XMS and EMS

[Daryl Lock]

For anyone who wants to use a full range of XMS and EMS data storage, I have been playing around with MAXLIB from www.gohel.de which provides almost everything you need to access these two memory types, incuding arrays and filestreams and sharing XMS/EMS data between chained programmes, up to the limit of your *coff coff* HIMEM.SYS reportable memory (ie the lamentable 64Mb limit). It's worth looking at even though it is dated 1995 and in a pre PB 3.5 lib (you have to get an old copy of PBlib, extract the obj files and create a new 3.5 lib) One caveat - if you use Dr-DOS the EMS functions won't work because in a MS-Centric world, he musta hardcoded the MS EMM386 version number (4.0) and the more advanced DR-DOS EMM386 is version 3.4 so it spits the dummy...but, that said, using the HIMEM.SYS and EMM386 from Windows ME in DR-Dos works a treat...if you don't won't multitasking

------------------

[Lance Edmonds]

A latter version of MAXLIB is available from the PowerBASIC Downloads section: http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/...ary/MAX12C.ZIP

However, I understand that MAXLIB (by Brian McLaughlin) is a shareware product, but the author is no longer taking registrations for it. This means that it may not be used for longer than the 30-day evaluation period, or used in any non-personal (ie, commercial) software. In case this situation has changed, it may be prudent to contact the author and enquiry as to the current availability of a registered version, and whether there are any changes to the terms of the license.

Otherwise, you might also take a look at http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/...ary/PBEZ2B.ZIP which also mentions XMS in it's features list. Same for http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/...y/SVGAPB26.ZIP and http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/...rary/XMS22.ZIP

While you are there, be sure to peruse the PBDOS LIBRARY section at http://www.powerbasic.com/files/pub/pbdos/library/

------------------
Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Sebastian Groeneveld]

Or check out http://dracuul.tripod.com/pbdos/

I've spent my weekend updating the site, so it should now be more easy to find what you're looking for... Hmm, maybe it will even be added once again to the links on the PB homepage I now have a mirror on my laptop, so when the site goes down for some mysterious reason again I can quickly re-open it somewhere else, I promise

Kind regards,
have fun with units,

------------------
Sebastian Groeneveld
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Brian P. McLaughlin]

Daryl,

Thank you for the appreciative comments. Sorry about
my hardcoding the 4.0 version number.

Lance,

I appreciate your attempting to protect my copyright in MAXLIB.
However, for your future reference, I am willing to let
anyone use an evaluation copy of MAXLIB for personal use
for as long as they want. This permission does not apply to
commercial use of an evaluation copy of MAXLIB. For a long time
Dave Navarro let me have space on his BasicGuru site. I made
the source code for the EMS Array functions available there.
I don't think my stuff is there any more because I did not
maintain or upgrade it - so it was not up to Dave's high
standards.

In any event, Daryl, if you can find that source code, you can
remove the hardcoded version number for the EMS array functions.
If I had an ounce of decency I would clean up the embedded
copyright code and put it all in the public domain now. I'm not
sure how many people would be interested in MAXLIB as a PD
item. It was slick for its time, but that was ages ago.


------------------

[Daryl Lock]

Originally posted by Brian P. McLaughlin:
Daryl,

Thank you for the appreciative comments. Sorry about
my hardcoding the 4.0 version number.

I wasn't sure if you were still around Brian, because I found Maxlib to be useful and would've registered it if I could have!
I have to correct something I said about hardcoded EMS 4.0 - it does work with Dr-Dos EMS if you edit the DRDOS.INI file or select LIM 4.0 compatible in the Dr-Dos Setup - not a problem at all now. I only found that out a couple of days after posting. Sorry...

------------------