Re: XyWrite for Windows versus XP Pro/SP2

[Patricia M Godfrey pmgodfrey@xxxxxxxx]

Ed, What are you doing with SMARTDRV.EXE in your autoexec.bat? Does XP
really need it? 9x certainly doesn't. _Windows 98 Secrets_ (Livingston
and Straub) say SMARTDRV is a 16-bit, real-mode cache that has been
replaced by Vcache, a 32-bit, protected-mode dynamic cache that doesn't
take up conventional or upper memory space. It isn't in my autoexec.bat;
in fact nothing active is (there are a few remmed out items that I tried
and discarded) beyond the path statement. So it might be gobbling up RAM
that XyWin needs. Can any XP users out there advise as to whether it's
really needed? (Don't remove it, or even rem it out, until we're sure.
Esp. with no floppy to boot from.) And what is that Ez at the end?

If you don't absolutely need TrueType (which is all I use XyWin for),
your files will be readable in Xy4 DOS. And with XP you can even print to
a USB printer, if it's PostScript or HP PCL (Robert detailed the
procedure for mapping the USB port to an LPT, but it doesn't work in 9x
unless it's really a network printer). Even if it's not, you can typef to
a postscript file and then export to PDF with PostGhost. Am I correct in
thinking that XyShell works with XP? Even if not, there's a workaround.

The rest is pure theory, as I don't have an XP box (or even a 2K one) to
test on. But the fact that Carl (of all people) cannot get XyWin running
on an XP machine while others can makes me strongly suspect a hardware or
BIOS component ot the problem. When TTG "designed" XyWin, they purchased
WYSIWYG at a ruinous price. The program gets severly confused by modern
display adapters. Just the other day, I had a 2-page invoice up in XyWin
(need a TrueType font for my logo). Nothing fancy: the DBA was in perhaps
24-point, everything else in 12-point, no graphics beyond two two-row
column tables. On screen, I had a bar of the desktop overwriting the
file. It printed OK, but...

Recall that when XyW (DOS and Win) was written, the average display
adaptor had 256 or 512 K of RAM. Nowadays, even my underpowered system
has 16 MB on the (integrated) AGP circuit and a further 16 MB borrowed
from system RAM. I suspect that XyWin is making some direct calls to
memory addresses that are being used by something else in modern systems.
But, obviously, not all modern systems, or nobody would be able to get it
running.

Sometimes a system that has been running XyWin nicely will suddenly
report that it cannot not load for lack of memory. (That's what drove me
to upgrade in May 03) Obviously, some bitrot in Windows, which might be
fixable with a complete reinstall, but not if all you have is a "restore
CD."

So, to get practical: could we compile a list of what hardware (CPU, Mobo
brand, chipsets) does and does not run XyWin? I seem to recall that
someone here couldn't get XyDOS running on 95, so the problem is not just
with XP. This box is an AMD Duron (the Mobo was sold me as an ECS K7SEM,
but then ECS insisted it was PCCHips M810L), AMI BIOS, SIS 730 Chipset,
PCI BUS vers. 2.10, PnP BIOS v. 2.3, VGA is SIS 630 GUI Accelerator,
sound is SIS 7018. I have it running on several older system (ancient,
some of them), but the newer the systems, the more problems, so we should
probably confine ourselves to newer ones--unless someone has had problems
on older ones, and can warn off would-be purchasers of second-hand
systems. I suggested this a while back, and we did get some answers,
which I will see if I can unearth from the archives.

Patricia M. Godfrey
PMGodfrey@xxxxxxxx