*   The following is extracted from the readme file that accompanied the
* PC executable of NH3.1.  NH3.1 is a major memory hog, even worse than
* Angband, but most of the advice here is still sound.  I've added my
* comments in lines prefixed by '*' characters.  Hopefully this will help
* people to free up enough memory to run Angband.  Standard disclaimers
* apply -- If you read a subliminal message to make a peanut butter and
* mayonaise sandwich, don't come to me about it...  -CFT
*
* p.s.  I've taken a couple of editorial liberties, to make this file
* slightly more applicable to Angband.  Oh, and anyone offended by the
* humor in the NH doc file can complain to them, not to me... -CFT

You asked:

	Zounds, my man!  How in the name of all that's pompous can one
	get 505K of user RAM free on one's machine?  Surely one can't
	be expected to use a computer without one's Pop-Up-Ducky
	programme, one's resident Latin Grammar Checker, one's TSR
	edition Who's Who?  We are talking, you understand, of the
	bare necessities of civilised existence!

Our resident iconoclast replies:

Er, yeah.  Well, safe sex an' all that, you might wanna keep your
virus protection in place, mate.  But the rest you can chuck, along
with the horse.
	Now, don't panic, chum, don't take a fit.  If you need that
stuff when you work, that's one thing.  But when you're playing
NetHack, that's all the fun you need, right?  So what you do is, you
take a floppy disk, you format it bootable, and on that you put your
COMMAND.COM, your ANSI.SYS, and a minimal CONFIG.SYS; just what you
*
* You shouldn't need ANSI.SYS for Angband.  But, if you use it (for color
* prompts, or other nice features), you shouldn't have to worry, since it's
* so tiny... -CFT
*
need to boot.  Oh, yeah, and an AUTOEXEC.BAT that sets up the path to
your NETHACK.EXE.
	So when you want to play NetHack, you put this floppy in the
drive, and reboot.  Presto!  500-510K free, and away you go with the game.
Time to do some work?  Save the game, take out the floppy, reboot, and
back comes your pop-up duck.
	Just 'cause you got a hard disk, no law says it's from it you
have to boot.  And just 'cause you boot from a floppy, there's no
reason not to run programmes on the hard disk.

* Or you could to set up a second set of config.sys and autoexec.bat
* files, or use DOS 6's multiple configuration ability.  For those w/o DOS
* 6, a batch file like the following (I named mine 'swap.bat') should make
* switching configuations easier:
*
@echo off
if not exist \angconf goto fromang
if not exist \normconf goto fromnorm
:error
echo Hey! There's a problem with your swap program!
goto end
:fromang
echo Restoring normal setup...
copy \config.sys \angconf
copy \normconf \config.sys
del \normconf
copy \autoexec.bat \angauto
copy \normauto \autoexec.bat
del \normauto
goto done
:fromnorm
echo Setting up for Angband...
copy \config.sys \normconf
copy \angconf \config.sys
del \angconf
copy \autoexec.bat \normauto
copy \angauto \autoexec.bat
del \angauto
goto done
:done
echo Set up complete.  Please reboot for it to take effect.
:end
*
* That's it.  To make it work, make a copy of your \config.sys as \angconf,
* and a copy of your \autoexec.bat as \angauto.  Then edit \angconf and
* \angauto to take out everything you can spare, except for mabye himem.sys
* and emm386 which would provide EMS memory if you have more than 640k of
* memory in your computer, or a disk cache. (See below for details about
* these...)  When you want to use Angband, run the above "swap" program,
* and then reboot.  When your done with Angband, run "swap" again (it
* will detect which setup is in use by the existance of either \angconf
* or \normconf, so these files should be left alone), and then reboot again.
*
* With a bit more headaches, this "swap" batch file is expandable to more
* configurations (I've run as many as 5), but you have to be very careful
* about how things are copied and deleted, so you don't erase something
* important.

You asked:

	ARGH!  The game is *so* slow.  What can I do?

A sales representative replies:

Buy a faster machine.  Get a faster hard disk!  Technology,
technology and Yankee know-how, technology and, let's be honest,
we're both people of the world, Japanese production techniques, are
the answers to all our needs!
	What's that you say? You want to use THIS machine?  And your
recommendation to the free computers for employees programme depends
on my proving it can be done?  Ah.  That puts a different complexion
on matters.  May I use your phone...?
				* * *
Yeah, yeah, ok.  Uh-huh.  Right.  Catch programmes?  Cache.  Right.
And TSRs.  Yeah, ok.  Right.  Thanks, Lesley.
				* * *
Great tech support, there.  Yeah, so the word is, you've got to get
everything out of RAM that you can.  It's as simple as that.  All the
TSRs, everything.  Even RAMdisks.

*
* To speed up PC Angband 1.31, you have 2 basic options.  You can either use
* a disk cache like "smartdrv", or you can make EMS memory available for
* Angband to use for its overlay buffer.  Of the two, I believe that EMS
* memory gives slightly better performance than smartdrv, but it's hard
* to be sure.
*
* If you have more than 640k in your computer, and you have a fairly new
* system, you should be able to use HIMEM and EMM386 to make EMS memory
* available to Angband (Is there such a thing as EMM286?  I thought I
* had seen such a thing, but I didn't take much note of it because I
* have a 386).  If you are using Dos 6, you can insure that EMS memory
* is available by putting these 2 lines at the start of your config.sys
* file:
*
DEVICE=C:\DOS\himem.sys
DEVICE=C:\DOS\emm386.exe RAM
*
* If you already have a line for himem.sys, you can keep it.  If you
* already have a line for emm386, just be sure that there is no word
* "NOEMS" after it, and add the word "RAM".
* For slightly older versions of Dos, you should still insure that there
* is a line for himem.sys at the beginning of your config.sys, and a
* line for EMM386.  It may be called EMM386.SYS instead of .EXE,
* depending on your version of Dos.  I'd start without the word "RAM",
* and see if Angband runs better.  If it still swaps to disk, then add
* "RAM".  I'm just not sure when they added that option.
*
* Also, if there is such a thing as emm286, most of what I said about
* should apply, but you'll have to read your documentation if it doesn't
* work.
*
* If you don't want to use EMS memory, or it doesn't work, or you cannot
* use EMS memory, your alternative is to use a disk cache, like
* smartdrv.  If you have memory over 640k, then you should set up your
* cache to use that.  If you have only 640k, you will probably have to
* make your disk cache quite small, in order to leave enough free memory
* for Angband to run.  When it first starts, there will still be a few
* pauses, but once the cache is filled with Angband, it should run w/o
* going to the disk (assuming you've got a large enough cache to hold
* all of the pieces of Angband that don't fit in memory).  If you had
* to make the disk cache tiny so that it would fit into memory, it
* may not provide any noticable improvement in performance -- you'll
* have to be the judge.  I'd guess that a cache of less than 64k is
* unlikely to be much help.
*
* That's about it.  For more info on freeing up memory, EMS memory, or
* disk cache programs, try your DOS manual, or friends, or your local
* BBS, or (try these last) the Usenet (comp.os.msdos.misc maybe?), or
* email me (as a last resort).
* 			cteague@cs.umb.edu