Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!helix.nih.gov
From: bert@helix.nih.gov (Bert Tyler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: RE: ATI 256-color Drivers, Winfract, and memory
Message-ID: <572@nih-csl.nih.gov>
Date: 29 Oct 90 21:09:24 GMT
Sender: news@nih-csl.nih.gov
Organization: National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
Lines: 28

> The earlier version of Winfract does not work (gives "unable to
> allocate global memory" error) but I haven't tried the new version yet.
> I was also unable to get a 256 color .bmp as background, but that is
> probably due to the fact that I only have a 1MB 286 motherboard.
 
That (admittedly uninformative - will fix) error message from Winfract
is caused by the fact that your system doesn't have enough free memory for
it to start up.  When Winfract first fires up, it looks around a bit 
figuring out what your hardware looks like, and starts up with a 2, 16,
or 256-color bitmap depending on what your video driver can support.  If
it can't get enough memory for that initial DIB, it spews out that ugly
error message and quits.

My guess is that your system had *just* enough free memory for Winfract to
fire up its default 200x150x16 Device-Independant Bitmap, but when you
switched to your 256-color driver, Winfract tried to GlobalAllocate enough
room for a 200x150x256 DIB instead - and couldn't get the memory.

Now, given that the size difference between those two bitmaps is all of
15000 bytes (assuming that the 256-color video driver takes up no more
room than the 16-color video driver), and version 2.0 of Winfract has more
doodads in it, the odds are that version 2.0 won't even get *that* far.


Bert Tyler
bert@helix.nih.gov
tub@nihcu.bitnet
73477.433@compuserve.com