19 Sep
2004
19 Sep
'04
5:04 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <dickset(a)amanda.spole.gov>
To: "Ronald Wayne" <AppleTO(a)gmail.com>om>; "General Discussion: On-Topic
and
Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: Yahoo! News Story - Floppy Disk Becoming Relic of the Past
(fwd)
On Sun, Sep 19, 2004 at 11:04:59PM -0400, Ronald Wayne
wrote:
Windows 95, 98, 98SE, ME have problems with vcache if you have 768MB of ram
or more that can cause hangs on bootup along with other problems.
http://godzilla.kennedykrieger.org/~jgillen/computer/pcmemory.html
"Out of Memory" Error Messages with Large Amounts of RAM
Installed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information in this article applies to:
a.. Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
b.. Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition
c.. Microsoft Windows 98
d.. Microsoft Windows 95
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
SYMPTOMS
If a computer that is running any of the versions of Windows listed
above contains more than 512 megabytes (for example, 768 megabytes) of
physical memory (RAM) installed, you may experience one or more of the
following symptoms:
a.. You may be unable to open an MS-DOS session (or command prompt)
while Windows is running. Attempts to do so may generate the following error
message:
There is not enough memory available to run this program.
Quit one or more programs, and then try again.
b.. The computer may stop responding (hang) while Windows is
starting, or halt and display the following error message:
Insufficient memory to initialize windows. Quit one or more
memory-resident programs or remove unnecessary utilities from your
Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files, and restart your computer.
CAUSE
The Windows 32-bit protected-mode cache driver (Vcache) determines the
maximum cache size based on the amount of RAM that is present when Windows
starts. Vcache then reserves enough memory addresses to permit it to access
a cache of the maximum size so that it can increase the cache to that size
if needed. These addresses are allocated in a range of virtual addresses
If the floppy disk disappeared, I would notice (I
use them) but would
not care.
I recently put together a semi-modern system (AMD Socket A, 1.4GHz,
768MB max RAM, 1 AGP, 5 PCI, 0 ISA) and some combination of the BIOS
and Win98 was unhappy. I had numerous issues of timeouts and slow
operation because it was waiting on a non-existent A: drive. Simply
disabling floppies in the BIOS was not adequate. My problems ended
when I _added_ a 3.5" drive and enabled it. I know there are other
systems that can run normally with no floppies, so I'm reluctant to
blame the operating system only.
from 0xC0000000 through 0xFFFFFFFF (3 to 4 gigabytes)
known as the system
arena.
On computers with large amounts of RAM, the maximum cache size can be
large enough that Vcache consumes all of the addresses in the system arena,
leaving no virtual memory addresses available for other functions such as
opening an MS-DOS prompt (creating a new virtual machine).