Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watdcsu!dmurdoch
From: dmurdoch@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (D.J. Murdoch - Statistics)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Swapping to disk
Message-ID: <5345@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 88 22:02:40 GMT
References: <5327@watdcsu.waterloo.edu> <245400002@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: dmurdoch@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (D.J. Murdoch - Statistics)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 32

In article <245400002@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>
>You are trying to run two standard programs that are too big to fit.
>Try running two SMALL programs - it will work fine. 
>
>Actually, there are reasons for this. Windows 386 does indeed appear
>to be unable to swap to disk (Desqview does, and is so slow that
>maybe Microsoft was right). It seems that Windows 386 allocates MUCH
>more memory than is needed to run the program. It must save a bitmap
>of the whole screen (and will, indeed, if needed, save all of graphics
>memory, which for a full EGA is 256K. Yes, one screen is less, but
>there is room for two). There must be other stuff too, it is so big.
>Try running two programs each less than 100K long. It will work.
>
>Microsoft probably is a secret agent of Japan Inc. Memory Chips. :-)
>
>Doug McDonald

Thanks for your reply - you were right that I could run two small programs.
I'm very confused about how to determine how much memory is available, 
however.  The numbers given by the MSDOS Executive don't seem to bear
much relation to reality - is there a utility somewhere that will tell me
how much memory is really available for additional windows?

As to the use of the disk for swapping, I'm only considering using it for 
applications that aren't going to attempt to run in the background.  I should
be able to put up with a small delay when I select the window again.
The Windows manual even names a WIN.INI variable (sorry, it's at work and
I forget the name) to hold a swapping directory.  Does Windows/386 just
ignore this?

Duncan Murdoch