Hi, Matej Horvat:
I've spent the last three hours writing a tiny COM program that moves
COMMAND.COM's environment block to the lowest address possible (using
DOS's low memory first fit strategy).
Nice !
Unfortunately, it does not seem to
be able to find the environment block if used in AUTOEXEC.BAT after
HIMEMX and JEMM386 were loaded in FDCONFIG.SYS (I only tested both at the
same
time, so I don't know which one causes the problem),
My bet would be on JEMM as the one which messes with memory control blocks.
but it works if run
after AUTOEXEC.BAT has been processed (for some reason - but by then
you may have TSRs loaded between COMMAND.COM and its environment,
which may or may not be OK for your needs) or if those two drivers are not
loaded.
Yup. TSRs which are never unloaded would not be a problem, otherwise
they could leave holes, but that's life... One could even re-run your
program and try to relocate the ENV again into such a hole, if it's big
enough :=)
So for example, without HIMEMX and JEMM386, FreeCOM will allocate its
environment block at e. g. segment 9F7F, but after running the program,
the environment block will reside at segment 23B4, almost immediately
after COMMAND.COM (it depends on the order in which you load TSRs).
Thanks. It would work indeed because - as I was checking a few minutes
before reading your mail - FreeCOM does maintain the master environment
pointer (its segment) in its PSP:3Ch slot, additionally FreeCOM seems
to use the contents of that 'slot', not some copy it made, whenever
it needs to access the ENV. At least a search (using debug!) did not
find the environment segment, as data, inside FreeCOM's live memory.
Of course it could be keeping the live ENV's segment in
registers, but since that is C it's dubious registers are used for
long time storage (contrary to what ASM code does profusely, at least mine).
Of course, I presume your program does care to adjust the PSP:3C pointer.
Please contact me off-list if you want to try it out.
Well, thank you. A fully satisfactory solution ought to come from
FreeCOM's initialisation itself, though.
Regards
--
Czerno
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