Re: file size

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Mark Garvey wrote:

> Not sure this question made it through to the list.
> Can anyone take a stab at my file size question?

Mark,

Not so Off the Wall theory: It may be because some have had to go to
draconian mail filters, "size" being an all too common Sp*m buzzword.
I haven't done that yet, but I've considered it. Almost deleted your
message unread though, because I didn't recognize your name and
suspected the worst based on your header. You wouldn't believe how
much of this junk still manages to get through my filters. And I
still can't believe how many people seem to be getting away with
selling stuff like Vicodin and Percoset online. I'd just like not to
have to receive all the solicitations for it, and the barrage of many
other junk mail categories.


> > I'm running XY3+ on an Omnibook 800CT that's booting
> > to DOS. I'm finding that the program will not load
> > large-ish files. I've got one that's 135K that won't
> > open. Message: Can't create temp file. Out of
> > memory.
> > The machine's got 48MB of RAM.

That should be plenty. I ran Xy-3+ for many years on hardware with a
small fraction of those resources. Unless your hard drive is full up,
it shouldn't be an issue. Elementary question (please excuse if too
much so) : Do you have a line like the following present in your
STARTUP.INT ?

  BC Default DR=D:\Temp

Where "D:\Temp" is a real, existing location (subdirectory), with a
decent amount of free disk space. Substitute your own choice of
"Temp" directory for the spillfile, according to the layout of your
hard drive. (Mine was more typically on Drive F, but I always had
quite a few partitions, and you may not, especially on a laptop. The
"BC" on that line is a function call (which appears highlighted), not
ordinary letters. There are various ways to enter it, but the easiest
one is probably just to define & copy it from another line in your
Startup file. Every line there is apt to begin with one. (The format
of things in Startup.Int is a bit different for XY-4.)

Since you are running real DOS, at a DOS prompt you might as well
check how much free memory you have to load programs. Run the command

 MEM /C | MORE

and note what is reported for "Largest Executable Size."

Memory managers are another issue, and they can somewhat stretch the
amount of usable memory in which to load DOS programs, but I would not
consider 135K all that large a file to load, even for XY-3+. If you
load a file that exceeds what you have, it should get handled by the
spillfile Xy will create (to disk), at which point you should see an
"X" on the right side of your Xy Command Line.

> > I tried some memory management in the config.sys
> > file--loading himem, etc. But it didn't help.

Get the basics working right, and *then* you can experiment with this.

> > Any pointers or suggested key words for the archive
> > search would be appreciated.

"Xy3*" or "Xy-3*" AND "memory."

> > Related question: As I said, I'm running a dual boot
> > (boot to DOS, but can run Win98 when I need to). The
> > config.sys file is empty. Will adding memory
> > management commands into that empty config.sys file
> > screw anything up when I boot to Windows? That is,
> > assuming the config.sys settings I enter are valid
> > to
> > begin with (i.e., not faulty due to user error).

I don't run any version of Xy in W98, and so can't add anything here.

Hope this helps.


Jordan