The following is a discussion that took place on the FreeDOS mailing list about the FDXMS program (HIMEM replacement): Subject: FDXMS with TDSK Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 18:48:36 -0800 From: k3pbu@arrl.net To: fd-dev@topica.com Is anyone successfully using TDSK and FDXMS (together) under FreeDOS? If so, could you please post your CONFIG.SYS file. I'm getting strange error messages, and I'm not sure if the culprit is TDSK, FDXMS, the kernel, or something that I'm doing wrong. It doesn't help that the TDSK /? documentation is faulty. Marty --------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: FDXMS with TDSK Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 03:34:12 -0800 From: BWSB To: fd-dev@topica.com Yes, I tried to make a compressed distrubution wich loaded a LOAD of software to a ramdisk using freedos once. It would have ruled -- if fdxms had worked at all. I have a zoo here on 8 computers. One with 4mb, another with 8mb, then we've got that 16mb pentium, my p2 with 128 und zo weither.. FDXMS has not worked, at all, at any time, for me. It seems like that FDXMS dislikes my 486 machines as much as it dislikes my p2 one.. Grr.. :-) Cheers, Mike -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: FDXMS with TDSK Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 06:43:24 -0800 From: k3pbu@arrl.net To: fd-dev@topica.com On 7 Jan 00, at 3:34, BWSB wrote: > Yes, I tried to make a compressed distrubution wich loaded a LOAD of > software to a ramdisk using freedos once. It would have ruled -- if > fdxms > had worked at all. Great minds run in the same channel! That's exactly what I was going to do, inspired by "Tom's Root-Boot" Linux-on-a-floppy. I did it with DR-DOS 7.03, and was planning to do the same thing with FreeDOS. Right now I'm investigating how hard it would be to finish FDXMS by adding XXMS support, or, alternatively, modifying TDSK so it doesn't need XXMS. Maybe we'll be able to have a ramdisk soon. Marty -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: FDXMS with TDSK Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 14:28:26 -0800 From: "Louis P. Santillan" To: k3pbu@arrl.net CC: fd-dev@topica.com What exactly are the error messages you are receiving...that might help us a bunch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: FDXMS with TDSK Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 15:06:00 -0800 From: k3pbu@arrl.net To: fd-dev@topica.com On 7 Jan 00, at 14:33, Louis P. Santillan wrote: > What exactly are the error messages you are receiving...that might help us > a bunch. If I put the following lines in CONFIG.SYS... device=fdxms.sys device=tdsk.sys 10240 I get what appears to be a normal "welcome" message from fdxms, followed by something that looks like this: device=tdsk.sys 10240 ^ error in config.sys Not very specific, is it? On the other hand, if I run the xmstat program that comes with the ram-disk program XMSDSK (file fu_rd19i.zip), it gives all kinds of specific error messages that seem to mean that fdxms is full of bugs, and then it crashes! Unfortunately, the xmstat messages are not documented, and both fdxms and xmstat use non-standard (and different) terminology to refer to various memory concepts. For example, fdxms uses the acronym XXMS to refer to some kind of XMS extensions, and xmstat uses SXMS for the same thing, I think. But none of my reference books have anything about either acronym. I've been looking at TECH Help and comparing its description of XMS functions to the fdxms source code. It looks to me like fdxms implements all the usual XMS functions, just like HIMEM.SYS. Therefore I'd be inclined to think that the implementation is just plain buggy, except for the fact that the author of fdxms claims that a lot of software works correctly with it. So, my present state of mind is "dazed and confused." Marty ----------------------------------------------------------------------- (see also the fdxms-rfc.txt file)