crodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Cliff Rodriguez) (05/09/89)
I am looking for a way to use my hard disk for virtual memory.
Which operating systems for the pc support this?
Does it require a 386.
I am interesting in anything you can caugh up.
--
Cliff Rodriguez
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internet: crodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.arpa
usenet: {uunet|sun|ucbvax|decwrl|uw-beaver}!crodrigu%teknowledge-vaxc.arpamadd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost) (05/14/89)
In article <27562@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> crodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Cliff Rodriguez) writes: |I am looking for a way to use my hard disk for virtual memory. |Which operating systems for the pc support this? |Does it require a 386. There are a variety of them. Which is for you depends on what you want to do. Xenix can give you that on an 80286 or 80386 box, although I believe that there are allocation limitations on the 80286 version. Several other manufacturers' versions of UNIX System V run on 80386 boxes. Personally I recommend Interactive 386/ix although the 80386 version of Xenix is very usable. Sun has the 386i running their version of BSD UNIX -- a real performer but at high cost. All of the 80386 versions of UNIX provide true VM. If you require the MS-DOS environment, you will be limited to 640k of memory per application (ignoring EMS) although there are many programs which allow you to use many of these environments. Desqview and Windows are two examples. I recommend avoiding Windows on an 80286 machine, but both are fairly usable on an 80386 machine. On the 80386 there are several systems which take advantage of the virtual 8086 mode to provide many small MS-DOS environments; 386-to-the-max is one such program. Lastly there is OS/2 which has some VM support (I say "some" because it is not possible to get very large "contiguous" areas of memory; if this is not a problem then OS/2 has VM so far as you are concerned). Due to the decision to implement OS/2 on the 80286, the virtual memory manager has to bend over backwards to provide VM, and performance drops dramatically as soon as VM is actually used. For this reason I recommend avoiding OS/2 if you need VM (and for many other unrelated reasons). If you really want to make use of VM, UNIX on an 80386 is probably your best choice. jim frost madd@bu-it.bu.edu
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst) (05/14/89)
In article <27562@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> crodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Cliff Rodriguez) writes: >I am looking for a way to use my hard disk for virtual memory. >Which operating systems for the pc support this? >Does it require a 386. If you want "real" virtual memory, you should go with a version of Unix for the PC. You will need at least a 286 (although a 386 will run much, much better), and several megabytes of memory. Under MS-DOS, there is only one product that I know of that will allow you to do this. It is called Above Disc (sorry, can't remember the publisher or anything else about it), and will allow you to turn Extended memory and/or hard disk space into LIM 4.0 EMS memory. You do not need a 286 or 386 to use this (it works fine on my 8088). Unfortunately, unless you have at least a 30ms drive, it will be slow. Very slow. (I don't actually have this -- I tried it out, but because of the speed problems, I returned it. Try calling around to software stores.) -- Marc Unangst UUCP smart : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us UUCP dumb : ...!uunet!sharkey!mudos!mju UUCP dumb alt.: ...!{ames,rutgers}!mailrus!clip!mudos!mju Internet : mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us
stephen@ziebmef.uucp (Stephen M. Dunn) (05/21/89)
In article <27562@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA> crodrigu@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Cliff Rodriguez) writes: >I am looking for a way to use my hard disk for virtual memory. >Which operating systems for the pc support this? >Does it require a 386. Well, I have used Windows 386 V2.01 on a 286 machine (you invoke it with the WIN86 command and it won't need a 386) and found that it will use the disk as backing store to implement VM. I have a 25 ms hard drive, so the speed is acceptable. However, don't consider this to be an endorement of Windows; it isn't. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ! Stephen M. Dunn stephen@ziebmef.UUCP ! DISCLAIMER: Who'd ever ! ! Take off to the Great White North eh, ya hosehead ! claim such dumb ideas? ! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------