[A89] Re: 8/24k size limit
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[A89] Re: 8/24k size limit
On Sun, 25 Aug 2002, Brett Simmers wrote:
>
> I think one of my programs has bumped up against some part of the 8/24k
> size limit, but I'm not sure. The file is 8.7k, but instead of not
> running at all, it will run but crash often when it is trying to exit.
> I've never really understood all the technical details of this size
> limit, so I don't know whether the crashing is from the size limit or
> just my code. Could someone explain the parts of the limit, and what
> happens when a prog hits it?
There are two parts of the limit, the "software" and "hardware" limits.
The limit is 8K on AMS 2.03, 24K on AMS 2.04 and above, and doesn't exist
at all on 1.x.
The "software" limit is a "feature" of the AMS which checks the size of
the program when you try to run it, and displays "ASAP or exec screen too
long" or something like that instead of running it if the program exceeds
the limit. This can be easily beaten by software (a "kernel" will turn it
off when installed, and it is not hard to make a launcher that goes around
it either).
The "hardware" limit is a "feature" of hardware version 2 that is enabled
by the AMS versions that have the size limit. This detects whenever the
PC is outside the approved range and will crash. This is harder to beat,
but it can be done. HW2Patch disables it, and you can also go around it
using a launcher like TTStart (which PPG laucnhers are built around) and
there is also a simple launcher to circumvent it in the TIGCC library
documentation.
Your problem doesn't seem related to this, however. If your program were
over the size limit, and the size limit had not been disabled, it would
have just shown an error instead of running. The size limit should only
crash if you tried to circumvent and got around the AMS check but didn't
turn off the hardware restriction, or if you tried to move some code to
another region of memory since the new location would probably be outside
the permitted area.
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