More 5.73 and shrinking memory ...

[Billy W. Cox]

Now that I've had abit of sleep ... here's some additional info...

I try the same 5.73 setup on my work laptop (8meg-486dx75) grrr .... it's
worst than the shack pc ... out of memory and locked up quickly ... Study
the "mem/c/p" results and compare it to the same on the shack PCs ....

This whole "thing" is related to how the memory is being setup ... and that DVPTSR ... 
(or all the other TSR/etc you have loaded ... CD rom, etc, etc)

Used MemMaker (DOS provided utility) and ran some tests ...

One PC has about 1.6K for free memory than the other, MemMaker set it be just
like the other one ... so that explains why PC-B showed abit more remaining
memory than PC-A during the contest ... OK, both PC's are the same now ...

Re-started using same 253 Q log ... 35k at startup drops, to 5k with 1 QSO added.

Grrr.... OK, let's try something else ... I modify the autoexec.bat to LOAD
the DVPTSR HIGH  ...

Now this is looking better .... 63,272k at startup, drops to 50,112 with 1 QSO
Mnnnn ... That's still a big drop ... so I add more Q's and watch the size drop

Adding 10 more Q's only drops the memory to 46,336 ... so am on right track ...
as before 10 more Q's would lock up the program and the PC ...

Run other combo's of low and high memory, get varying results ...

"Barnyard solution" that I tried next was to make up a "CONTEST BOOT FLOPPY" that
has stripped down AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files to boot off of for contests.
DVPTSR was loaded HIGH, misc NON-CONTEST stuff REM'd out ...

Looks OK at less than 300 Q's ... but my effort was not much pumkin ... Let's
merge some files and see what happens ... CRASH time due to memory running out
then occurs ard 450 QSOs ... mnnn ... Why haven't I seen this before with TR
and larger logs in the past ... does not make sense ... So out come the 
floppies from versions gone by ....

Unloaded the DVPTSR from memory to compare the versions ....

Go back to TR 5.61 and use same setups ... Aha ... 5.73 (462 q) = 52,488
                                                   5.61 (463 q) = 83,008 *
                                                   *= it showed 113,688 at
                                                      startup, but dropped to
                                                      83,008 after 1 Q added.

So the 5.73 is using more 'space' to provide ALL the bells and things we bugged
the H*LL out of Tree for ... interesting....

SUMMARY ... TR is still THE CONTEST PROGRAM ! No question ....

WARNING ... If I had NOT had the DVPTSR loaded I would have NOT noticed this
            "memory thing" UNTIL I was in a SERIOUS SSB effort and then what 
            would have happened when I went past 300's Q ? And the NAQP SSB is
            just two weeks away ... Boy I am glad I played CW in the IARU ...
            If you are NOT running the K1EA DVP, this all this is of NO worry
            to you, just "be happy, and work AA4NU in every contest" ! 

            If you are using 5.73/DVP I'd look carefully at how you have your
            memory configured and REM out what you don't need for CONTESTING.
            
Anyone else other than AA4GA and myself run into this ? 

Anyone run up a BIG # SSB QSO log using TR5.73/K1EA DVP ... ? Number of QSOs ???
How do you have it all setup ?

73 Bill AA4NU   aa4nu@raider.raider.net