mitsu@well.UUCP (Mitsuharu Hadeishi) (08/01/89)
I noticed that Windows/386 does not support certain
hi-res displays (such as the Wyse 700). However, after some investigation
I found an interesting hack that gave me most of what I wanted from
Windows/386, and then some: I simply use QEMM from Quarterdeck with
Windows/286! Of course you don't get true multitasking but you can get
as many large DOS partitions as you like and switch between them rapidly
(swapping goes out to EMS rather than the hard disk, so it works quickly).
In addition, if you have applications that use a DOS Extender (such as
Mathematica, C++, or other sophisticated applications) since QEMM is
compatible with such 386 DOS Extenders you can run those applications
as well, yet under Windows! (Windows/386 does not provide this capability).
Since I use C++ daily, this gives me much MORE power than Windows/386
provides.
Important configuration caveats: make a PIF file for command.com,
and give it a lot of memory (say 300K required, 640K desired). On my
machine I get DOS partitions with about 511K free, plenty of memory for
most all of my DOS apps (particularly those that use the DOS extender). I
have 4 meg on my system and am able to run Smartdrive and two or three
DOS partitions without swapping to the hard disk (after that I can run
many more, but they swap to the hard disk). It helps to include the line
MAPS=32 to be able to run more Windows applications, and RAM=1000-6fff
causes Windows/286 memory management to operate more effectively, allowing
one to run Paint and other applications that allocate large contiguous
bitmaps, although you lose some EMS swap area doing this (it doesn't seem
to affect performance much on my machine.) (This last thing is a weirdity
of Windows which I'd love some Microsoft technician to explain to me someday---
it took me some time with Heapwalk and fiddling about to hit upon this solution
to not being able to run Paint with QEMM up.)mitsu@well.UUCP (Mitsuharu Hadeishi) (08/02/89)
Correction to my article referring to using QEMM with Windows/286 on a 386 machine: RAM=1000-6fff should read EXCLUDE=1000-6fff.