> Right. So here are my questions. First, is there some better > combination of utilities I should use? Second, what am I losing, > exactly, by using umbpci.sys instead of emm386.exe? And finally, how > come cwsdpmi doesn't work with emm386.exe?
I can share my experience with FreeDOS memory managment as I have been using it with my NetWare boot disk project (NwDsk: http://www.veder.com/nwdsk ), allthough I lack the technical background to discuss the bit-level details. I use the combination HIMEM.EXE (now HIMEM64.EXE) for XMS/HMA (dos=high) and UMBPCI.SYS for UMB (dos=umb). NwDsk has grown popular among NetWare admins as starting point for imaging or unattended OS installs from NetWare servers. As such it is used on a very wide range of hardware. HIMEM(64).EXE has proven to be very reliable. Thanks, Tom! I only do get feedback from users about UMBPCI.SYS which unfortunately does not work with all chipsets. For that I provide a CONFIG.SYS with a menu in which they may choose to boot with (default) or without UMBPCI.SYS (with additional choice for UDMA.SYS). I am very pleased with Michael's intentions of tackling VCPI for EMM386 wich would make a good replacement for UMBPCI.SYS (VCPI being needed for NIOS.EXE). With 2 previous releases of NwDsk I side-stepped to FDXXMS.SYS but had to pay for that by having to answer a lot of email from my end-users complaining it was freezing NIOS.EXE on their hardware. Since I am back with HIMEM64.EXE things calmed down again ;-) Since the 32-bit NetWare client (NIOS) is loading in XMS the pain of having no hardware-independent UMB provider (UMBPCI is hardware dependent) is not that hard. It leaves enough for "winnt.exe". But from a general perspective I will swap UMBPCI for a non-hardware-dependent EMM386(64).EXE right away whenever it features VCPI. So far for my observations based on the feedback of my users concerning HIMEM(64), FDXXMS and UMBPCI. Erwin P.S. OpenDOS (DrDOS 7.01) has a full featured EMM386. For me it has 2 major concerns: it is too big for my boot-flop, and its license status is unclear to me (still open source ??). -- Erwin Veermans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> NwDsk: NetWare Boot Disk (IP/IPX) <http://www.veder.com/nwdsk/> NwDskPe: NetWare Client for WinPE <http://www.veder.com/nwdskpe/> ------------------------------------------------------- The SF.Net email is sponsored by EclipseCon 2004 Premiere Conference on Open Tools Development and Integration See the breadth of Eclipse activity. February 3-5 in Anaheim, CA. http://www.eclipsecon.org/osdn _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
