95LX - booting into DOS

[striegel]

I was mistaken to suggest editing the AUTOEXEC.BAT. The full details are explained well on page 2 of the HP 95LX Developer's Guide in chapter 3 (It's only 2 pages long).

Quote:The Default Shell
On standard DOS systems, the default shell is COMMAND.COM. On the HP 95LX, COMMAND.COM is the System Manager.

The System Manager is the program that directs execution of the built-in and special add-on applications.

The HP 95LX System Manager does not process any AUTOEXEC.BAT files.

The DOS Command Processor
COMMAND.COM is available in the HP 95LX but is not normally run at initialization time since DOS goes directly to the System Manager shell. There are two ways to access the command processor:

1. Invoke the command processor from within the System Manager program.

2. Change the shell to the command processor by including the line SHELL=COMMAND /P
in the CONFIG.SYS file and reboot.

This causes DOS to go directly to COMMAND.COM — the System Manager is not invoked, and the built-in application keys will not be active. The commands that are available are the internal command processor commands, any external programs on disk, and the two ROMed program commands listed above.

One use of this method is to get access to DOS in order to perform some custom initialization and then run the System Manager using the $SYSMGR command.