Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 03:36:24 -0400 (AST)
From: Bill Davidson <bdavidson AT ra DOT isisnet DOT com>
Subject: Re: Ramdrive
To: Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu



On Fri, 6 Jan 1995, Stephen Turnbull wrote:

> I don't really know what your problem is.  The possibilities I can
> think of are
> (1) I've had problems with any combination of MSDOS products involving
>     using EMM386.  The problems usually go away when I use QEMM386.
>     But apparently you're using QEMM....  You could try a public
>     domain ramdrive/cache combination called combi, latest version I
>     had heard of some months ago was 1.7.3, I think.  This is at
>     SimTel, in .../msdos/memutils/combiXXX.zip, I seem to recall.
Yes, I use QEMM386, v.7.04.  I do not load QDPMI, although I have tried 
and it doesn't seem to matter.  I have not yet tried combi.
> (2) If you have barely 4MB, sometimes GO32 will try to use VM even for
>     such a small program as info.  Are you sure your GO32TMP variable
>     points to a working drive that has space on it?  If you are trying
>     to use VM on a ramdrive that's almost full you're gonna have
>     problems.  GO32TMP (where GO32 puts its paging files) should *not*
>     be a RAMdrive, it should be a hard disk with a couple dozen (if
>     you're going to do big compiles or links) MB free.
My (relevant portions of) environment looks like this:
(I have djgpp in C:\GCC)
PATH=C:\GCC\BIN;C:\BIN;C:\DOS;...
TEMP=C:\GCC\TMP		/*This is the DOS TEMP*/
DJGPP=c:/gcc/djgpp.env
TMPDIR=c:/gcc/tmp
GO32TMP=c:/gcc/tmp
GO32=ansi nodpmi
Drive C: is a 340MB drive with about 270MB free.  The RAMDRIVE is drive 
D:, not used here but set up in the config.sys file (at 1Meg).  Also in 
config.sys, FILES=40 and the shell statement is as follows:
SHELL=C:\QEMM\LOADHI.COM /RF C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /E1024 /P
>     Unfortunately, using QDPMI to supply virtual 
memory won't work,
>     since the VM service of QDPMI simply is completely broken AFAIK.
> As I said, I'm no expert, but maybe one or more of the above ideas
> will help.
>     --Steve

The errors I get running info.exe are as follows:
Error:
Unsupported INT 0x0d
General Protection Fault at eip:4e14
(regs and call traceback)
or
Segmentation Violation in pointer 0x00816d34 at d8:816d34
(regs and traceback)
I am using a 20MHz 80386SX with 4MB RAM and a 340MB IDE hard drive under 
MSDOS 6.02.  The problems with running RAMDRIVE.SYS persist.  Needless to
say RAMDRIVE uses EMS for the "disk".  The appearance of the errors is a 
bit random, but generally occurs a couple of layers "deep" in the 
program.  That is, I get to the main menu, select a topic, select a 
sub-topic, and there or in reading the sub-topic the problem occurrs.
I know this problem is not earth-shattering, but it is annoying!