OmniBook 300/425 - Freeing up conventional memory

[Dave Britten]

(12-30-2016 09:53 PM)matthiaspaul Wrote:  That's right in general, but it depends on several factors like the speed of your storage device, the processor speed and the type of files. Compressing data and transferring only the remainder can sometimes be faster than just writing through the uncompressed data. This may not apply to your setup at all, but I found that some old (disk-based) systems actually became faster by installing Stacker.

Very true. SQL Server, for example, will almost always give you faster backups if you enable backup compression, thanks to the massive size reduction it often affords (particularly with our ERP system's fixed-width columns and tons of repeated values). I doubt the wee little 386 in the OmniBook would offer much of a boost, though, especially when it's already using a nice quick CF card. The 425's 486 might be another matter. And anyway, leaving the disk uncompressed makes it easier to yank it out and mount it on another system in case of problems.

(12-30-2016 09:53 PM)matthiaspaul Wrote:  Does it really swap to XMS? AFAIR, DOSSHELL only swaps to disk, not XMS or EMS. What makes you think it is using 386 virtualization features? (AFAIK, it does not.)

Greetings,

Matthias

It may be doing something like that. I tried finding documentation explaining what the task swapper actually does under the hood, but couldn't find anything. It does let you adjust how much conventional memory and XMS a program gets, however, which made me think it's at least doing some kind of protected and/or virtual mode tricks. I'll have to keep an eye on the OB's disk activity indicators to see if it looks like it's swapping to disk, and if I can find the swap files laying around somewhere. And perhaps it has a couple different modes of operation depending on what sort of CPU you have; I'll have to see what it does on my 200 LX.