I installed DOS 6.22,Arachne and Cardsoft PCMCIA--that's all. Started Arachne a few times and then missing DOS files--System boots to C: prompt ok. Arachne is version 1.66. Happens without Cardsoft installed too. Can't seem to find if thee is an up-date of Arachne. Any suggestions welcomed-Thank you. It's a Compaq,contura 410C/8Meg RAM

Bob, Can you be more specific with your error? You said there were dos files missing. Which ones? The newest version of Arachme is 1.70. You can get it here: http://arachne.browser.org/ Hope that helps, Michael BTW, Arachne is memory intensive and you need to have himem.sys loaded in your config.sys file . You might also need emm386.exe also loaded to get it to work. I haven't played with it in a while so I am not positive as to the requirements for it.

The only way that I have been able to run Arachne successfully on my 486 is by creating a RAMDISK. Since doing that, I have formatted that computer and don't have the RAMDISK setup anymore. I should have documented what I did but what the hey. The text file included with ARACHNE on the subject is a little obtuse. Setting up the RAMDISK is not so bad, their is enough documentation in the DOS help files for that but creating the right batch file to start up Arachne in the RAMDISK is the trick. If anyone here is successfully running Arachne with a RAMDRIVE maybe they would care to show the lines from their AUTOEXEC.bat, CONFIG.sys and Batch file. Thanks

I am using XMSDISK to create the RAM drive. Also note that I am using the Himem.sys from Win '98 so I can use RAM over 64 MB for the RAM drive, thus it's stupidly huge size. Here are the relevant lines: Autoexec.bat: LH /L:0;1,688 /S C:\DOS\XMSDSK.exe 64000 F: /T /Y (All one line, you will want to change 64000 to something reasonable like 2000 or 4000.) xcopy command.com F:\ SET COMSPEC=F:\COMMAND.COM MD F:\TEMP SET TEMP=F:\TEMP SET TMP=F:\TEMP Config.sys: SHELL=COMMAND.COM /P /E:512 XMSDISK can be found Here

Doofus, Thanks for the post. In your example above, if I were to be in DOS at C:\ARACHNE, then type ARACHNE to launch it, I would not be running in the RAM drive unless I am missing something. I would have to copy over ARACHNE.exe or some portion of the ARACHNE files to the RAM drive in order to run it-wouldn't I?

Correct, read the ARAMDISK.TXT file in the Archne directory for a list of files to copy. I find that often, just having the temp file on the RAM Disk, as in my above example, is enough. From ARAMDISK.TXT: "With a supersize RD, (6Megs) you can make the initial install directly to the ramdisk; but FIRST, create RD:\ARACHNE and RD:\ARACHNE\TEMP and put a copy of command.com in RD:\ARACHNE. Do the install with the source file on hard disk or floppy, NOT on the ramdisk. Temporarily, SET ARACHNETEMP=RD:\ARACHNE\TEMP - this will change. Get Arachne working properly and then exit. In Arachne.cfg set the following: Cache2TEMP Yes Hotlist HD:\ARACHNE\HOTLIST.HTM CookieFile HD:\ARACHNE\COOKIES.LST DownloadPath HD:\ARACHNE\DOWNLOAD\ MailPath HD:\ARACHNE\MAIL\ Delete RD:\ARACHNE\cache.idx, history.lst, *.tmp and the contents of RD:\ARACHNE\CACHE, CACHE\HEADERS and the contents of ARACHNE\TEMP. On the HD make an ARACHNE directory and a DOWNLOAD subdirectory. Copy Hotlist.HTM and Cookies.LST from RD to HD:\ARACHNE. Delete the copies on the Ramdisk. Xcopy RD:\ARACHNE\MAIL\*.* HD:\ARACHNE\ /s /e. Deltree RD:\ARACHNE\BACKUP, \DOWNLOAD and \MAIL. Now, from the ARACHNE directory of the ramdisk execute the line: PKZIP -rp HD:\ARACHNE\ARCN1Nn.ZIP .\*.* (Replace 1Nn with version #) This will place a complete and hopefully working copy of your install in the ARACHNE dir of the HD. When you re-start, you will be starting with empty cache, no history. If the cache is on RD there is no need to have Cache2TEMP Yes except it will improve mail performance when the mail directory is on the HD. Here is a batch file to load Arachne to RD and start her. If you exit and re-start, the Cache contents and history for the day will persist. SPIDER.bat (sometimes called simply A.bat) @Echo off If not "%ARACHNETEMP%"=="" goto RERUN PKunzip -d HD:\ARACHNE\ARCN1Nn.ZIP RD:\ SET ARACHNETEMP=RD:\TEMP :RERUN SET COMSPEC=RD:\COMMAND.COM RD: Call Arachne HD: SET MYIP= SET REMIP= SET NETMASK= SET PEERMRU= SET COMSPEC=HD:\COMMAND.COM All cookies, download, and mail transactions will be made to the HD. The ramdisk and it's contents can just evaporate when you're finished."

Regarding your missing DOS files, according to a document from the Arachne website, your must not have your temp variable set to c:\dos, or your DOS files will be erased. I think that this problem has been eliminated in versions newer than 1.61, but I could be wrong. Just to be safe, I would be sure that temp is set to C:\temp (and that that directory exists) in Autoexec.bat. I have also run Arachne both from a RAMDRIVE and from C:, and it ran well on either, as long as I remembered to kill the cache at just the right time when I was doing a lot of surfing. (I also had 16 MB of RAM, so that might have helped). If you want the latest version of Arachne, try the Arachne Home Page.