Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!nichols+ From: nichols+@andrew.cmu.edu (David Nichols) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: TSR Manager ... Message-ID: Date: 2 Feb 89 20:17:52 GMT References: <150@usm3b2.EDU> Organization: Information Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 37 In-Reply-To: <150@usm3b2.EDU> Well, there are program like install/remove from PC magazine that let you easily unload tsrs before you run a program. You then have to put them back yourself. Another approach are programs that allocate the max memory used by any of your TSR's and lets you swap them. I tried out ONCALL from Simtel, but after allocating room for ONCALL and my largest TSR, I was only saving about 8k. However, I'm now using a program I just bought from Helix Software called Headroom ($99 or so). It uses 50k, then lets you load and swapout up to 30 or so TSRs. You teach Headroom each of the TSR's hotkeys, and it automagically make them all active without their using any memory. The trick is to save the memory that the TSR will need, plop it in to let it run, and then clean up when the TSR deactivates. You can swap to extended memory, expanded memory, or disk, but disk is a little clunky (you have to hit the hotkeys twice). There are also facilities to for dealing with TSRs that need other interrupts, like print spoolers, etc. You've got to keep them in extended or expanded memory, though. It seems to work pretty well. I'm swapping to disk until I get more memory (my extendend memory has my disk cache), and I've got about 4 TSR's including Sidekick on this thing. I've gotten a few bugs, but only one without an easy workaround was its feature of eating ^@ keystrokes, which are important to Emacs fans. I talked to the author, and he told me how to patch the program (which worked). He also promised to send an update with some display bugs fixed. The other thing that may be Headroom related is some occasional redisplay bugs I'm getting when running kermit on my 19.2k line to school. I don't know what's causing them, but they haven't occurred yet without Headroom loaded. All in all, I'm reasonably pleased. Their number is 718 262-8787. I'm not associated with them in any way other than as a customer. David