File runs, Copy of file "Too large to fit in memory" LONG

Factual Questions
1

NOTE-This is a long op. Having worked tech support many years ago, I wanted to be sure to give all the information necessary to solve the problem.

While at a relatives I downloaded a zip file. I copied the file to CD. I unzipped it and copied those files to a seperate directory on the CD. There were no errors in any of the files.
The unzipped files on the CD work. But, I can not save because I do not have a CD burner. The program(OK, it’s SuperHero League Of Hoboken.) does not allow me to select a destination for save files, so I cannot save to a floppy or a hard drive.

Using copy *.* c:\shoboken , I copied the unzipped files. They are the same size as the files on the CD. But when I try to run slh.exe I get "Program too large to fit in memory".  When I copy the zip file to the hard drive and attempt to unzip it I am told that it is missing data. If i fix it with pkzipfix and unzip it, it contains CRC errors. The program runs, but with many bugs. If I use Winzip to extract files from the zip file on the CD to the hard drive, I get no CRC messages but slh.exe still won't run.

Recently, the program won't save. I had been able to save before. My hard drive has plenty of free space. My ram is the same as ever. But the game won't save! I deleted a few saved games. It didn't help. I tried saving with less items. Didn't help. If I restart the game from the beginning I still can't save.     

 Trying to figure all this out is rapidly destroying what little sanity I have left.  I would be most greatful for any help my fellow Dopers could give.
2

Umm, I do not fully understand the sequence of events.

  1. You downloaded a zip file to the hard drive.
  2. You unzipped the file to a separate directory on the hard drive.
  3. You burned the zip file to a CD.
  4. You attempted to burn the separate unzipped files to the same CD?

See where I am going with this?

Separate from the above is the inability to run the program. From where? From the hard drive? From the unzipped files on the CD? What?

I ran tech support for years. It’s important to describe every step in the sequence. That’s why I am confused because it appears you combined several steps. In addition, you say you don’t have a CD burner but you also imply you burned a CD.

So what did you do exactly?

3

First, I should note that I am unfamilar with the program “Superhero League of Hoboken”, but…

The “program too large to fit in memory” is related to RAM, and not related to the errors you are seeing in the zip process (well, not directly related, at least).

My guess is that the game you are trying to run is a DOS game, but you are running a Windows operating system. I could go into a dissertation here, but I sure you could care less about why, and just want to run the game, so for brevity’s sake:

DOS games are designed to run within the base 640K RAM available on PCs. Many DOS games need the vast majority of this memory to run reliably. On newer machines with much more RAM, DOS is unable to use the “higher” memory. When Windows loads, it uses portions of the base memory, which often prevents DOS games from then being able to load properly.

So, what you will likely need to do is to load directly to DOS, and not to Windows, in order to maximize the amount of available base RAM. The easiest way to do this is with a boot disk. See this website for more information about how to do this.

Stick with the files you unzipped from the CD to your harddrive without CRC errors. I can’t explain why you are unable to copy the zip file to your HD and then unzip, but you should not need to.

Upon re-reading your post, I guess I am confused on a couple of points.

You say you are able to run the program from the CD, just unable to save. But when you try to run the same executable from the HD you get the “program too large” error. I can’t explain that.

Were you starting both from a DOS window? Or some other method? There are some tricks about maximizing RAM under a Windows DOS window, and there could be something there that is accounting for this difference.

And then you mention that you were able to “save before”. Where? And while your RAM has not changed, it is possible that Windows use of RAM has changed.

Good Luck.

4

Addendum to my previous post:

How did you acquire the zip file?

You say you downloaded the file. Did you actually go online and download it from the Internet to the computer’s hard drive?

Or did you copy the file from:

  1. The computer’s hard drive, or
  2. A CD inserted into the CD drive and copied to the hard drive of the same computer?

I am not playing semantics. It’s important to know and understand the origin of the zipped file, as well as the attempted destination(s) of the zip file and/or the unzipped files.

5

Ok, I have Superhero League of Hoboken, and it is a great game… It is a DOS game, so chances are that your problem is your Conventional Memory. Remember that DOS only really cares about the first 640k of memory that you have.

So, how much of that 640k do you have advailable? To find out go to a DOS prompt, and type “mem” (without the " marks) near the bottem it should say something like “Largest Executable program size”. I don’t remember how much Superhero League of Hoboken requires off hand, but I do know it works in a DOS box (full screen of course) on my Win98 machine. I currentally have 572k advailable on it, so its somewhere less then that.

Oh, and if you do get it working, let me know if you get stuck anywhere, I have a solve for it somewhere around here.

6

"But when I try to run slh.exe I get “Program too large to fit in memory”. "

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that particular error message - but when I used to see it, the ultimate cause was a corrupted copy of the executable file.

MS-DOS files have a “I need this much memory to run” binary value a few bytes into the file, and if the file gets corrupted so that those bytes are bad, then it can look to the operating system like you have an executable file that requires a zillion bytes to run.

You can also get this error message if you do something like mistakenly copy a BAT or other file into an EXE file. IE, “copy c:\slh.zip d:\slh.exe”.