Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 16:00:54 +0200 (MET DST) From: Mark Habersack Reply-To: grendel AT ananke DOT amu DOT edu DOT pl To: Charles Sandmann cc: fighteer AT cs DOT com, djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com Subject: Re: DJGPP Installation Diagnostic Program In-Reply-To: <9609131418.AA13253@clio.rice.edu> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, Charles Sandmann wrote: >No assumptions on video - needs to work on a monochrome system. TVision does that all right. >Needs to be either all 16-bit non-DJGPP code, or needs to be multiple > images, so that really badly configured boxes can be identified. >PMODE binding will make the single image more portable, but PMODE is > less stable and capable in some environments (low memory and/or > raw memory). So if someone has memory misconfigured, a PMODE image > won't run at all, while a CWSDPMI image can with as little as 100K > total (ie DOS memory only) available. So if you bind with PMODE, > you MUST have the 16-bit memory diagnostic program. > >> 1.> - DJGPP files present >> 4.> - DJGPP files installed in the correct directory structure >> 3.> - Environment variables set >> 2.> - DJGPP version >> 6.> - Available memory > >If 6) isn't set properly, 1,4,3,2 will need to be done with 16-bit image. > Isn't it possible to write a stub to replace the DJGPP standard one, that would do the memory diagnostics and, depending on it, either load the DJGPP app or continue by its own? I realise that this means doubling the code, but if it is written portably then it might work. The only disadvantage is having double-sized .EXE. OTOH, it is better for the novice user than having diag32 and diag16 on disk. And I guess that there MUST be a pmode diag program to test the system's ability to work in DPMI (or p-mode in general) environment which cannot be done from within the 16-bit RM app. ********************************************************************** So if you ask me how do I feel inside, I could honestly tell you we've been taken on a very long ride. And if my owners let me have free time some day, with all good intention I would probably run away! Clutching the short straw... ******************* http://ananke.amu.edu.pl/~grendel ****************