Home

• Contact
• Donate
• Privacy /
  Datenschutz
• Imprint /
  Impressum

Products

• BATT
• BOOTMGR
• C2EAUTO
• DIVT
• DRVEXCH
• EIDL
• FIX8X14
• MOS6502
• NOKEYB
• OB
• PAUSE
• PVLDR
• RA
• SBMIX
• UPXDUMP
• X

Hosted products

• FED
• Free Software for DOS
• Insight
• VGAPaint 386
• By Jürgen Hoffmann

Ports & builds

Articles

Links

Forum

Products /
NOKEYB

Copyright © 2021 Robert Riebisch
[Under  Fair License]

About

NOKEYB prevents loading the standard DOS keyboard driver KEYB.COM in C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT on the Vobis  Highscreen Handy Organizer ( #2) palmtop PC. This allows using a custom keyboard driver or no driver at all to save precious RAM. (KEYB.COM uses 6,208 bytes.)

Files C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and D:\DOS\KEYB.COM are in ROM (read-only memory) on this palmtop PC. That prevents editing, renaming, or deleting. So I came up with this tiny 'fake' device driver to intercept the DOS 'load and execute' function.

When the palmtop PC boots and DOS tried to run d:\dos\KEYB.COM (from C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT) NOKEYB disables itself, leaving a RAM footprint of 80 bytes only.

System Requirements

• Intel 8086/88 microprocessor (or compatibles)
• Microsoft MS-DOS 2.0 (or compatibles)

Download

Release 3 (2021-06-17)

Version History

(File size: 206 bytes. RAM footprint: 80 bytes.)

• Improved robustness of d:\dos\KEYB.COM detection
• Added license name to driver banner message to be clear

With the help of C. Masloch:

• Fixed a bug overwriting wrong memory location in strategy routine

Thanks go to Frank Steinberg for testing!

Files

• nokeyb3.zip (5.1 Kbytes) – Binary, manual, source code.

Release 2 (2021-05-30)

Version History

(File size: 177 bytes. RAM footprint: 80 bytes.)

• Made driver 'self-disabling'
• Changed driver's internal name to NOKEYB2$ to reflect release number and be closer to the DOS specs
• Rewrote most of the documentation

With the help of C. Masloch:

• Always report success, when 'something' (= DOS) tries to run d:\dos\KEYB.COM for the first time
• Reduced file size and RAM footprint

Files

• nokeyb2.zip (4.7 Kbytes) – Binary, manual, source code.

Release 1 (2021-03-14)

Version History

(File size: 205 bytes. RAM footprint: 96 bytes.)

• Initial public release

Files

• nokeyb1.zip (4.1 Kbytes) – Binary, manual, source code.

Page last modified on 2021-06-24.
Copyright © 1997-2024 BTTR Software. All rights reserved.
Favicon contributed by Paul Blair. Used with permission.