I am not seeing the error of which you speak when I use dialect"rm" or just the rm directive.
I believe that you also had an open incident regarding the call "system" but it failed if you set dialect"rm" on because of the different call-convention used when dialect"rm" is on.
I find that both the echo and the call "system" work correctly if I use $set rm instead of $set dialect"rm" at least when testing under Windows.
The following compiles and runs fine under VC 2.2 for Eclipse update 1 when I run it locally under Windows.
$set rm
identification division.
program-id. Program1.
environment division.
configuration section.
data division.
working-storage section.
01 field-1 pic x(10) value "12345".
01 any-key pic x.
procedure division.
display "test"
accept field-1 line 5 position 5 echo
call "SYSTEM" using "notepad.exe c:\temp\test.txt"
accept any-key
goback.
end program Program1.