Mail Archives: opendos/2000/12/04/17:59:00
OK ... last attempt!
For some reason, the following message kept bouncing ... :-(
Joe.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Da Silva, Joe
> Sent: Monday, 4 December 2000 11:45
> To: 'opendos AT delorie DOT com'
> Subject: RE: Misc. (was BASIC & EMS, nee Optimizing CONFIG.SYS...)
>
> Arkady is of course correct, re. XMS, etc. :-)
>
> Now, for some miscellaneous items that have "surfaced" in
> this thread :
>
> 1. FYI : We all agree the 8088/8086 was a very stupid choice
> by IBM and is the reason we now have all these issues. The
> reason they chose this *very* poor performance chip, instead
> of the 68000 or Z8000 (both good performers, although I think
> Z8000 also uses segmented memory - yuck!!!) is that :
> a) They already had an 8085 design, which they could quickly
> "rehash" to use the 8088 chip.
> b) They had a license agreement with Intel, to make the 8088
> or 8086 chip themselves.
>
> 2. What is DV (some multitasking thing mentioned ...)?
>
> 3. FYI : My 4x and 6x CD-ROM drives _don't_ make shrill
> spinning sounds, but my 40x CD-ROM does! This tells
> me that indeed, my 40x drive spins *much* faster than
> my 4x or 6x drives, so this "40x" stuff is real, not a
> marketing fiction for drives that just have data buffering ...
>
> 4. Is it really possible to split the EMS page frame into, say
> two 32K chunks? This would be a very "handy" thing - for
> instance, 32K could "live" on top of the VGA BIOS, using
> Stealth (not Cloaking, right? ;-) techniques, and the other
> 32K could "live" on top of the F000-F7FF BIOS region (MP
> says this is possible for 90% of machines ...). Great stuff,
> but it sounds "too good to be true", doesn't it???
>
> Joe.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arkady V.Belousov [SMTP:ark AT belous DOT munic DOT msk DOT su]
> Sent: Saturday, 2 December 2000 21:02
> To: opendos AT delorie DOT com
> Subject: Re: BASIC & EMS (was: Optimizing CONFIG.SYS...)
>
> X-Comment-To: Patrick Moran
>
> Hi!
>
> 1-δΕΛ-2000 03:57 pmoran22 AT yahoo DOT com (Patrick Moran) wrote to
> <opendos AT delorie DOT com>:
>
> PM> Okay, what the hello is XMS meory?
>
> XMS is not a memory, but a specification, API to access extended
> memory for "real mode" programs (see below).
>
> PM> Is it ENTEDED meory or just another stupid swap em out memory?
>
> XMS is not a memory, this is a specification how to exchange data
> between conventional memory (for direct access) and extended memory (to
> store data there).
>
> PM> Extended memory does not swapping you are in
> PM> memory above 1MB when you use ectended memory and you are in protected
> mode
> PM> when using extended memory.
>
> Please, don't mix extended memory itself and XMS API to access this
> memory. When program work in "native" 386+ mode (so called "protected
> mode")
> then it have full access to all physical/virtual memory and there is no
> requirements to additional explicit APIs. But me talk not about "32bit"
> programs (286 CPU is not 32-bit but this not change the idea), we compare
> two specification to access additional memory (XMS and EMS) in "16bit"
> programs which works in "real" mode (or in "V86" mode) and have "native"
> access only to 1M of memory.
>
> This thread started when you prosecute EMS as very bad specification
> in
> compare with XMS. I try to show you: EMS have _only one_ contra - it cuts
> frame for working from 1M addressing. This have nothing common with
> Windows,
> Task manager, etc which are protected mode apps and don't require XMS and
> EMS to access extended memory for itself.
>
> ----- snip -----
>
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