Hi,
Bernd Blaauw escribió:
Johnson Lam schreef:
I think it SHOULD BE optimized for 386 CPU, that means priority is
386, then have a 8086/286 version for users still using old PC's.
generally the term 'optimized' means 'works only for/on', which I find
very bad. Proper 'optimize' should mean 'has additional features or
speed increase when run on a better platform'
FreeCOM indeed should be optimized for 386 (use XMS), but the same
binary should also work on 80286 (also XMS support if you have about
1.5MB or more total), and on 8086.
I entirely agree with you, but... (see below).
When no XMS is found, CALL /S (swap freecom out to disk) should be
allowed to work.
However current FreeCOM versions have become too big and complex to
allow all features in a single binary.
4DOS uses the same 'swap to XMS' trick, and in conventional memory is a
lot larger (220KB or so) without this trick.
most optimal would be a 8086 compatible version of FreeCOM, with all
features enables, and XMS swap on 286, and support for swapping to HMA
or expanded memory (EMS). EMS does exist on hardware cards on really
ancient computers.
This would be ok, but in most cases being optimized for 386 also means
that you have compiled for 386+ opcodes, so it is hard or impossible.
It could be that the, say, three versions are bundled together within an
executable, and by means of some trick, the correct version is unpacked
and run, but note that the executable version would grow a bit.
Perhaps Eric can come up with one such ideas of packing programs
together, given that he's the author of the CPX trickery.
Aitor
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