#386 BB memory mess
20 messages in this thread
2386 BB w/5 megs total, Diamond SpeedstarPro, Soundblaster 2.0 in a 2000.
Janus that came with it.. 2.1, I think; MessyDos 5.0.
How do you get pgms to 'loadhigh' or 'devicehigh', as appropriate? The
Janus EMM doesn't seem to support this. Himem loaded DOS high ok, but
Amouse, Ansi.sys or anything else I've tried just sit there.
This started when an aviation utility needed Ansi.sys to unscramble its
screen. First time I've needed it. Thinking I was going to run this
program fairly often I put ansi in the config.sys. Well, the very next
thing I ran grumped about not enough memory and quit. I had run this
program many times before. Some time ago I had done the DOS=high,umb
trick, but had stopped there. 602,xxx seemed to be working.
I've spent the last couple of evenings with a boot floppy and EMM386.
That does the trick, but the EMS/XMS equation seems to be messed up. I
don't understand this, anyway. Extended (2 kinds? confusing), expanded
(durnedest thing I ever saw.. page frames, indeed..), HMA, UMB… bah. I
hate these ibms.
Hope someone will help.
-DonM – On Autopilot from 1Q1 –
Chickenlips doesn't sell Amigas, we just buy them!
Don,
I had the same problem with MS-DOS 5.0 and my A2386SX; DeviceHigh and
LoadHigh didn't. When I upgraded to MS-DOS 6.0 (and just last week to
6.2), things started working just fine. What I think happened, and
somebody check me on this, is that EMM.SYS didn't support this feature.
EMM386.EXE in MS-DOS 5.0 wouldn't work on the BB, for me.
Well, that's all changed. I tried EMM386.EXE in MS-DOS 6.0 and it
worked just fine, thank you. I then tried Memmaker, and d*mn*d if that
didn't work as well. I just checked, and I've got 2.12 MB of stuff
stuffed into extended memory. Works fine, lasts long time.
BTW, if you do decide to upgrade, and you don't have either a
high-density 3.5 or 5 1/4 drive, use another machine to copy the files
onto low-density diskettes, copy these files from the low-density disks to
a sub-directory of your IBM partition, and run the installation program
(Setup). It never notices that the disks aren't there.
I hope this helps.
Brian
bjbart@watnxt01.ucr.edu
Thank you. Good info.
I hope I can go from 5.0 straight to 6.2 w/o buying 6.0. Bet not, though.
<sigh>
EMM386 seemed to work, but Checkit skipped the Extended memory test even
though it otherwise reported its presence. Made me nervous, so I'm back
with EMM.
-DonM – On Autopilot from 1Q1 –
Chickenlips doesn't sell Amigas, we just buy them!
Don,
6.2 is on the streets. I saw it in Software, Etc. Thursday. They even
have a full version that comes with Dan Gookin's Book.
Brian
bjbart@watnxt01.ucr.edu
>6.2 is on the streets. I saw it in Software, Etc. Thursday. They even
>have a full version that comes with Dan Gookin's Book.
Gookin… That's the stuff that's, '<whatever> For You Idiots',
right? Something like that… mumble mumble. Anyway, thanks for the
good info.
yep, that Dan Gookin. I met him several years ago, back about the
time Byte threatened to sue the local rag for trademark infringement
(it was called ByteBuyer).
Haven't heard of or seen the ByteBuyer since I left San Diego several
years ago. Is that rag still in print?
// daniel on autopilot in paradise
\X/ with intel and motorola inside
Daniel,
the last time I looked, it was thriving. Perhaps it's time to log onto
"The MouseTrap" and check in with the Scum Diego crowd.
Brian
bjbart@watnxt01.ucr.edu
Funny how things come in bunches. The latest Amiga Report has a tirade in
it with a tone similar to the intent of my smart-alecky remarks. I d/led
AR and posted that message in the same AP session. Great minds..
-DonM – On Autopilot from 1Q1 –
Chickenlips doesn't sell Amigas, we just buy them!
MSDOS 6.2 is a bug patch for 6.0 and you HAVE to have 6.0 also. I believe that
Microsoft is now selling combined upgrades.
>MSDOS 6.2 is a bug patch for 6.0 and you HAVE to have 6.0 also. I
>believe that Microsoft is now selling combined upgrades.
That would figure, considering who and what we're dealing with.
phphphphtt..
-DonM – On Autopilot from 1Q1 –
Chickenlips doesn't sell Amigas, we just buy them!
sorry, but that information is incorrect. There is a package out
that includes all of MS-DOS for revision 6.2, not just an update. The
update itself is sold as a single diskette in a mailer type package.
The whole package is sold with 3 diskettes, and if you wish, a book
as well.
Don,
you can go from 5.0 to 6.2 only if you buy the whole package from
Microsoft. If you already had 6.0, you could have downloaded the upgrade to
6.2 here on CIS.
Don
Yup, figured as much. Wonder how much a person has spent on MessyDog if
he's kept up since, say, '83?
A local IBM type guru-expert-hacker tells me not to bother with 6.x. He
says I'll get along just fine for the forseeable with 5.0 and QEMM. Fine
with me.
-DonM – On Autopilot from 1Q1 –
Chickenlips doesn't sell Amigas, we just buy them!
Don,
There are definate advantages of 6.2 on a new system (the included
utilities)…but for someone with a decent utility set…5.0 is fine.
Don
Got QEMM. Set the page frame to E000 and excluded D000-DFFF. MFT
reports all the expected things, plus some things I didn't know. I
now have 628224 free. That oughta do it.
Also _finally!!_ got it through my thick skull that EMS and XMS with
the DOS emulators like QEMM and EMM386 actually coincide (overlap?..
whatever).
The afore-mentioned local sysop was the one who provided the very
lengthy explanation of this. At the end of my query message, I had
added a little smart-alecky one-liner the went something like, "Am I
too dumb for this MessyDos stuff … or too smart?". Treating it
seriously, he added this to the end of the explanation:
"No, you're not dumb, you started with the next generation and are
working backwards. Your system provides virtual resources all the
time, but you don't know how." Pretty good of him, huh?
Don,
Amouse won't load high, so that solves that problem. You
shouldn't be using any expanded memory manager like the Janus EMM
because DOS 5.x and higher have their own memory management. If you
need to allocate expanded memory, then get something like QEMM or
DRDOS 6.0. However, be sure you understand that the Janus software
utilizes upper memory between D000-D800. When you load in your video
drivers into upper memory they will usually take the space between
A000 and BFFF. As you load other things into upper memory the amount
of contiguous ram available gets chewed up. You may find that the
last program you try to load doesn't find enough ram in whcih to run,
thus the out of memory message. Generally, the best thing to do is
to experiment. Run the programs high that use the most ram first,
then one by one add more in decreasing memory load order until you
find how many you can actually put into upper memory. High memory is
the 64K space just above 1 meg. Usually only operating system
software loads up there.
If you play to run Windows or other more modern software, then EXTENDED
memory is the main concern. Few new programs use expanded memory.
Furthermore, expanded memory requires a 64K window reserved in upper memory,
which detracts from ram available to load other programs/TSRs into upper
memory.
You can experiment with all this by first booting with NOTHING in upper
memory other than your video stuff. Then add program, run the DOS MEM.COM
program to see what's happended. Gradually, add programs. Remember that you
need to set HIMEM for DOS loaded high.
You can try to run programs in high memory using the the LOADHIGH
command. You must have dos=umb setin config.sys for a program to be loaded
into upper memory. Also remember that not all programs will run in upper
memory. Amouse.com is one. You can run it with loadhigh, but it will always
run in conventional memory. It was not compiled to run outside of conventional
memory.
Steven,
one more interesting thing that I ran into when using Memmaker. It
picked up on the Janus reserved area and excluded it without any input
from me. Maybe MicroSloth get's it right for once <g>.
Brian
bjbart@watnxt01.ucr.edu
Brian,
Actually most memory managers will do the same. I use DRDOS and have
used an earlier version of QEMM and both find and exclude the Janus segment.
Steven,
it suprised me at the time, given that earlier packages did not. I
guess it's current technology now.
Brian
bjbart@watnxt01.ucr.edu