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The News Manager)
Nntp-Posting-Host: na
Reply-To: tporczyk@na.excelan.com (Tony Porczyk)
Organization: Standard Disclaimer
References: <LEVERICW.91Mar29085520@cheetah.ece.clarkson.edu>
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1991 00:20:10 GMT


Mr. levericw@cheetah.ece.clarkson.edu (Walden Leverich) writes:
> Does anyone know the memory requirements of DOS 5.0 loaded into high
> mem and running 4DOS as the shell (also in high mem)

Hm... 4DOS loaded high?  It swaps itself to exended or expanded memory
as needed, if that's what you mean.
Here are the memory numbers for a bare boot:

  Address     Name          Size       Type 
  -------     --------     ------     ------
  000000                   000400     Interrupt Vector
  000400                   000100     ROM Communication Area
  000500                   000200     DOS Communication Area

  000700      IO           000A60     System Data

  001160      MSDOS        0013D0     System Data

  002530      IO           000F80     System Data
                HIMEM      0004A0      DEVICE=    
                           0005D0      FILES=     
                           000100      FCBS=      
                           000200      BUFFERS=   
                           0001C0      LASTDRIVE= 
  0034C0      MSDOS        000040     System Program

  003510      4DOS         000B90     Program   
  0040B0      4DOS         001000     Environment
  0050C0      MEM          000110     Environment
  0051E0      MEM          0176F0     Program   
  01C8E0      MSDOS        083710     -- Free --


    655360 bytes total conventional memory
    655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    634384 largest executable program size

   7602176 bytes total contiguous extended memory
         0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
   7458816 bytes available XMS memory
           MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

Now, in reality, you don't run your machine bare, so more realistic
stuff would look as follows:

  Address     Name          Size       Type 
  -------     --------     ------     ------
  000000                   000400     Interrupt Vector
  000400                   000100     ROM Communication Area
  000500                   000200     DOS Communication Area

  000700      IO           000A60     System Data

  001160      MSDOS        0013D0     System Data

  002530      IO           00C6A0     System Data
                SETVER     000180      DEVICE=    
                HIMEM      0004A0      DEVICE=    
                SMARTDRV   005930      DEVICE=    
                RAMDRIVE   0004A0      DEVICE=    
                ANSI       001060      DEVICE=    
                MOUSE      004720      DEVICE=    
                           0005D0      FILES=     
                           000100      FCBS=      
                           000200      BUFFERS=   
                           0001C0      LASTDRIVE= 
  00EBE0      MSDOS        000040     System Program

  00EC30      4DOS         000B90     Program   
  00F7D0      4DOS         001000     Environment
  0107E0      MEM          000120     Environment
  010910      LSL          005470     Program   
  015D90      MSDOS        000130     -- Free --
  015ED0      3C503        000E10     Program   
  016CF0      TCPIP        004E60     Program   
  01BB60      TELAPI       005460     Program   
  020FD0      MEM          0176F0     Program   
  0386D0      MSDOS        067920     -- Free --


    655360 bytes total conventional memory
    655360 bytes available to MS-DOS
    520224 largest executable program size

   7602176 bytes total contiguous extended memory
         0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
   3264512 bytes available XMS memory
           MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area

No, I do not load drivers high using EMM386 and loadhigh - some of the
DOS apps I use under Windows die with such configuration, so I'd
rather live with 520K under almost full load (still quite acceptable).
You may, of course, use QEMM and fine-tune it with various switches,
but it is still too delicate for me, and after seeing its dump on the
screen one time too many, I switched back to HIMEM. Besides, with comm
card (have to exclude some memory), you can't really load that much of
this stuff into high mem anyway. With QEMM you may gain 30K-35K. To me
it's not worth the shakiness of the system. Now, if it was 465K to
500K jump, that would be a different story. 520K to 550K is not that
crucial (to me). To me, more important is that there is no more 4096K
limit on ramdrive.

> ie: How much memory can I really get if I move all this stuff to
> highmem?

See above.

> Also how many of the DOS 5.0 improvements are in DOS proper and how
> many are in the shell (commmand.com)?

LOADHIGH is in COMMAND.COM, most other stuff is in DOS.  I would
never, repeat, never, give up 4DOS for that. I would much rather use
QEMM386.
Overall, I love this combination - more memory, single partitions
(without buggy DOS 4.0), improved OS, AND all the flexibility of 4DOS.
Hard to beat in the single-tasking world.

Tony