Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 92 11:42:47 EDT
From:         Robert Braham <RMB@CUNYVMS1>
Subject:      Blums's UMB driver and huge free RAM for NB
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene

More news re Blum's driver:

On my 386 computer, with C&T 82C351 ( 386DX ) chipset (4M RAM), and
a) forcing the shadowing of A000- in the /M switch (which
apparently removes some of my video shadowing, but NB doesn't
care)
b) using the "extended" version of the Hyperware cache--Hyperdkx,
not Hyper386
c) enabling all shadowing in the BIOS setup, _except_ for 64K
system ROM (F000-), the results for NB are:

When I first enter NB, it reports 380 Kb free; after a Shell to
DOS and return, it reports 402 Kb free; after using "func me" (or
Itamar's or Tony's utils) to remove the Math, Spelling, Sorting,
and Printing files, it reports 429 Kb free--while maintaining a
complete HELP_ file.  This is spooky, but apparently it works.s.

This configuration, however, is useless for Windows
(total garbage results), and ineffecient in freeing up the
complete amount of memory for EMS, as the following report shows.
I'm still working on the Windows set-up (I now can have the Video
OK--i.e., no freeze-up--but it looses the boot-page).  Re-booting
w/ an alternative config and autoexec (there are utilities that
facilitate this) seems at the moment to be worthwhile, given the
dramatic results re NB alone (my first and true love).

my config.sys for this:

device=c:\dos\bin\umb_drvr.sys /c=04 /m=++++....................
rem for editing /M                      123456781234567812345678
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICEhigh=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /NUMHANDLES=65
DEVICEhigh=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 512 /E
DEVICEhigh=c:\tvgautil\tansi.sys
devicehigh=c:\dos\bin\umb_ems4.sys
rem burndev is a screen blanker
devicehigh=c:\dos\bin\burndev.sys f3
buffers=20
files=40
SHELL=C:\DOS\COMMAND.COM C:\DOS\  /p
stacks=9,256
rem hyperdkx is the extended-memory version
devicehigh=c:\hyper\hyperdkx.exe c:2048:512 cw:512 s I:200 a p:200
cb:512 oc:-

the mem /c report:

Conventional Memory :

  Name                Size in Decimal       Size in Hex
-------------      ---------------------   -------------
  MSDOS              15904      ( 15.5K)       3E20
  COMMAND             2624      (  2.6K)        A40
  FREE                  64      (  0.1K)         40
  FREE              734896      (717.7K)      B36B0

Total  FREE :       734960      (717.7K)

Upper Memory :

  Name                Size in Decimal       Size in Hex
-------------      ---------------------   -------------
  SYSTEM             65696      ( 64.2K)      100A0
  HIMEM               1072      (  1.0K)        430
  RAMDRIVE            1184      (  1.2K)        4A0
  TANSI               1680      (  1.6K)        690
  UMB_EMS4           73136      ( 71.4K)      11DB0
  BURNDEV             4368      (  4.3K)       1110
  HYPERDKX           27040      ( 26.4K)       69A0
  FREE               55056      ( 53.8K)       D710

Total  FREE :        55056      ( 53.8K)

Total bytes available to programs (Conventional+Upper) :      790016
(771.5K)
Largest executable program size :                             734672
(717.5K)
Largest available upper memory block :                         55056
( 53.8K)

   2555904 bytes total EMS memory
    458752 bytes free EMS memory

   3145728 bytes total contiguous extended memory
         0 bytes available contiguous extended memory
    458752 bytes available XMS memory
           MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU