ldstern@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Larry Stern) (04/13/91)
To all: I've been told that creating a drive D with ramdrive.sys and loading command.com there (ie. setting comspec=d:\command.com) will increase overall performance and speed. Any comments? P.S. I use a 286 AT clone, 640K base and 384K extended memory. Thanks, Larry Stern -- Larry Stern LDSTERN@RODAN.ACS.SYR.EDU
cs352a41@cs.iastate.edu (Adam Goldberg) (04/14/91)
ldstern@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Larry Stern) writes: >To all: I've been told that creating a drive D with ramdrive.sys and loading >command.com there (ie. setting comspec=d:\command.com) will increase overall >performance and speed. Any comments? >P.S. I use a 286 AT clone, 640K base and 384K extended memory. I have exactly the same configuration, and I do what Larry suggests. Performance increase comes only when loading COMMAND.COM ... ie, exiting programs or spawning a dos shell from within a process. Admittedly, this isn't a great speed-up, but I haven't any easy way to use my upper 384K for anything else. Speaking of which, anyone have any ideas what I could do (for free) to utilize my 384K better than a Ramdisk? -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ! Adam Goldberg ! * ! "It's simple! Even a PASCAL ! ! cs352a41@cs.iastate.edu ! * ! programmer could do it!" ! +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
c60b-1eq@e260-1c.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) (04/14/91)
In article <1991Apr12.192526.23566@rodan.acs.syr.edu> ldstern@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Larry Stern) writes: >To all: I've been told that creating a drive D with ramdrive.sys and loading >command.com there (ie. setting comspec=d:\command.com) will increase overall >performance and speed. Any comments? >P.S. I use a 286 AT clone, 640K base and 384K extended memory. Yes, it should increase overall performance in two respects: (a) when you shell to DOS (another copy of COMMAND.COM has to be loaded); (b) when you're executing COMMAND.COM's intrinsic commands. Situation (b) is less common but it does exist since COMMAND.COM only loads about 5K of itself into low memory and accesses the original COMMAND.COM when necessary. So, to answer your question, yes it does. But I'm sure that you could find better ways of utilizing a 384k RAM disk. Putting COMMAND.COM there is just a generic way of improving performance. You might consider setting some of your programs' 'temporary directories' to the RAM disk (provided you have enough room). That is a much better way to improve a program's performance. One other alternative is an extended memory disk cache. That will improve overall performance, but it may require you to surrender some of your conventional memory. -- +==========================================================================+ | Noam Mendelson ..!agate!ucbvax!web!c60b-1eq | "I haven't lost my mind, | | c60b-1eq@web.Berkeley.EDU | it's backed up on tape | | University of California at Berkeley | somewhere." |
jdwhite@iastate.edu (White Jason David) (04/14/91)
In article <cs352a41.671590865@zippy> cs352a41@cs.iastate.edu (Adam Goldberg) writes: [...] >Admittedly, this isn't a great speed-up, but I haven't any easy way to use >my upper 384K for anything else. Speaking of which, anyone have any ideas >what I could do (for free) to utilize my 384K better than a Ramdisk? >-- Yes, set it up as a disk cache. You'll love the difference in access time. This is, of course, assuming you have a hard disk. Jason White // jdwhite@iastate.edu // "Get bent!" - Bart Simpson
warkenti@CAE.Mitel.Com (Brad Warkentin) (04/20/91)
Adam Goldberg writes:
[use of upper 384K as ramdisk deleted]
Admittedly, this isn't a great speed-up, but I haven't any easy way to use
my upper 384K for anything else. Speaking of which, anyone have any ideas
what I could do (for free) to utilize my 384K better than a Ramdisk?
There are device drivers that allow you to simulate EMS memory with
this 384K extended memory. Most programs recognize this ok and are
willing to use it. I used to do this before I got some other
applications that could use the upper 384K directly. Go looking on
local BBSs for EMS simulators...
BJ...warkenti@CAE.Mitel.Com | This space for rent
Kanata, Ontario, Canada | [ CHEAP ]
I really didn't mean it quite that way, or did I :->jwbirdsa@amc.com (James Birdsall) (04/25/91)
In article <34067@ccicpg.UUCP> mhr@ccicpg.UUCP (MHR {who?}) writes: >Whoa, hold on a moment there. > >The upper 384k of the first megabyte of memory on a PC _is_ EMS memory. >Why would anyone want to go out and get an EMS emulator whic requires >XMS (extended memory spec) memory when they already have the EMS they >need? Hold on yourself. The parts of this which aren't incorrect are meaningless. There are two 384K's wandering around. The high 384K of the first megabyte of address _space_ is used for video RAM, system ROM, the EMS page frame, etc. But if the motherboard uses 1M chips, there's an "extra" 384K of physical memory which can't just be dumped directly into the address space, the way the low 640K can. So, what happens to this extra 384K? Depending on the motherboard, it may be: 1) inaccessible 2) used to shadow ROMs 3) mapped just above the 1M line as extended memory 4) mapped elsewhere above 1M as extended memory 5) turned into expanded memory (EMS) via hardware on the motherboard 6) used for proprietary ramdisks, disk caches, etc. For example, the Compaq 306/20e does a combination of 2 and 4: it uses some of the memory to shadow the system and video ROMs, and maps the rest just below the 16M line as extended memory. It sounds like the original questioner has a motherboard that does at least 3 or 4 -- uses the memory to provide extended memory -- and is looking for something useful to do with it. -- James W. Birdsall WORK: jwbirdsa@amc.com {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!jwbirdsa HOME: {uunet,uw-coco}!amc-gw!picarefy!jwbirdsa OTHER: 71261.1731@compuserve.com ================== Kitten: a small homicidal muffin on legs. ================== =========== "For it is the doom of men that they forget." -- Merlin ===========