[Freedos-devel] re: FreeDOS Beta 0.9 sr1. install. FreeCOM: XMSSwap-In: Memory allocation error

[Eric A. <er...@Co...>]

Hi Eric :-).
Please use TEXT mail, not HTML, in particular when mailing to the list...

> a) iso to fat16 with win98 plus boot diskette
> b) copied to c:\fsbootcd ...
>    can boot but win98 cannot open the cd
> have to use chain-to-kernel to avoid invalid opcode

You mean: You copied the CD contents to a directory on C: and then
used the boot diskette to install? But you said Win98 could not
access the CD, you can only boot from it?

>     Metakern.sys written to C:\ okay.
>     Scan finds no MemDisk.
>     Error: "FreeCOM: XMSSwap-In: Memory allocation error.

Sounds like you had a problem with the default install, which uses
a MEMDISK, so you used some other mode, which avoids the MEMDISK?
I recommend to try some other fail-safe mode which uses the memdisk
but which does not use the SVGA eye-candy install user interface.
If you have no menu item (monochrome, failsafe, ...?) which reaches
the TEXTINST interface, you either have to abort the SVGA interface
when it asks you which graphics or text mode you want to use or
use another boot mode (if nothing else works, use F8 at boot time
to be asked for each step?) and start the TEXTINST program manually.

Depending on how far you got with the installation (e.g. did the
DOS components get installed in c:\fdos already?) you can also
complete the installation manually. Check freedos-config.txt for
some inspiration: You put a fdconfig sys file (if FreeDOS finds it,
it will use it instead of config sys) in your C:\, then put some
fdauto bat or similar somewhere, specify a SHELL line in your
fdconfig sys which points to the FreeDOS command com instead of
to the MS one and which selects fdauto bat to be used instead of
autoexec bat...

FreeDOS should have detected the existing Win98 and installed
metakern. If it worked, you get a boot menu which lets you select
DOS or Win98 whenever you boot from harddisk. If not, you always
boot either Win98 or DOS or booting always fails. In the latter
case, you have to boot from a Win98 or FreeDOS boot diskette or
boot CD and use SYS to make C: boot Win98 or FreeDOS again.

>     Error: "FreeCOM: XMSSwap-In: Memory allocation error.

This should not happen. Check your fdconfig sys (or if you have
none, your config sys). You might need something like "add /E
to the switches= line, and add a switches= line if there is none
in fdconfig sys yet", or "remove I=... parts of the emm386 load
line of emm386". Or just try to update emm386 / himem or to
replace FreeCOM command com (not the MS one, leave that as is)
by the classic stable version (xmsswap zip from
http://freedos.sourceforge.net/freecom/packages/082pl3/ ...!)
or by a newer CVS version: http://fdos.org/kernel/
... avoid the 386-optimized kernels, I think they have a compatibility
problem with EMM386 and nobody wrote that it is solved yet.


Eric