Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!aries!mcdonald
From: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: How to get extended mem back after a windows session?
Keywords: extendedmemory,  himem.sys
Message-ID: <1990Oct27.005409.19884@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Date: 27 Oct 90 00:54:09 GMT
References: <1990Oct26.195130.17719@cs.uoregon.edu> <1990Oct26.214912.19652@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <1990Oct26.225054.28224@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: School of Chemical Sciences, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Lines: 41

In article <1990Oct26.225054.28224@portia.Stanford.EDU> aaron@jessica.stanford.edu (Aaron Wallace) writes:
>In article <1990Oct26.214912.19652@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald) writes:
>
>[ Question as to why have Himem/XMS deleted ]
>
>>Very simple: Microsoft did it that way to pimp out users of other companies
>>software. Himem.sys makes it impossible to use any software using
>>extended memory that was written earlier than it was. This means that
>>Microsoft is saying "Hah Hah!! You thought it was safe to buy other
>>companies products? Gotcha!!! We are Microsoft - you use our 
>>products, then WE will prevent you from running other companies
>>products! If you buy ONLY ours...... (*)"
>
>Excuse me, but anyone can write an XMS-compliant program. 
Certainly, they can now. Its trivial. ***BUT THEY COULD NOT DO
SO BEFORE THE SPEC FOR IT EXISTED!!!!!!*** The point is that this
new thing ***BREAKS EXISTING PERFECTLY CORRECT PROGRAMS***.
It is an ex post facto attempt to usurp extended memory.



>The alternatives?  Back-patch INT 15h to reflect how much memory you're 
>claiming--
>this works well when programs are run/quit in a LIFO manner, 
Yep, thats how you do it.

but otherwise
>
>>Actually, there are ways to fake out himem.sys but they are
>>rather complicated to describe. Basically, you lose unless your 
>>are a sneaky programmer.
>
>Maybe Microsoft could have written a program that tells HIMEM to revert to the
>braindead non-memory-management system, 



Exactly - they should have allowed for the older method to still work.
I am VERY adamant about this.

Doug McDonald