Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 13:21:25 -700
From: Walter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Nettamer Vs. Bobcat
Bobcat was coded to run on an 8086 CPU, at the very least, where it
is rare to find EMS/XMS memory. Bobcat does use SPAWNO, however, to
evacuate the software from memory when "external" software is called
or when a shell to DOS is invoked. But, this doesn't help the
exhausted memory issue. The author of Bobcat -- Wayne Buttles -- is
no longer coding the software. At least, that's what I was told in
E-Mail from him quite recently. His original focus was on creating a
DOS port of the famous Lynx browser for UNIX and one which would run
on minimal/legacy hardware. Memory was not and is not an issue in
Lynx since UNIX applications use "virtual memory." Thus, as I intuit,
he was working on mysteries with few clues in attempting to solve
Bobcat's memory problems. That's to say he may not have been too keen
on making extensive changes to accommodate memory issues in DOS which
might otherwise break ported code. I gathered, from the E-Mail
referenced above, that Buttles was not well-versed in programming
around and for memory usage. There is a 386 version of Bobcat which
makes extensive use of EMS/XMS memory and therefore solves the memory
usage problem for hardware newer than 8088/8086/80286 processors.
The author pointed me to a website where another person had written a
port to DOS that runs on 80286 CPUs. I tried to download that
package. But, the URL provided was dead. (no server response when
attempting a download)
Walter Scott
On 2001-01-06 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
and the group:
::>I too have begun to experience the "exhausted memory" messages
::>from Bobcat. And it is such a pity because the program works so
::>flawlessly in most other respects.
::>
::>What I can't understand is why memory should be "eaten up" over a
::>period of several minutes, hopping from link to link. One would
::>think that pages could be cached to disk, or simply not cached at
::>all.
::>
::> [......]
::>
::>That said, I don't understand why the maker of Bobcat could not
::>make use of EMS/XMS memory as Arachne does, at least employing such
::>in an alternate release version.
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