Re: [Freedos-devel] Re: WINNT install, FDXMS trouble, HIMEM64 uncompressed enclosed

[Patrick J. L. <pa...@us...>]

Luchezar Georgiev <lu...@ga...> writes:

> > (Although the "UMB" does not seem to do anything; the kernel says
> > "No UMB's available!" every time.  Is this normal?)
> 
> Yes, this is normal, because you REQUEST using UMBs (DOS=...,
> DEVICEHIGH=...) but you DON'T have an UMB "provider" like UMBPCI or
> EMM386 installed!

Shows how ignorant I am about DOS memory management.  :-)

> Yes, FDXMS can't detect which A20 switching method to use and this
> is a disadvantage against HIMEM

That is a pretty huge disadvantage...  Dare I ask why FreeDOS has
both?

> The compressed HIMEM64 binary "as is" doesn't work in DR-DOS since
> its decompression stub has some incompatibility with their kernel,
> but works with all other DOS kernels I tested, including
> FreeDOS. But as the symptom is just like it was on DR-DOS, it seems
> the problem is the same for you. So enclosed is a binary HIMEM64.EXE
> file I compiled myself, UNCOMPRESSED. May it run for you!

It works flawlessly.  Thank you!!

By the way, I should probably mention that I am booting a FreeDOS
"virtual floppy" over the network using PXELINUX and memdisk.
(Network boot is the only way to install a system, in my opinion.)
Perhaps this is related to the decompression problem; I did not even
try using a physical floppy.  Let me know if you want me to try that,
or anything else I can do to help you debug.

Thanks again!

 - Pat