Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!stl!ndh From: ndh@stl.stc.co.uk (Neale D Hind ) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: In praise of QEMM-386 Message-ID: <3981@stl.stc.co.uk> Date: 28 Jan 91 17:49:50 GMT Sender: news@stl.stc.co.uk Reply-To: "Neale D Hind " Organization: STC Technology Limited, London Road, Harlow, Essex, UK Lines: 85 Summary of this posting _______________________ o QEMM-386 seems an excellent product (I have no connection with Quarterdeck) o When trying to maximise the number of Devices/TSR's in high memory, try swapping around the order in which they are loaded in your config.sys and autoexec.bat files. o Do read through the Fine-tuning parameters in the manual. Especially the EMBMEM and EXTMEM if you are having problems with applications clashing (eg some need expanded, others extended, memory). o Statements in postings along the lines of "Product 'A' does not work with product 'B'" most likely mean "I do not know how to make product 'A' work with product 'B'" There has beem quite a few postings about QEMM-386 under DOS. I have been very impressed with the product (using v5.11). The problem, if any, is with the documentation rather than the software - everything you need is in there somewhere, but finding it is the difficulty. (But with the vast combinations of machine/software that must be around this is not really surprising). I am running QEMM on an i486 PC (company not mine - sigh!!!) that has a WD Ethercard installed and is dedicated to two applications PC/FOCUS (database system) and Lotus 1-2-3 r3.1 (spreadsheet - as if you needed telling). The Ethercard takes up nearly 80k with print redirection loaded. PC/FOCUS wants as much conventional memory as possible and will use up to 2mb expanded, 1-2-3 r3.1 wants as much extended memory as possible. First Problem - Maximise use of high memory ___________________________________________ The first problem was shifting as many TSR's into high memory as possible. Initially they would not all go - tucked away on page 56 of the manual was a (small print) reference to the fact that TSR's often require much more memory to load than they need to remain resident. BUT it didn't tell you that 'OPTIMIZE' doesn't try shifting the order around of TSR's in your autoexec. The solution was to load them high with the /getsize parameter (page 41 - finds out how much memory they really need) and then alter the order in your autoexec (after all who cares if keyb is loaded before or after the Ethercard software). The net result is that 101k of TSR's / DOS resources are now loaded high and the machine is left with 593k of conventional memory. Second Problem - Expanded v Extended ____________________________________ After installing 1-2-3 r3.1 it would not load (something about the hardware not conforming to some standard or other). With a vanilla configuration it worked fine so the error message was a red herring. The dirty fix was to add the parameter EXT=1000 (page 19) to the QEMM command in config.sys. This let 1-2-3 run with 1mb extended memory leaving more than enough for PC/FOCUS to run with it's maximum expanded memory (2mb). But this seemed inelegant, so I read the bits of the manual that at the time had seemed irrelevant. (ie Windows 3.0 installation). Tucked away in the Windows 3.0 section of the manual (have all those people who complain about the product with Windows read pages 10 - 12?) is a reference to an EMB parameter which talked about VCPI and EMS memory allocation schemes. I had seen the term VCPI in the 1-2-3 manual and so, trial and error at work, the EMB parameter (page 19) was added to the QEMM command in config.sys and lo and behold, PC/FOCUS sees all the memory as expanded and 1-2-3 sees it all as extended. Moral _____ Don't expect a software package to manage something as sophisticated as machine memory to do a 100% job first time round on it's install routine. Expect some sweat to get the best from it. ---- Neale D. Hind - (N.D.Hind@stl.stc.co.uk)