[net.micro.pc] out of memory

bradley@princeton.UUCP (Bradley Dickinson) (02/27/86)

I have a curious problem.  In running an application (PC-MATLAB)
by calling a batch file located in c:\matlab (a directory included
in my path) I get the "program too big to fit in memory" message
when I'm in the c:\ directory, but everything is fine when I start
in the c:\matlab directory.  Can anyone suggest why I have this
problem?  It does not happen on other machines that I believe to
be configured in the same way. ?????
Thanks for any suggestions about this problem.
Bradley Dickinson   ...allegra!princeton!bradley

reintom@rocky2.UUCP (Tom Reingold) (03/02/86)

>I have a curious problem.  In running an application (PC-MATLAB)
>by calling a batch file located in c:\matlab (a directory included
>in my path) I get the "program too big to fit in memory" message
>when I'm in the c:\ directory, but everything is fine when I start
>in the c:\matlab directory.  Can anyone suggest why I have this
>problem?  It does not happen on other machines that I believe to
>be configured in the same way. ?????
>Thanks for any suggestions about this problem.
>Bradley Dickinson   ...allegra!princeton!bradley

What is happening is the following:

You are not accessing your batch file that is in your path.  You
are accessing a file in your current directory.  (DOS always
searches the current dir before your path.)  The file in your
current dir (the root dir) is matlab.com and it is hidden.  This is
part of a copy protection scheme.  When you run your program in the
normal way, it looks for \matlab.com and checks to see if it is as
it was when the installation program put it there.  (It does other
things too but I won't go into that now.)

There is not much you can do, unfortunately.  I hate copy
protection myself.  After all, you have paid for the product; why
should you be inconvenienced more than pirates?  I suggest you buy
CopyWrite from Quaid in Toronto.  It can break pretty much every
scheme so that you can make as many legitimate archival copies as
you need to.

Tom Reingold
New York City