(Excerpts from a message dated 09-16-99, Will Honea to Mark Ellis,
original topic: Objects):  

Hi Will--

ME> Okay, this line i rem'd out on the advice of CNFGINFO (dat
ME> os2cfg15) and the fact that I use all HPFS. 

WH>No, you don't use all HPFS; you have FAT support by default.  I'm
  >pretty sure that there is a default cache - but I may be wrong since
  >I haven't looked at cache sizes with OS2MEMU lately.  Anyway, you
  >have FAT support whether you want it or not and you may have to use
  >the diskcache line to set the minimum amount of memory cache
  >possible. There was a thread about this a long time ago but I can't
  >remember exactly what the conclusion - if any - was.

    As you imply, all "floppies" are FAT.  I also use an Iomega Zip
drive and I keep all Zip diskettes formatted FAT, for convenience.  But,
my usage of both is such that I don't consider it reasonable to waste
real memory on a cache for them.

    According to the on-line manual ("help diskcache"), when you have as
much installed memory as I do, the default amount of diskcache is 10% of
that installed memory.  Also, according to that source, if you have no
memory allocated for diskcache, none is assigned to it.  (BTW, it is not
apparent from the on-line help discussion that allocated space for
DISKCACHE is used only with FAT files, even though we know that is the
case.)  So, I have 512 KB of memory allocated to the HPFS cache (in the
first IFS line in CONFIG.SYS) and have REMmed out the DISKCACHE line.

    After reading your post, I decided to test my assumption with
OS20MEMU.  Obviously, the following data apply to my system only: I am
running Warp 4 plus FixPak 5 in a system supposedly containing 40 MB of
RAM.  As normally configured with the DISKCACHE line REMmed out,
OS20MEMU says that I have 40560 KB of installed memory, 3200 KB
allocated to "resident system" and 512 KB of disk cache.

     Deleting the leading "rem " from the line in CONFIG.SYS (leaving
the install-provided: "DISKCACHE=D,LW") and rebooting, I get 3204 KB
resident system space and 512 KB of disk cache.  As you will recognize,
the additional 4KB (one page) for resident system is in the noise, and
can be ignored.  This data led me to believe that there was no default
assignment of "DISKCACHE" memory in my system, in spite of what it said
in on-line help!

     Next, I changed the line to "DISKCACHE=2048,LW" and rebooted.  Now,
OS20MEMU showed 5616 KB allocated to the resident system, and 2560 KB
allocated to disk cache.

    This exercise increases my tendency to disbelieve much of what I
read in "help" files unless corroborated by test!  I have gone back to
my original version of CONFIG.SYS with the DISKCACHE line REMmed out.

    Your (or anyone else's) comments would be appreciated.

    Regards,

        --Murray
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 * MR/2 2.25 #120 * One printed manual is worth a thousand INF files

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