🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello net.people!

I had this really hooky idea, that it aught to be possible to take
areas of memory that are known to be available, and telling malloc()
somehow that they are OK free blocks.  I am thinking of the malloc()
library function of the C compiler packages, in the large-data
models (compact, large), or the farmalloc() function in the small
model.  The holes I'd like to use include: unused parts of "shadow"
RAM above 640K but below 1 meg, an EMS window, and even the first
64K (minus 16 bytes) of extended RAM, which supposedly you can cheat
and read from "real" mode (using the segment FFFFH, offsets over 000FH
- is that really possible?).  Together it should be possible to gain
well over 100K, to be used in your program in a completely transparent
manner (if you program does a lot of small malloc()s).

So, has anybody tried this?  Does anybody have code to do this?
(You'd have to set up the block with the right stuff before you
call free() on it -- unless you compiler's library has a function
for adding a new block.)  I am looking for such code for Turbo C 2.0,
but I am sure other people could use examples for MS C or other
languages (Pascal, Modula 2).

- Moshe Braner

Cornell Theory Center, 265 Olin Hall,
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853	USA
(607) 255-9401
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