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From: scjones@thor.UUCP (Larry Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Why load "SHARE" (was Re: program to break 32MB barrier)
Message-ID: <140@thor.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jan 91 18:25:10 GMT
References: <1991Jan21.230226.4874@hub.cs.jmu.edu> <5489@husc6.harvard.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: SDRC, Cincinnati
Lines: 21

In article <5489@husc6.harvard.edu>, albert@endor.uucp (David Albert) writes:
> Why is it the case that "SHARE must be loaded for large media" in
> MS-DOS 4.01?  I ran my computer with a full 40Meg hard disk for a
> month without SHARE loaded, with no problems.  Might something bad
> have happened if I continued?

SHARE is needed to allow the old DOS 1.0 FCB functions to work right
on a large partition -- if it is not loaded, they wrap around and trash
the partition.  Since they are significantly faster in some cases than
the newer functions that were supposed to replace them, they are still
widely used.  If you have a large partition and don't load SHARE, you're
living on borrowed time.  On the other hand, there's a small piece of
public domain software that replaces SHARE -- rather than making the FCB
functions work right, it intercepts the calls and returns a failure
status (and also puts out a message indicating that it happened, I
believe).  That way you don't trash the disk and it takes up a whole lot
less space.  I don't remember the name, but it's undoubtedly on SIMTEL.
----
Larry Jones, SDRC, 2000 Eastman Dr., Milford, OH  45150-2789  513-576-2070
Domain: scjones@thor.UUCP  Path: uunet!sdrc!thor!scjones
Do you think God lets you plea bargain? -- Calvin