FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: Comprrressing ramdrives

[Bart Buitinga <bartbuitinga@xxxxxxxxx>]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Michal H. Tyc wrote:
> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
> 
> On Wed, 05 May 2004 15:15:14 +0200, Bart Buitinga wrote:
> 
> 
>>Just another speedy idea:
>>Use a disk compressor (not win9+ drvspace because it won't run in DOS)
>>to create an empty volume, mount it, install arachne, unmount, unattrib
>>it if necessary, zip it and write a batch to put it on a ramdrive.
> 
> 
>>When?  If low on XMS (if 4 / 8 MB total mem) and already using disk
>>compression.
> 
> 
> At least with Stacker (3.12 shipped with DR-DOS) you don't have to
> use hard disk compression, you can force Stacker to load always with
> STACKER.INI; I don't know whether it is possible with MS DBLSPACE/
> DRVSPACE, because I never used them.
> 
> Then, you can create empty volumes any time (with CREATE.EXE).

I'm not really sure about the version number, but the Stacker I used to 
play with had som utilities like screate and scheck (possibly sdefrag).
I can hardly imagine that the same limitations that M$ used to 
"stabilise" Dos6.2 would also have affected Stacker, so probably
screate RD: would be sufficient.
> 
> 
>>Additional questions: Which compressor would make best compressable
>>empty volumes? (Dos6 drvspace volumes won't compress more than about 40%
>>and that's just lousy)
> 
> 
> Well, Stacker doesn't physically wipe the whole STACVOL.xxx file,
> just stores the necessary information that it is empty, so most of
> it may contain random garbage (the previous contents of the clusters
> allocated for the Compressed Volume File). Similarly, formatting
> a hard disk parition doesn't wipe the files, just clears the File
> Allocation Table and Root Directory (internally, the CVF contains
> such data structures as well). I wouldn't expect MS DriveSpace to
> behave much differently, and 40% compression for random data wouldn't
> be particularly lousy ;-)

For the initial Arachne install, there would be no problem if the 
remainder of the compressed volume would be unaffected after copying 
Arachne. What puzzles me is that M$-drvspace volumes too, contain only 
dots (zero's in the hex window) and pkzip "implodes" the fresh and empty 
file from 6 to 4 MB only, as do Arj and Winzip, btw. I think Stacker 
will win this contest, and since it's there on two MFM drives at the 
bottom of the pile, just waiting to be dug up, I think I'll be back soon...

Bart

> 
> I tried creating a 6 MB empty STACVOL.DSK on a 'fresh' RAMdisk
> (just after booting) and it was almost all-zeroes. PKZip squeezed
> it to about 6 KB, saying 100% compression ;-) BTW, Stacker seems
> to require 512-byte sectors (which can be forced on RAMdisks, of
> course).
> 
> Michal
> 
> 
> Arachne at FreeLists
> -- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --
> 
> 
> 

Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Web Browser/Suite for DOS and Linux --