Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 13:21:00 +0300
From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
Sender: halo1 AT zahav DOT net DOT il
To: Antti Koskipaa <antti DOT koskipaa AT edu DOT stadia DOT fi>
Message-Id: <4634-Fri17Aug2001132100+0300-eliz@is.elta.co.il>
X-Mailer: Emacs 20.6 (via feedmail 8.3.emacs20_6 I) and Blat ver 1.8.9
CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
In-reply-to: <3B7BFD22.9020004@edu.stadia.fi> (message from Antti Koskipaa on
	Thu, 16 Aug 2001 20:04:34 +0300)
Subject: Re: Compiling Quake
References: <3B7AC29A DOT 9080305 AT edu DOT stadia DOT fi> <3b7ae00b DOT sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu> <3B7BFD22 DOT 9020004 AT edu DOT stadia DOT fi>
Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Errors-To: nobody AT delorie DOT com
X-Mailing-List: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
X-Unsubscribes-To: listserv AT delorie DOT com
Precedence: bulk

> From: Antti Koskipaa <antti DOT koskipaa AT edu DOT stadia DOT fi>
> Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
> Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 20:04:34 +0300
> 
> > The release was built with DJGPP V2.0 beta 3 pre-release, which only had
> > unixy sbrk() at the time (which is now not the default).  To make the
> > unixy sbrk() be non-moving extra memory was allocated (to DPMI commit it)
> > and then a negative sbrk() sent to leave extra for various libc usages.
> 
> I ask again: why?? It's virtual memory, it's the DPMI provider's
> task to take care of it.

Except that many DPMI providers do a poor job of supporting the DPMI
spec to the letter, and the spec doesn't give an application any
control on where in the address space the memory is allocated. id
Software wanted their game to work with as many environments as
possible, and work as reliably as it gets.  Why do you dismiss these
reasons so easily?

> If the app mallocs it, it has it, period.

But what do you do if it fails?

> I personally wouldn't care less it it all didn't stay paged in all the 
> time.

Quake hooks the hardware keyboard interrupt, and you cannot page
inside an interrupt handler.  Thus the initial allocation.

> If the user does not have enough memory, it's his/her fault.

Yeah, right.  Try telling that to teenagers who just shelled $$ out of
their daddy's pocket to buy the darn thing...