Message-ID: <000a01c1660b$c1f951a0$027efea9@atlantis> From: "Matthias Paul" To: References: <200111041428897 DOT SM00968 AT dfsi DOT net> Subject: Re: QEMM OPTIMIZE and DR-DOS Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 15:37:27 +0100 Organization: University of Technology, RWTH Aachen, Germany MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id fA5F9MO20937 Reply-To: opendos AT delorie DOT com On 2001-11-04, "cyborg" wrote: >> anyone know how to make qemm use autodos7 and dconfig ? >> that would work also. >> however i will try the call in the dconfig-autodos file There are several possibilities. Depending on the version, OPTIMIZE has a command line switch /B:d or /BOOT:d to specify the boot drive letter, so you can use CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files from a different drive. A quick examination of the OPTIMIZE.EXE binary also revealed "AutoExecToRead=" and "ConfigSysToRead=" strings in there, leading to the assumption that you can either specify them on the command line, or, more likely, specify these alternatives filenames in the OPTIMIZE.INI file. I only had a quick look at the documentation and the various .TEC files and could not find any hint on these directives, but in case this does not work for you, I suggest to check the docs and Quarterdeck´s valueable tips & tricks material yourself more carefully. I haven´t used QEMM for a long while now, as the use of the DR-DOS EMM386 with manually fine-tuned configuration files gave better results for me. Without the DR-DOS EMM386 you cannot use the DR-DOS preemptive multitasker, however, without QEMM you cannot use DESQview/386. QEMM and DR-DOS are compatible in general (see their docs for the supported versions), however, there are two small issues with QEMM and DR-DOS 7.02+, which you should know about: - The memory arrangement of the handle structures (MEM /A HANDLES=) changed with the introduction of the FILESHIGH= and FCBSHIGH= [D]CONFIG.SYS directives in order to free up to several more Kb of conventional memory under DR-DOS (depends on the count of handles (FILES+FCBS) on your system). They are now grouped in 3 chunks while they were arranged in 2 chunks previously. The change should not have caused problems for QEMM because this is completely valid in terms of DOS standards, however, QEMM´s DOS-UP feature does not expect this, and its sanity checks keep it from loading the DOS structures high. This results in ca. 1 Kb less conventional memory than the theoretical possible maximum under QEMM. (Maybe, there´s an undocumented QEMM configuration directive to override this sanity check, but I don´t know about any such directive...) Unfortunately, Quarterdeck stopped working on QEMM before they could incorporate this really minor correction on their party, so you will just have to live with it. I once wrote a patch (a DEBUG script named IBMBIO85.SCR IIRC) for the DR-DOS kernel which will reenable the old handle memory layout. This will free even more conventional memory under DR-DOS, but causes serious compatibility problems with Windows 3.xx when the FILESHIGH=, FCBSHIGH=, or DOS=AUTO directives are used at the same time, because it will leave only 5 handles in low memory in contrast to the 8 handles that are required for Windows to work properly due to an extremely dangerous hack on Microsoft´s side to determine the size of the DOS internal SFT structures (this is known as "CON CON CON CON CON" hack, because Windows opens CON five times and then scans the first 512 Kb of memory for the "CON" string to measure the displacement between these strings, something that could be easily fooled by just placing some "CON" strings in the DOS memory image with incorrect offsets from each other - with fatal consequences for the running system). You can find my patch by searching the 1998-1999 archives of this list. In case you cannot locate this anymore, let me know, I can also look this up in my archives. - The other issue is QEMM´s Stealth feature which may conflict with the new DR-DOS 7.02+ YEAR2000=ON [D]CONFIG.SYS directive. Either use YEAR2000=OFF before you load QEMM (requires a ROM BIOS which does not have Y2K bugs, or a 3rd party Y2K-fixing TSR instead of DR-DOS´ built-in fix), or use QEMM´s EXCLUDESTEALTHINT=1A. Hope it helps, Matthias BTW. What´s your real name, "cyborg"? As in real life, it´s always more fun to know who you´re talking to. Most people inhere do not post incognito and this is must appreciated in this forum to create a more personal "feeling". -- Matthias Paul, Ubierstrasse 28, D-50321 Bruehl, Germany ; http://www.uni-bonn.de/~uzs180/mpdokeng.html; http://mpaul.drdos.org