svihla@evax6.eng.fsu.edu (C. Kurt Svihla) (11/12/90)
The server I has been trying to post from wasn't working properly and I was testing a new one. Anyway, here's my real question. I have a Zenith Z-100 series PC. It has 512K RAM and the other standard accoutrements. I use it to run a variety of software packages, the two of most interest being Sigmaplot WordStar 2000 (I know, but it's what the department uses). It worked fine for a while, but then I noticed that whenever I tried to start Wordstar immediately after exiting Sigmaplot, I would get something like an INTERNAL STACK DUMP error and the machine would lock up. I use batch files which allow me to start the routines from any subdirectory and it was only by accident I discovered that I could start WordStar immediately after exiting Sigmaplot if I first changed to the WS200 subdirectory. This made absolutely no sense to me, although I thought that it maybe had something to do with the path getting messed up somehow. I tried a variety of strategems, including changing back and forth between the subdirectories in the batch files and this led to random variations on the machine locking up theme. Sometimes I'd still get the stack dump error, sometimes I'd get a divide overflow error, and sometimes the machine would simply reboot itself. I know the obvious solution is to just start WordStar from the WS2000 directory, but that's time-consuming and just a little unsatisfying. Does anybody know what could be causing this problem? Could it be some limitation due to having only 512 K RAM? An interesting sidelight is that I just recently ran into the same problem with an IBM XT with 640 K RAM. I was using this machine to run a data acquisition system and it was working fine. One day I tried to load the acquisition software package and I got the same INTERNAL STACK ERROR kind of message. I fiddled a little bit and then got the DIVIDE OVERFLOW error. I tried reading the documentation on the STACK command but it wasn't real helpful. Any advice or helpful comments would be appreciated.