Jason Aller Floppy Collection/270.img/QEMM511.ZIP/READ.ME

Text File | 1990-08-24 | 21KB | 600 lines

QEMM-386 Version 5
Additional Information

This file contains information which does not
appear in the current manual.

**** If you would like to print this file,
     simply type

     COPY READ.ME PRN: ─┘

at the DOS prompt.


**** Using the new QEMM parameters

This version of QEMM provides many new
parameters.  Many of these parameters enable
compatibility with special purpose programs and
computers.  In general, INSTALL and OPTIMIZE
will automatically place the parameters you
need and most users will not need any other
parameters.  We find that many people who have
trouble with QEMM have added parameters which
they don't fully understand and we recommend
that you do NOT add any other parameters unless
the default ones are not working well.


**** QEMM says "Unknown MCA Adapter ID: xxxx"

If you get this message, then there is no entry
for the Adapter ID xxxx in the MCA.ADL file.
This message is for your information and is not
fatal, although you may not have the proper
areas excluded. If you want to ignore the
message, then add NOPE to your QEMM386.SYS line.
If you want to get rid of the message, see
Appendix D in the manual to add the information
about this card to your MCA.ADL file.  If you
want to help others, then you might want to
upload a copy of the ADF file for this board to
Quarterdeck's BBS so that we can add it to the
MCA.ADL file which ships with QEMM.


**** Compaq computers without the "Half ROM"
     capability

Some Compaq computers do not have a ROM which
is duplicated at F000.  If this is the case,
then the area from F000-F7FF will not
automatically be included.  QEMM-386 determines
if the Half ROM feature is available or not.
You may be able to use QEMM's Analyze feature
to figure out if some of the ROM in this area
is available.


**** Analyze seems to say an area is usable but
     your keyboard acts funny or you can't
     reboot

The Analyze feature of QEMM-386 will only give
you information about things it "sees" while
you are running.  If the piece of your ROM that
handles the "reboot" sequence isn't ever
touched during normal use and you have INCLUDEd
it, then you may not be able to reboot your
machine.  Of course, if you DO reboot, then you
can't run Analyze to see what part of the ROM
performs this function!  If you have reboot
problems, try including less of your ROM in 4K
groups to see what location is used.


**** Lotus 1-2-3 reports that "123 cannot start
     because the driver set is invalid."

If you get this message you are probably using
VIDRAM.  1-2-3 is trying to check on the
graphics card's capabilities and VIDRAM is
telling it that no graphics are allowed.

If you run the 1-2-3 INSTALL program and delete
the graphics entry, then 1-2-3 will work.  The
best way is to use 1-2-3 INSTALL's "Advanced
Options" and "Modify Current Driver Set"
selections.  Then select the "Graph Display"
item.  Using the "Del" key on the driver which
is selected.  After doing this, press the "Esc"
key and use "Save Changes" to save the driver
set with a different name (we suggest 123VID).
Then when you use 1-2-3 with VIDRAM simply
enter

   123 123VID

and the right driver will be used.

DESQview users may want to install a second
version of 1-2-3 which passes 123VID as another
parameter.


**** Ventura Publisher reports error 19

Ventura Publisher will not tolerate the Page
Frame to be set higher than E000.  QEMM-386
Version 5 may find that you are not using the
first part of your System Bios at F000 and
therefore may automatically set the unused
areas as mappable.  Since QEMM usually picks
the last 64K of useable memory, it is possible
that the Page Frame may start higher than E000.
If this happens then Ventura Publisher will not
be very happy.  The best thing to do is to use
the FRAME=xxxx parameter and choose the lowest
available mappable address by running the
QEMM.COM program and picking the first area
above C000 which is at least 64K in size.


**** QEMM-386 reports an invalid parameter

The INSTALL procedure will not remove any "old"
parameters which are not needed which QEMM-386
Version 4 would need.  Also, QEMM-386 Version 4
would not display a message if an invalid
parameter was specified.  You will need to
remove these manually.


**** Extra messages from OPTIMIZE

The OPTIMIZE program may report things which
are not mentioned in the documentation:

  1) The number of combinations OPTIMIZE uses
     to figure out the best possible locations
     for your programs.  This number depends on
     the number of programs which need to be
     loaded high, and the number of High RAM
     areas.  If you have few High RAM areas,
     then the number will be smaller than if
     you have many.

  2) The amount of memory you gain or lose by
     using OPTIMIZE is reported.  OPTIMIZE will
     save the current memory size when it is
     run and then calculates the difference
     when it has finished its 2nd reboot.  If
     you have previously run OPTIMIZE (i.e. you
     already have some programs loaded high),
     then the memory savings or loss is
     reflected in the new memory values.

  3) Unable to optimize a line in AUTOEXEC.BAT
     because it is too long.  Since OPTIMIZE
     needs to add some extra parameters to each
     LOADHI, it is possible that the line will
     end up longer than 128 characters. Lines
     in AUTOEXEC are limited to 128 characters,
     so OPTIMIZE can't test if LOADHI will work
     for that line so, you might try OPTIMIZE
     /PATH which will avoid adding the path to
     each LOADHI (instead, it adds the QEMM
     subdirectory to your PATH).

You may have to watch carefully for these
items, since they may happen in the middle of
your AUTOEXEC file.


**** Additional switches for OPTIMIZE

Several switches have been added to OPTIMIZE
since the manual was printed.  Some of these
switches are for its own use while others may
be useful to you.  You can see the switches
yourself by typing:

    OPTIMIZE /HELP

The /PATH switch tells OPTIMIZE to add the path
to OPTIMIZE to your PATH= statement in the
AUTOEXEC.BAT file.

The /EMM:fname switch tells OPTIMIZE the name
of your expanded memory manager.  Most expanded
memory managers have "EMM" somewhere in their
name, but if yours does not, then you may have
to use this switch so the OPTIMIZE will know
which line in your CONFIG.SYS is the expanded
memory manager.

The /LOADHIONLY switch tells OPTIMZE to only
modify lines which alread have LOADHI in them.
This will keep OPTIMIZE from trying to add
LOADHI to lines which you may not want loaded
high.


**** The Analyze procedure seems to show your
     whole ROM as an area which you can
     INCLUDE.

If you are trying to Analyze where you can put
some more High RAM into the ROM area, and the
Analyze function seems to show huge areas
available for INCLUDE (and the Accessed screen
doesn't show many "W" or "A" areas), then you
probably do not have QEMM in its "ON" mode.
See the instructions about using the Analysis
procedure in the manual.


**** What are those numbers in the LOADHI.OPT
     file that OPTIMIZE creates?

When OPTIMIZE is gathering statistics on your
programs, it uses the "GS" parameter with the
output sent to a file.  The file name is
LOADHI.OPT and will usually be found in the
QEMM directory.  You can see the same numbers
if you use the "/GS" parameter yourself.

The first item on each line is the name of the
program.  The second item is a number which is
the amount of memory the program needs to load
in.  The third item is the amount of memory the
program leaves resident in memory (a 0
indicates a program which leaves nothing
resident, no reason to load that one high).
The two letters are something OPTIMIZE uses to
keep track of which programs and device drivers
are where.

By the way, if you use DESQview and are
wondering how to figure out how much memory a
program needs, you can use LOADHI/GS progname
for any program.  The first number you get
(when you exit the program) is that program's
minimum memory usage to load.


**** There should be enough room to LOADHI a
     program, but it won't load into high RAM

First, see the item 'Attempting to LOADHI a
program reports "Not enough room to load High"'
in Appendix A.

Second, If you think a program should be able
to LOADHI but it won't, check the LOADHI.OPT
file for its size.  Perhaps if you load the
items in your CONFIG or AUTOEXEC files in a
different order it may be able to fit.  This is
especially true of programs which start out
using large amounts of memory to load in and
then leave small amounts resident.  In general,
if you can load the programs which use the most
amount of RESIDENT memory first, you'll be able
to fit more programs into memory.

Third, maybe you have "too many" high RAM
areas.  This means that you have some devices
using memory between 640K and 1024K (A000-FFFF)
which fragment the high RAM.  This is
especially true on PS/2 computers.  Devices
such as network cards, hard disks, and 3270
cards can put ROM and RAM in this area.
"Fragmenting" the area above 640K, means that
these ROMs and RAMs are leaving empty places
between them.  The best thing to do is to move
each of the ROM and/or RAM pieces to the
beginning or end of your usuable area.  This
means to move them as close to C000 (the lowest
possible) or E000 (the highest possible) as you
can.  Try to get the end of one device and the
start of the next device to be right next to
each other.  Then you'll have fewer high RAM
areas, but they will be larger in size (the
same amount of memory is available, it's just
in bigger pieces).


**** Avoiding small chunks of high RAM

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, having
a few large high RAM areas is better than many
small ones.  One way to avoid fragmenting
memory is to make sure your devices are all
grouped together.  Another way is to place the
Page Frame in an area that avoids
fragmentation.

Since the Page Frame normally requires a 64K
region of memory, its placement in the highest
possible address areas may not be the best
place if it leaves a small high RAM area either
above or below it.  This may often happen if
the first 4K of your system ROM is INCLUDEd.
In this case, this small 4K high RAM area might
be made into a larger area by forcing the Page
Frame into the lowest possible address.  Use
the FRAME parameter to set the Page Frame into
a particular location.


**** Notification when DMA buffer is too small

If a device which uses DMA, such as a floppy
drive, performs DMA transfers larger than the
current size of the DMA buffer, then QEMM-386
will display a message indicating that the size
must be larger.  QEMM-386 will tell you how
large the buffer must be, and you will need to
add a DMA=xx parameter with the correct size to
the DEVICE=QEMM386.SYS line in your CONFIG.SYS
file.


**** Token Ring Adapter detection

QEMM-386 Version 5 should be able to
automatically detect the presence of a Token
Ring Adapter and avoid the use of the adapter's
RAM area.  This will result in an area marked
"Adapter RAM" for the card.  Since some work
needs to be performed to find the adapter, it
is possible that the automatic detection will
interfere with some other device.  If you
suspect this, try the NOTOKENRING switch which
will keep QEMM-386 from attempting the Token
Ring detection.


**** LOCKDMA for 10-Net

The 10-Net network program seems to disable
interrupts for long periods of time, and
expects these interrupts to remain disabled
during DMA transfers.  This may cause trouble
with QEMM-386, which likes to keep interrupts
enabled during DMA.  If you are using 10-Net,
the LOCKDMA parameter will probably be needed.


**** Use of external XMS drivers

QEMM provides all the features necessary to
provide an XMS driver.  If an XMS driver is
present in the CONFIG.SYS file before QEMM,
then QEMM will use XMS calls to get all of the
previous XMS driver's memory.  QEMM-386 will
then provide the XMS support itself.  However,
you should probably remove the other XMS
driver, such as HIMEM.SYS.  Probably the only
reason to use this feature is if your computer
uses XMS to provide access to more than 16
Megabytes of memory.  If you don't want QEMM-
386 to be your XMS driver, use the NOXMS
parameter.


**** New Parameter NOVIDEORAM prevents high RAM
     in the video area

When using Monochrome, Hercules, or CGA video
adapters, QEMM-386 normally fills the unused
memory areas between 640K and 736K with memory
and raises the DOS upper memory limit to 704K
or 736K.  This process is call "video filling".
If you do not want the DOS memory limit
increased, then you must specify NOVIDEOFILL.
The video areas will be treated as High RAM if
NOVIDEOFILL and RAM are specified.  If you do
not want the area treated as High RAM, then you
may specify NOVIDEORAM which will prevent any
area below C000 not explicitly specified as
high RAM from becoming high RAM.  Most people
won't need to use this parameter; it is
intended to make VIDRAMEGA and VIDRAMEMS easier
to understand.


**** New Parameters for use along with VIDRAM

If you wish to use the VIDRAM program, you may
find two new parameters to be of some use.
These parameters are VIDRAMEGA and VIDRAMEMS.
These parameters affect how QEMM treats the
memory area between A000 to BFFF, commonly
called "the video area".

VIDRAMEGA tells QEMM that the video area is not
to be mappable.  This is equivalent to having
the following parameters on the QEMM line:

   X=A000-BFFF

VIDRAMEMS tell QEMM that the video area is
mappable but it is not a part of conventional
memory nor will be converted to high RAM.  This
is equivalent to the following parameters on
the QEMM line:

   NOVIDEOFILL NOVIDEORAM I=A000-AFFF

These two new parameters are meant to be used
along with the VIDRAM program.  VIDRAM will
allow you to use the EGA/VGA video area as
conventional memory as long as you don't use a
graphics program.

With VIDRAMEGA, the memory used to fill in the
video area by the VIDRAM program comes from the
EGA or VGA card's memory.  While this will
conserve your extended memory for use as
expanded memory, the memory provided is usually
very slow, often less than half the speed of
your other memory.

With VIDRAMEMS, the memory used to fill in the
video area by the VIDRAM program comes from
expanded memory (EMS).  This memory is usually
just as fast as your other memory, and since it
is mappable, the size of background programs
inside DESQview will increase as well.

The VIDRAMEMS option will confuse versions of
DESQview prior to 2.26.  You should NOT use
VIDRAMEMS with DESQview unless you have version
2.26 or higher.


**** New parameters to allow the Page Frame to
     be smaller than 64K

FORCEEMS, (FEMS), instructs QEMM to allow EMS
memory requests to be honored. Use this
parameter only if you have used the FRAMELENGTH
parameter (see below) with a value less than
four. This will allow programs limited access
to expanded memory even without a full page
frame. Be aware that some programs which use
expanded memory may not work with a partial or
missing page frame if you use this option.

FRAMELENGTH=x, (FL), instructs QEMM to assume a
page frame containing "x" pages, where "x" is a
number from 0 to 4. Setting "x" to zero is
equivalent to not having a page frame at all.
See also FRAME=NONE. Setting "x" to four is
equivalent to the EMS standard. Normally a page
frame is established by the expanded memory
manager and consists of four 16K pages. With
this parameter, QEMM allows you to free up one
or more of these pages for use as high RAM. Or,
you can use this option with FORCEEMS if you
have programs which can make use of expanded
memory in the absence of a page frame, or with
a partial page frame. This can be important if


none of your high memory areas is large enough
for a standard size page frame. See also
FORCEEMS and NOEMS.


**** Oracle and VCPI

Oracle is a VCPI compliant program, starting
with version 2.1.34 of the SQLPME.EXE. You may
want to contact Oracle to find out the status
of the VCPI support of your version.


**** QEMM-386 and DOS Extenders

Programs which use DOS extenders and also
support VCPI (such as Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3),
do NOT need to have any exTENDed memory
reserved for them (i.e. you do NOT need to
specify EXTMEM=xxx).  These programs will use
VCPI to convert expanded memory back into
extended memory.


**** Programs which use XMS

Programs which use XMS to gain access to extend
memory do NOT need to have any exTENDed memory
reserved for them (i.e. you do NOT need to
specify EXTMEM=xxx).  QEMM-386 provides the XMS
memory by converting exPANDed memory back into
exTENDed memory for XMS use.


**** Using Super PC-Kwik with LOADHI

The Super PC-Kwik disk cache may cause OPTIMIZE
some confusion when it is loaded high.  While
it is possible to load this program high, the
amount of memory it may take when loaded high
can be different than when the program is
loaded low.  Since OPTIMZE loads all programs
in low memory to calculate its size, you may
find that programs loaded after the disk cache
may not be able to load high.  One possible way
to avoid this problem is to use /t:8 with
SUPERPCK.  This parameter limits the amount of
"look ahead" the cache uses to less than a full
track.  Refer to the Super PC-Kwik manual for
mor information about the "/t" switch.


**** References to QRAM

The manual occasionally mentions one of
Quarterdeck's products called QRAM (pronounced
"cram").  This program can convert expanded
memory into high RAM on 8088, 8086, and 80286
PCs.  The QRAM product (which gets its name
from the "Q"EMM "RAM" feature) is not needed in
any way with QEMM; all of its features (and
more) are available with QEMM.  If you have
other computers which are based on the 8088,
8086, or 80286 and have an EMS 4 expanded
memory board, you may find that the QRAM
product provides LOADHI capabilities similar to
those of QEMM.


**** Special information for Intel Inboard
     386/AT users

The following information is for Intel Inboard
386/AT users (those who used to have 80286
processors).  It is NOT for the Inboard 386/PC
(those who used to have 8088 processors).

The documentation for the Inboard/AT suggests
that you disable your motherboard memory to
256K so that it can replace the slow
motherboard memory with fast memory from the
Inboard.  Since QEMM-386 2 normally sorts the
memory by speed and replaces the memory below
640K with the fastest available, you can regain
this memory back!  You'll also get 128K more
memory from the Inboard which was "lost"
before.  That's a total of 384K more memory,
and the first 640K is still the fastest memory,
as long as you use QEMM.

To get this extra memory:

     1) Turn off the computer.
     2) Move the jumper marked J18 from the
        "rear" two posts onto the "front" two
        posts.  This makes the AT a 512K
        machine again.
     3) Change the swithes on the Inboard.
     4) Turn the computer back on, and watch
        the memory count, it should be 384K
        higher.  If not, recheck the
        installation.
     5) Run the computer's SETUP program and
        specify that you have 512K (not 640K)
        conventional memory and add 512K more
        to your total extended memory

The AT will "jump" its count from 512K on the
motherboard to the extended memory on the
Inboard.  Since QEMM will automatically
"backfill" from 512K to 640K, you will still
have 640K of conventional memory as long as you
run QEMM.

Notes on setting the switches:

Left switch (8 positions)

  1 - 5 will be set for the next 512K value
        higher

  6 - 8 Should not change

Right switch (4 positions)

    1 - Should not change
    2 - Should be ON  (512K, the amount now on
        the motherboard)
    3 - Should be OFF (NO backfill, QEMM now
        puts the fast memory there)
    4 - Should not change

************  End of READ.ME  ************