added to the Active Task List at one time. If tasks
are simply added to the list, Task Swapper will still use only
approximately 35.4K of conventional memory. If the tasks are enabled first,
there may be an additional small amount of memory (1 or 2K) added to that
35.4K.
...

Keep in mind that swapping to disk was a common thing for DOS task switchers (as opposed to multitaskers) to do.

I also found this in TechNet, so apparently it supports EMS:

PD0445: Replacement DOSSWAP.EXE for MS-DOS 5.0 wrote:

the original DOSSWAP.EXE does not swap expanded memory properly. This causes problems when switching among two or more applicati […]
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the original
DOSSWAP.EXE does not swap expanded memory properly. This causes
problems when switching among two or more applications that use
expanded memory.

Harry Potter wrote on 2022-01-30, 12:00:

I don't have access to taskmax or taskmgr. […]
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I don't have access to taskmax or taskmgr.

DOSShell isn't good enough. I found it online, but it was said to require all programs to fit in Conventional memory.

I have Windows 3.1 but want to do it from DOS mode.

I found DesqVIEW, but it's too large. 🙁

DOSSHELL is in the supplemental disks if you install MS-DOS 6.x as mentioned above .

MS-DOS 5 had it included as a standard program.

You don't have to have it running all the time. It is a shell that you can exit right back to the command line. You do not have to have everything running in conventional memory.

II would like to see said page that said such nonsense.

I ran it back in the day when it was current so I know just a bit about DOS, starting at version 5.0

Thank you. 😀