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Re: Executor/DOS 1.99o and Windows 3.1



>>>>> "Gene" == I HATE INDIANA WEATHER <DECLARKG@DEPAUW.EDU> writes:

    Gene>      I am trying to run Exec/Dos 1.99o on Windows 3.1 and am
    Gene> having trouble with memory allocation.  Basically, I need to
    Gene> know how best to set the PIF parameters.

    Gene>      What happens is this: after loading up the soundblaster
    Gene> and CD-ROM drive (the first because it will I assume
    Gene> eventually work with Exec. and the second because it does) I
    Gene> have 5.06 free DPMI memory (I think that's the acronym).

You should alter your config.sys so that you have a special option for
booting when you plan to run Executor.  In it, you should cut out
soundblaster (it doesn't work right now; you can restore it later) and
trim your CD-ROM drive buffer down to 256k or so.  That should leave
you with about 7.5 MB left at this point.

    Gene> But, with Windows, automatically 2 Meg (by the way, that
    Gene> should read 5.06 Meg) goes to smartdrive (it's amost
    Gene> impossible to run Windows without it, even on a fast 100MHz
    Gene> DX4) and 0.88 to Windows.

You can then trim the smartdrive down to 512k, so you'll then be at
about 6 MB left.

    Gene> So, thanks to the wonderful way
    Gene> in which DOS and Windows allocates and reallocates memory,
    Gene> if I run just about any application before Executor, I end
    Gene> up with about 0.4 Meg left...  out of 8 Meg!

Well, now you can run a 1 MB app and still have 5 MB left.

    Gene> Forget about
    Gene> running multiple copies of Executor for multitasking... you
    Gene> can't even run it once!

Executor itself takes up about 1.5 MB of memory before doing anything
else, so you're now down to about 3 MB left, which means you can get
about a 1.5 MB ApplZone and still have room to avoid paging.

    Gene> And even if it is the first thing I
    Gene> launch, it still won't run much of the software, especially
    Gene> memory intensive stuff (like spell checking on MS Word 5.1a,
    Gene> which doesn't work even with 5.06 Meg DPMI available...)

    Gene>      What should I do?

I would suggest running Executor from DOS instead of from Windows.
Word 5.1a runs fine on our 75 MHz DX4 laptop with a 512 kb read only
smartdrive.

Other than trimming the buffers, like I suggest above, programs
require memory -- Windows requires memory, Executor requires memory,
the programs that you run under Executor require memory.

    Gene> Just wait for Windows '95??  I
    Gene> really can't afford to buy more physical memory (especially
    Gene> since I'd only need it to run Exec on Windows, which isn't
    Gene> all THAT critical... but it would make cutting and pasting
    Gene> between DOS and Exec stuff easier (then so would a DOS
    Gene> shell...))  .

Executor is a windowing operating system all by itself, *and* a
synthetic CPU.  There's no way we can significantly trim its memory
requirement, but if you cut out Windows and big buffers, you should be
able to run on an 8 Mb system without much hassle.

    Gene>      How about the RAM doubling software out there for IBM
    Gene> compatibles?  I really don't know how well it works, but it
    Gene> is much cheaper.  Do you know if said application would work
    Gene> when Exec is running?  I would think so, but then I didn't
    Gene> think it would override doublespace either... which it did.

I don't know about RAM doubling software.

    Gene> I made a 400 Meg HFV file on a compressed drive and it's
    Gene> reported in Exec as 200 Meg... not all that surprising, but
    Gene> kind of disappointing.

Hmmm... that's very surprising to me.  If DOS shows the file as 400
MB, Executor should think it is 400 MB, too.  I've had other people
say that it works, although the compression ratio that they get varies
greatly depending on how much free space is still "virgin".

	--Cliff
	ctm@ardi.com