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From: pschwart@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Paul Schwartz)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Running non-windows applications in windows 3.0
Message-ID: <4162@dogie.macc.wisc.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 90 21:46:52 GMT
Sender: news@dogie.macc.wisc.edu
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Wisconsin Academic Computing Center
Lines: 38

In article <1990Aug7.164058.3849@agate.berkeley.edu>, joonsong@earthquake.Berkeley.EDU (Suk-Hyun Song) writes...

>In article <4319@buff3.UUCP> krotz@motcid.UUCP (Scott A. Krotz) writes:
>>
>>  I am having problems running non-windows applications using
>>the 386 enhanced mode of windows 3.0, and it is beginning to
>>drive me nuts.  
>> [stuff...]
>>windows says I have 800k free
>> [more stuff...] 

>
>When you are running in 386 enhanced mode, virtual memory is turned on.
>Hence, Windows reports that you have 800k of memory left.  Unforuntunately,
>non-windows applications can not run in virtual memory.  Windows must
>allocate physical memory to those applications.  On your 2 meg system,
>you only have a bit over 1 meg left after Windows is loaded.  So there
>is no way for you to run 2 640K dos windows.
> 

This is not true.  I have a 386 with 4 megs of RAM and I can open 16 DOS boxes
before running out of memory, much more than the 4 megs of actual memory that
I have avaliable.  I think windows can swap inactive DOS boxes to virtual.  
My hypotheis as to why you run out of memory is because windows saves some of
that memory for itself.  When windows apps like paintbrush, write, and notebook
get minimized, only a portion of their code stays in memory.  DOS boxes when
minimized don't free up any memory, therefore there is no memory avaliable 
for windows functions (some of the 386 management stuff takes heafty memory
space).  Also, windows does some weird stuff as to where in memory it sticks 
things.  Perhaps there is no contiguous block free for a new DOS box.


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