Op 29-1-2013 20:02, Michael B. Brutman schreef: > PC/MS DOS 5.x and 6.x will run in 256K with usable memory to spare. > PC/MS DOS 3.x will run in 128K with usable memory to spare. If FreeDOS > is designed/optimized for a bigger footprint then that's fair, but there > is nothing wrong with asking or trying to push the limits. > > So make it 256K. Fine. The point (which you missed by a country mile) > is that it should run on a fairly small machine. Because they are out > there ... And no, 35 years ago would put us in 1978. 128K/256K PC > style machines were common even in 1985/1986. FreeDOS does not add that > much extra function where a 256K (or even a smaller machine) could not > be a reasonable target.
Boot FreeDOS on a modern machine (or emulator) without loading an XMS driver. You'll see about 56KB for kernel (likely config.sys settings can reduce memory if manually specifying a lower amount of buffers/files etc) and FreeCOM using about 101KB (which you can't reduce, even if loading an XMS-manager from commandline). That makes 157KB, without having loaded drivers and loaded programs. Though compiled versions of FreeCOM exist that can swap large parts of shell to disk upon executing a command, my bet would be on the shells used by embedded ROM-DOS or so. 4DOS also is able to swap to disk (256KB swapfile) in order to preserve memory for starting/running programs. Out of the remaining amount of conventional memory, I've got no idea what's still able to run and what not. Only ever used machines that had at least 640KB available. Any emulator available that allows to set CPU below 386 and total system memory capacity at a user-selected value below 1024KB ? Bernd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Master Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL, ASP.NET, C# 2012, HTML5, CSS, MVC, Windows 8 Apps, JavaScript and much more. Keep your skills current with LearnDevNow - 3,200 step-by-step video tutorials by Microsoft MVPs and experts. ON SALE this month only -- learn more at: http://p.sf.net/sfu/learnnow-d2d _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
