Re: available memory

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

J R FOX wrote:
> So, all those OS memory settings for the program are
> irrelevant, in this regard ? We'll be branded with
> that "X", no matter what ?
That's an interesting question. Up through XP you could set all
those things on the memory tab of the shortcut properties page
(the one you get to from right-clicking the shortcut itself; we
need a clear nomenclature to distinguish the two property pages:
this and the one you get to from right-clicking the title bar of
an open app running in a window). I once did some experiments and
found that setting too many too high could send Xy into a
tailspin. I always set Expanded to 5120 (per a long discussion
here a few years back), though that was probably irrelevant,
since I don't use the dictionary that needs it, everything else
to Auto, and checked Protected and Uses HMA. The Expanded at
least took: if you shelled to DOS and typed mem/d, you would see
EMS memory.
I use the past tense, because in Vista it's all a mirage. If you
run Xy under command.com (but then you cannot change the icon;
see innumerable previous posts on this), you have a Memory tab on
the desktop pif properties Page. But it's a pack of lies. When
you run mem/d, there's NO EMS memory at all. Whether this is
Redmond deliberately spreading FUD, so people won't use
command.com or apps that run under it, or just bad communications
(the team designing the system internals didn't let the team
maintaining the GUI know that they'd axed that functionality), I
don't know. (I may have my suspicions. But who was it said it's
safest to attribute messes to stupidity rather than malice, or
words to that effect?) Or it just occurs to me, it may simply be
that this hardware has no "hole" for an EMS page-frame: all the
under 1Mb RAM is occupied by hardware. (And not merely can you
not copy or save that report, from Device Manager, you can no
longer even print it, as you could up through W2K; and if you can
print, you can "print" to a file using the generic/text printer
and get a plain text report that way. Grr!)
On the other hand, so far (knock wood!), Xy, running under
cmd.exe, with not even the pretense of memory settings, does not
seem to go OOM any more frequently under Vista than under XP or
9x. I just pulled up one of my largest Xy files, 112,468 Bytes,
heavily formatted, and ran some SEearches and CVs on it, and I
did not go OOM or get the dreaded "Cannot continue scrolling"
message (which can sometimes be escaped from by switching to
expanded mode). The X was there, but it made no never-mind.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
priscamg@xxxxxxxx