Hi, I need to run a DOS executable of size 1040Kb. When I execute this in a Windows XP DOS box I get, of course, the message 'program too big to fit in memory'. Does DOSBox allow me to optimise RAM for DOS executables like we did in the old days before Windows?
Not really. DOSBox essentially comes pre-optimied. You have 634KB of conventional memory free on startup. The most I ever got in a real DOS system was 620KB (or maybe it was 610? I can't remember well, but, 620 does sound a bit impossible) or so with one of the drivers used to get so much free being one that crashed my system a lot. In other words, with DOSBox you really don't have to worry about conventional memory anymore (thank god, that's another thing I don't really miss about the DOS days.) The coolest thing about it is that that 634KB free is WITH drivers essentially built in.
Sounds like a corrupted program.
it might be possible.
It depends a bit on the exe header.
Water flows down the stream
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wrote:Sounds like a corrupted program.
Because of the claim it requires 1MB?
It struck me that he either misunderstood the message or it was just poorly worded. It probably meant just to say that it requires a system with at least 1MB of memory.
I could be wrong though. If it really expects 1MB of conventional memory to be free, then something is definitely messed up.
wrote:
Looks like you're right.
Oh well, to answer his first question, no, no need to memory manage DOSBox. But, clearly that file is damaged and needs to be replaced with an original.
Thankyou all for the flurry of responses. What an excellent forum. Absolutely right, on closer inspection it turned out not be an executable of any description whatsoever. I was sold an expensive dummy there.
> But, clearly that file is damaged and needs to be replaced with an original.
Why? There are a lot of games/progs which use an extender, thus loading
them works fine under dosbox (see the posting from rcblanke). The
executable parts >size mod something (don't remember, think it's
0x9fff) will be loaded through the extender.
Er, I did read his post, hence the quote. The implication of what I read there is that it means the file is currupted.
Anyway, let's put it this way. Just run the program from inside of DOSBox. It's very unlikely it can in any way damage your system if it goes horribly wrong (helps to not mount C:\ as C:\ though -- the advantage of an emulated system is it's very hard for anything going wrong, such as a virus, to affect the host system in any large way) and if it fails with the same error message, then chances are that it is currupted. If it works, then it's just windows with it's very bad conventional management (I usually get around 580KB or so conventional in NTVDM's environment, which is enough to run MOST dos programs -- though for games that's really pushing it -- but definitely isn't enough to hold a candle even to DOSBox's 634KB free.) If it still doesn't work in DOSBox then either you have a currupted file, or it wasn't meant to be run that way at all (perhaps meant to go with something else and be run by that other program?)
some computers allowed you to adjust conventional memory size in the bios and make it either 640kb (<- compatible mode) or 1mb (<- enhanced mode)
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