By the way, if any of you is interested in optimizing Win32 programs for retro systems..
Include optional relocation tables. The Windows versions that can benefit from them will use them (Win31+Win32s, Win XP+ with DEP etc).
And it should not hurt to align executables to 4K boundaries, too. 😀
Systems like Windows 98 do have the ability to load such programs directly from VCache,
so no extra memory operations are needed.
For a start, all you need is to use the tools included in Windows 98/SE. Like winalign.exe.
"Winalign.exe and Walign.exe optimize programs by rewriting a program's file headers, creating a new section table, and
then writing file sections, each of which starts on a 4-kilobyte (KB) boundary. The new section table is then updated with this information, and the file headers are also
updated to denote the file is now aligned to a 4-KB boundary. By aligning files in this manner, the Windows 98 CacheMap feature can map directly to sections in the cache memory. This can result in significant performance increases by freeing memory. [..] "
Source: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ques … -start-do/11743
This works best on a FAT32 system, also (vs FAT16).
If its HDD is freshly defragmented, the better.
Some extra tools can be found here: https://www.mdgx.com/98-1.htm
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