I was just reading a post in the Win 3.11 forum asking about a patch that will allow long file names in 3.11. Now is it just me, or isn't Dos 7.10 supposed to support long file names. I know when your in windows and you use a dos prompt you get long file names. But when actually in Dos you don't. Am I wrong? Have a gotten a bad version of Dos?

Nope you got it about right. WinDOS 7.10 does not support Long File Names (LFN) in Real Mode. It shows them as an addition in a DOS Windows on the right hand side of the DIR Listing and will change to a LFN named directory. However no default DOS file is named longer than the 8.3 limit, nor will any DOS program allow you to use LFN. So its a bit of catch 22 really! What do you need it for? or how can you live without it? P.S. Take a look at www.powerload.fsnet.co.uk/msdos.htm I think he also has a LFN patch for DOS

Check out Odi's Lcopy and other lfn stuff: http://www.odi.ch/

I have seen programs that are supposed to deal with this, however, I ran into two different websites by people who sound like they know, that illustrated that this "doesn't always work." There seems to be some glitch, that can screw things up. All I know is, I bought a program off ebay that was supposed to be a "dos" program, and when I got it, it required 3x. I have no use for it in 3x, hell I'll just run W9x. What I really want is LFN in dos, but apparently there is just no reliable way. Actually, as Pentiums become more available used, there really is no nead anymore (just bought a P166 with 2.5 hd at St Vinny's for 20 bucks! Works fine.

Check out any LFN for DOS program you download. The one I have seen displays long filenames in DOS instead of ...~1.etc, but when you copy a file it still cuts off the long filename. And that wasn't much good to me. I don't think there are any LFN programs for dos that copy correctly. Hopefully, one will be along soon.