From: Bill Drake 
Subject: no memory for 4dos under
Date: 1998/04/18
Message-ID: #1/1
Distribution: fido
Organization: VKUG/VPCC 4DOS Echo - Richmond, BC
Newsgroups: fido.4dos


VB>I've not found out how to change things yet. I'm trying to 
VB>find out if the reason why things can't be loaded high from 
VB>a dos box is just because vmm32 has taken the lot for 
VB>itself.  If so, some could be reserved for 4dos, etc.

As far as I am aware, the use or non-use of UMBs in a W95
DOSBox is an all-or-nothing thing.  There is not enough benefit
in gaining back the UMB in the DOSbox, only to lose DOSbox speed.
 BD> The above changes will prevent secondary shells (any loads of 4dos
 BD> after the primary) from trying to claim UMBs for secondary copies 
 BD> the master environment or secondary copies of the 4DOS resident st

VB>What does 4dos use instead of UMB's in that case? I assume it uses HDD 
VB>as each time I open a new shell (up to about the 4th shell) the availab
VB>disk space goes down. I don't know why it doesn't use up 
VB>any disk space after the 4th shell though?   I also don't 
VB>know what it does with the diskspace, as I've not yet found 
VB>any temp file it writes to the disk.  I'm going to have to 
VB>investigate further.

4DOS will use approx 5KB of conventional memory to load the resident stub
and the master copy of the environment in DOSbox conventional memory.

Normally, this is not enough conventional-memory loss to signifigantly
affect programs loaded in the DOSbox.



VB>BTW, that error msg never appeared when a shell was started from
VB>another prog which was already running in a dosbox. Any idea why 
VB>that was?

A subshell loaded from inside another program "sees" the memory in
the machine through the "eyes" of the program providing the shell
ability.

Most programs do not provide UMB capabilities from their subshells.
Consequently, since 4DOS can't "see" that UMB is available (because
the originating program won't grant UMB to the subshell), 4DOS doesn't
squawk because as far as 4DOS is concerned, there's no UMB to use.




Best I can do for now. 



Bill


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