[C] Date: Wed, 05 Mar 1997 21:02:27 -0500
From: Wagner Yotov <yotovw@ere.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: Contura Aero, EPP, and Parallel Port Zip Drive

Martin Ziessler wrote:
> >If you are using W95 you will need to F8 the boot sequence to
> >load the drivers before entering the full W95 boot.
> How does F8 allow me to load drivers?  It only gives me a menu to choose
> between standard Win 95, protected mode Win 95, DOS prompt (under Win 95),
> and plain DOS (and a few others I keep forgetting about).  Does he mean I
> should put something in my config or autoexec?

First: my interpretation of the answer you got from COMPAQ:
You do not neet autoexec.bat or config.sys under Windows'95, because
Win'95 is a DOS-independent operating system, while the Win 3.x is a
"shell" built over DOS.  Therefore under Win 3.x your C:\...\GUEST.EXE
will load automatically from AUTOEXEC.BAT, however under Win'95 you have
to hit F8 when you see "starting Win'95" on the screen. Then you choose
"command promt only" and from the command promt you type GUEST and hit
"Enter" button.  If the machine responds with an error message, you go
to the directory C:\...\ where the GUEST.EXE is, and you type again
GUEST <Enter> and it should work.  You will see a response like:
"THEDRIVERFORTHEDAMNEDZIPDRIVE loaded successfully", or similar, and you
will see a drive letter assigned to it, if applicable in your case.  At
the end, you type WIN and press Enter to continue loading Win'95.

Second: Now, my humble opinion on this subject. I do not have a ZIP drive,
but I do not believe you have to hit F8 and go to manually load the
drivers.  My Aero's portable (parallel port) CD-ROM loads from
AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS during the normal startup of Windows'95.  I
see the loading message and the letter assigned to the CD-ROM drive
during normal Win'95 startup process (while still in the initial
DOS-like B&W screen mode) and if I REM out the two lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT
and CONFIG.SYS, I do not see those loading messages and the drive does
not work.  Remember that you do not need the two files to run Win'95 (on
my desktop I do not have those two files or even a DOS directory), but
as long as you still keep them in the root directory of the startup
disk, they will be consulted during normal loading of Win'95.
Therefore, the F8-load manually stuff is bull.