@Jerome
Thanks for reply.
With 3 different HP laptops - SRDISK does work and the MAXIMUM RAMdisk is 512
Mbyte (not one byte more).
I experimented with xmsdsk.exe and obtained LARGER RAMdisk:-
i3 INTEL -> 2,146,140,160 bytes for E:\ RAMdrive
i7 Xeon -> 1,554,317,312
It is interesting for me that there is a significant difference in maximum size
(~ 512+ MB), the i3 has 8 GByte Memory and the i7 has 32 GB Memory.
I had to reduce the RAMdrive size (from the values above) because at maximum
size, got "Out of Memory" / "Out of Data" with my programs.
@Eric
Thanks for reply.
I have not tried RDISK yet - but I think that xmsdsk.exe is about as good
(maximum RAMdisk) as I can achieve.
For info, with my very old USB BOOT stick (non-freedos from around 2000) I
achieved two RAMdrives:-
D:\ 1,323,237,376 bytes (both i7 and i3) ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM SIZE
E:\ 134,217,728 bytes (both i7 and i3) ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM SIZE
whereas my NEW "FreeDOS" (RC5) USB BOOT stick now (adjusted down RAMdrive size
to allow my programs to work) gives
E:\ 1,531,772,928 bytes (for both i7 and i3)
NO D:\ RAMdrive possible BUT I do have a larger ~~1,5 GByte E:\ RAMdrive (a
size increase of about 200 MByte) so I am not complaining.
HOWEVER, a "plus" with my NEW FreeDOS USB BOOT is that the USB stick is split
between ~ 512 MByte C:\ (of which at present I have about 75 MByte free) and
over 14 GByte free D:\.
The results for the third laptop with AMD k6 processor are very similar to i3.
In summary, the INTEL i7 laptop has the "worst" memory specs (despite having
32GByte versus 8 GByte memory) but I will typically use this for important work
and always ensure that the ONE (and only one) USB BOOT disk (FreeDOS RC5)
always works on the i7 (mandatory requirement). So for example, using
jemm386.exe "locks up" the i7 but not the i3.
Using MEM (for i7), in a typical working setup with FreeDOS RC5 I now have:-
Conventional Memory Detail:
Segment Total Name Type
------- ---------------- ------------ -------------
0000 1,024 (1K) interrupt vector table
0040 768 (1K) BIOS data area
0070 8,880 (9K) IO system data
NUL system device driver
CON system device driver
PRN system device driver
AUX system device driver
LPT1 system device driver
LPT2 system device driver
LPT3 system device driver
COM1 system device driver
COM2 system device driver
COM3 system device driver
COM4 system device driver
CLOCK$ system device driver
A: - D: system device driver
029b 3,120 (3K) DOS system data
029d 192 (0K) FILES FILES=40 (3 in this block)
02aa 2,176 (2K) HIMEMX device driver
XMSXXXX0 installed DEVICE=HIMEMX
0333 160 (0K) UMBPCI device driver
UMBPCIXX installed DEVICE=UMBPCI
033e 528 (1K) XMSDSK device driver
E: installed DEVICE=XMSDSK
035f 272 (0K) QBX environment
0371 324,192 (317K) QBX program
5298 272 (0K) MEM environment
52aa 2,320 (2K) COMMAND program
533c 55,248 (54K) MEM program
60ba 249,920 (244K) free
Upper Memory Detail:
Segment Total Name Type
------- ---------------- ------------ -------------
9dc0 205,824 (201K) reserved
d000 6,368 (6K) DOS system data
d002 64 (0K) DEVICE data area
d007 1,904 (2K) FILES FILES=40 (32 in this block)
d07f 2,288 (2K) LASTDRV LASTDRIVE=Z
d10f 2,048 (2K) STACKS data area
d18f 96 (0K) free
d196 2,320 (2K) COMMAND program
d228 720 (1K) UHDD program
UHDD$ installed DEVICE=UHDD
d256 100,256 (98K) free
ead1 2,304 (2K) free
eb62 448 (0K) COMMAND environment
eb7f 2,048 (2K) COMMAND environment
Memory Type Total Used Free
---------------- -------- -------- --------
Conventional 631K 333K 298K
Upper 112K 12K 100K
Reserved 281K 281K 0K
Extended (XMS) 1,518,080K 1,501,500K 16,580K
---------------- -------- -------- --------
Total memory 1,519,104K 1,502,126K 16,978K
Total under 1 MB 743K 345K 398K
Memory accessible using Int 15h 0K ( 0 bytes)
Largest executable program size 298K (305,184 bytes)
Largest free upper memory block 98K (100,272 bytes)
FreeDOS is resident in the high memory area.
Essentially the MAJOR difference if use i3 instead is
Extended (XMS) ~ 2,603,520 K Total
~ 1,102,020 K Free
which allows a larger E:\ RAMdrive.
Interesting is that the Total under 1 MB is only 743K (no matter what I do),
yet
TOTAL of (Conventional + Upper + Reserved) = 1024 K.
Question.
What would be a guide to the min-max recommended values of free Extended (XMS)
memory?
If say 16,580K would be too big then I could increase the RAMdrive a bit (for
say the i7).
@Jerome - will soon try making my configuration "a little smarter" as per your
suggestion (thanks for the tip).
Richard
________________________________
From: Eric Auer <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, 17 February 2022 7:43 PM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Freedos-devel] RAMdrive install problem (on bare metal)
Hi!
> SHELLHIGH = \FREEDOS\BIN\COMMAND.COM ...
> devicehigh=srdxms.sys
If you have not EMM386-style driver loaded,
then you should not use ...HIGH style commands.
Also, you write that autoexec uses
> C:\FREEDOS\BIN\srdisk E:8192 /s=256 (using % notation for C:\FREEDOS)
So I expect this "srdxms" to also be in \freedos\bin\
which you have not specified in the "device..." line.
You could also use RDISK, which is just one file,
instead of SRDISK, where you have to load SRDXMS
and SRDISK after each other in config and autoexec.
Regards, Eric
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