On 26 Feb 99, Gunnar Thoele wrote :
Hallo Gunnar,
Speaking about the QNX internet demo which according to their web page
<http://www.qnx.com/iat/modem/index.html> runs from a bootable
floppy, on a 386 or better, no harddisk needed - but at least 8 MB
memory required.
> >..... pretty amazing. Anyone here tried it?
> Yes, on a 386-16 IBM Laptop with 6 MB RAM.
> (It was an older version which somehow could manage
> everything with 6 MB)
I have a second PC, a Thinkpad 300 (a 386-25) with 8 MB on it, which
should be more than sufficient given that you succeeded with less. So I
figured I give it a try. But no, it refused to load, the error report
said not enough memory. :-(
Granted, my Thinkpad reserves 384 kb for the system, so in fact I have
less than 8MB available, even if 8 MB physically installed (for
non-geeks like my self, this sure is easy to forget!) Still this do
not explain why it fails to load, considering you managed to run it
with even less (6MB). Maybe the QNX demo expects to use the memory area
reserved by my system? I dunno.
One thing I found mildly confusing though is the way QNX reports the
memory detected. On my Thinkpad with 8MB it the error report
said:
*** Error: Not enough memory (6286K detected)***
The QNX demo requires that your machine have a minimum of 8
Mbytes of memory. Please install more memory, or try this disk on a
different computer.
I have no problems understanding what *not enough* means. What I found
confusing was the fact that it reports much less (6286 kb) than what
is actually on it. My Thinkpad have a total of 8192 kb (640 base mem and
7168 extended, but 384 reserved by system). After testing my Thinkpad
for memory errors (internal test) I booted the demo from my 386-16 w/
4MB (a PS/2). Here QNX detected only 2428 kb out a total of 4096 kb (
640 base mem,3328 extended, but 128 reserved by system). I noticed the
following:
Looking at extended memory alone, the QNX in both cases reported
exactly 900 kb less than the actual.
Thinkpad: 7168 extended - 6268 detected = 900 kb diff
PS/2: 3328 extended - 2428 detected = 900 kb diff
Looking at the totals, subtracting what was detected and what is
reserved by the system on these machines, I end up with the amount of
memory used (I assume) by QNX at the time of the error report:
Thinkpad: 8192 total - 6268 detected - 384 system = 1540 in use
PS/2: 4096 total - 2428 detected - 128 system = 1540 in use
Reading one of their web pages again <http://www.qnx.com/iat/how.html>
what is said in the section about *How the demo disk works* seems to
be in accordance with this. I'm not sure I understand all the technical
details listed, but in short: The moment QNX issues the error report
and memory count, the compressed data from the floppy (1,44 Mb) and the
boot-loader (x kb), and maybe part of the kernel - or the ramdisk
software (x kb) is all loaded in memory, adding up to some 1540 kb.
What QNX reports as *detected memory* at this stage is thus only the
remaining available memory, not counting the memory already in use.
Mildly confusing!
> Works great. I compared the speeds of the QNX windowing system
> with Win 3.11 installed on the same machine. Guess what came out...
> BTW did you know that DOOM is available for QNX?
No, I didn't know this. I read somewhere someone saying QNX being
used to code software for space shuttles. If this is true or not, well
I would't know. (If this is mentioned one their web pages, I missed
it. Did not read them all)
All the best
Bjorn
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