A few questions on 5.2e & XP

[SM777]

I use 5.2e and link with RTLINK. I also use the XMSDSK ram drive to create a 700Mb ramdrive.

Do I have to use Blinker or will RTLINK work fine?

Has anyone tried XMSDSK on XP?

Is it possible to upgrade 98 to XP or does the disk have to be formatted and a fresh install?

 

[Bozz]

I've used RTLINK on W2K without problems, then I got Blinker so I'm not sure about XP but I'd guess it's OK.

XMSDSK, tried it on W2K from a command line and you don't get a prompt back. I wouldn't hold out much hope.

While you can upgrade to XP, I'd look upon it as an opportunity to install from scratch. Ian Boys
DTE Systems Ltd

 

[SM777]

I'm really stuck at the moment.

I had a 768Mb Win 98 running just fine with 640Mb Ram drive. I then bought a new Nforce2 with 1Gb DDR3200 Ram and this is when the problems start.

I know that 98 has a limit of 1Gb of ram and I know that you have to tweak vcache settings and stuff. But whatever I do, I just can't 98 to run with 1GB and a ramdrive bigger than about 50Mb.

I'm told to upgrade to XP but I'm loathe to do that! It was working fine on my old 768Mb PC so I should be able to get it to work with the new stuff.

At the moment I don't know if the problem is

a) Duff ram
b) Nforce2 not liking 1Gb & 98
c) ATI AGP card
d) XMSDSK not liking Nforce2

I spent a lot of money on this. I don't know if I'd be throwing good money after bad if I upgraded to XP!

If there is someone who has got XP with 1GB or ram and can run XMSDSK with an 800Mb ramdrive then I'd feel more confident about getting XP.

It's driving me nuts I tell ya

 

[Bozz]

I know that this is probably a silly question but, why the massive RAM drive? OK things may be a bit quicker but stick a gigabyte of two of RAM on W2K or XP and virtually everything you do is in cache anyway. Ian Boys
DTE Systems Ltd

 

[SM777]

Why the ram drive?

I use it to databases. Ram caching is no good as I swap between a 500Mb, 250Mb, 3 X 100Mb and other small dbfs. I have tried caching but its not the same - you can't beat the raw power of just copying a dbf to ramdrive, manupulating it, creating indexes (also on ramdrive) in it and then copying back to the disk when finished.

Note that this is not a transactional databse so I'm not worried about the power going off. If it does I just start again.

The dbfs are used to created data for a website. The data is created offline and the resulting data uploaded to internet.

---

well I got XP now. I got the upgrade version. That installed fine.

Just need to work out how to get clipper to go, and of course XMSDSK.

 

[Bozz]

Clipper no problem, XMSDSK - good luck.

As a slight aside, I tried one of these USB RAM sticks. The performance was c*%p.

Just found this:

http://www.softnews.ro/public/cat/13/7/13-7-14.shtml

A RAMDisk for NT based OS. I'm just trying it out Ian Boys
DTE Systems Ltd

 

[SM777]

The clipper progs seem to run fine.

I am finding a few problems with ! running dos command.

I use this as a work around for saving files in long file name format.

e.g.

*********
m_source = 'g:\test.html'
m_dest = c:\websitefiles\longfilename.html'

!move &m_source &m_dest
*********

with 98, the !move or !copy works fine but not with NT.

If I try it with shortnames such as m_dest = 'c:\test.html' then NT saves the file as C:\TEST.HTM It truncates to 3 char extension and converts to uppercase.

Any workaround for this?

 

[SM777]

PS, as a workaround for now without a ramdrive I've run a SUBST G:\ E:\TEMP thus I don't have to change all the code to point to new dir

 

[Bozz]

A heart stopping 30 minutes there. Be a bit careful over the RamDisk form the link. It may work for you but I had some problems.

http://www.engwall.com/clipper/lfnlib.htm

Clipper long file name support at the above link, thanks to Klas. Ian Boys
DTE Systems Ltd

 

[SM777]

I got it working quite well now. I'm Using the Cenatek / John Lajoulie Ramdisk NT which is allowing me an 800Mb ramdrive.

The longfilename libs worked a treat.

Many thanks for your help.