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FreeDOS and DPMI

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David Ormand

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Mar 19, 2003, 4:38:15 PM3/19/03
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Does anybody use SEAL on FreeDOS natively? I know that SEAL
is included as the GUI in the FD distribution, but it won't
run on perfectly good installations. I suspect that it works
fine under EmuDOS, which is probably where most FreeDOS targets
end up. It won't even install on a native setup (a machine
formatted by FD and for which FD is the primary or only OS).

Says it needs DPMI. I'm not real DOS-savvy. I see HIMEM/EMM386,
FDXMS or FDXXMS, and UMBPCI, all presumably for accessing extended
memory. I've tried them all, and SEAL is still not happy.

In fact, I've got a program here at work that was written to
access extended memory. It works fine on MS-DOS with HIMEM.SYS,
but it won't work on FreeDOS. Makes me wonder how compliant
the FD memory managers are. But SEAL was supposedly written with
FD in mind!

David Ormand

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Mar 20, 2003, 10:57:53 AM3/20/03
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Okay, never mind. After a bit of googling, I found CWSDPMI, normally
part of the DJGPP compiler. Strange, I need DPMI to _install_
SEAL, but not apparently to _run_ it.

I still would appreciate a thumbnail explanation of the differences
between HIMEM, EMM386, and FDXMS.

Chris Giese

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Mar 20, 2003, 10:24:11 PM3/20/03
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David Ormand <dlor...@raytheon.com> wrote:

>I still would appreciate a thumbnail explanation of the differences
>between HIMEM, EMM386, and FDXMS.

HIMEM.SYS is Microsoft's XMS (eXtended Memory Specification) driver,
FDXMS is the FreeDOS XMS driver.

XMS is pretty simple: allocate/free the high-memory area, allocate/
resize/free/copy extended memory (above 1 megabyte), and control the
A20 gate.

EMM386 works with HIMEM.SYS to provide upper memory blocks (UMBs)
and simulated EMS. It's obsolete, in my opinion.

Martin Str|mberg

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Mar 21, 2003, 11:21:53 AM3/21/03
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David Ormand <dlor...@raytheon.com> wrote:
: In fact, I've got a program here at work that was written to

: access extended memory. It works fine on MS-DOS with HIMEM.SYS,
: but it won't work on FreeDOS. Makes me wonder how compliant
: the FD memory managers are.

Tell me more about the FDXMS case. What program? Your CONFIG.SYS and
AUTOEXEC.BAT? What happens?


Right,

MartinS

Florian Xaver

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Mar 21, 2003, 4:44:38 PM3/21/03
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You need cwsdpmi.exe in the path.

You can download CWSDPMI (a dpmi server, doesn't need any memory
manager) at
http://ftp.univie.ac.at/mirror/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2misc/csdpmi5b.zip

Unzip it into the seal directory.

bye, flox

--
Florian Xaver
http://www.flox.at.tf <http://www.flox.at.tf>
http://www.drdos.org <http://www.drdos.org>
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