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From: ralf+@cs.cmu.edu (Ralf Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.desqview
Subject: Re: Communication programs
Message-ID: <13127@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 20 May 91 21:15:36 GMT
References: <1991May19.113245.19970@cs.umu.se>
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Lines: 41

In article <1991May19.113245.19970@cs.umu.se> dvldbg@cs.umu.se (Daniel Brahneborg) writes:
}I read somewhere in the manual that you shouldn't let com-progs be
}swapped out. Is there any workaround for this? The problem is

Not unless you want your system to crash the next time a character comes in
the serial port after the program has been swapped out.

}Now I have a 286, with 1 Mb memory. Would more memory do it?
}(Expanded or extended, I never seem to remember the difference.)

You would need an expansion board which supports *hardware* EEMS or EMS4 and
can backfill the low 640K with mappable memory.  In addition, you would need
to disable as much motherboard memory as possible to give you a large
mappable area for multitasking.  Unfortunately, most 286 machines now won't
boot with less than 512K on the motherboard, which would limit you to one
500+K partition and multiple 128K or 192K (if no EGA/VGA) partitions.
Besides, the cost of such an upgrade is pretty close to the cost of a 386SX
motherboard....

You will want to get a much smaller comm program.  My own RBcomm (available
on SIMTEL20) will run in 65K with file transfers or as little as 45K without,
and provides full VT10x support plus partial VT2xx support.  That may be
sufficient for your needs.  It's also DESQview-aware.

}I also tried opening two Basic-windows. Very cute, if the could only
}run at the same time. Now it just says 'Swapping', and stops the first
}one when I click on the second. Very annoying. So, what is happening
}here? I tought that DV could multitask, even if you didn't have a 386.

Sure it can, but you are limited to a TOTAL of about 500K worth of programs
on less than a 386 unless you have the above-mentioned hardware EMS4.  So
if the BASIC window is set to more than half of the "total available"
conventional memory listed by the memory status program, DV will have to
kick one out of memory in order to load a second.


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