Help: Oracle 5.1A for DOS: error ORA-0418: instance table is full

Hello,

we have an Oracle database for MS-DOS version 5.1A. Since a while sometimes the application programs (SQLForms, SQLPlus) crash, display some strange chars (some lines) and then register values and a traceback. The values are not allways the same.

When we bought Oracle we used a Acer 910 (286/10) with 2 MByte of main memory and all worked fine, but slow. This summer we upgraded to a 486/33 with 4 MByte of main memory (and local bus). We had problems with QEMM386, so we didn't install it. Most the time it works fine.

Last week we had added 4 MByte of main memory, so now we have 8 MByte of main memory in the 486/33. I simply installed 4 1 MByte SIMMS. Then when I booted the PC had forgotten it's configuration values in EPROM, and unfortunately I hadn't noticed all the configured values. I tried as good as I can (and I think I'm right), but since then Oracle doesn't come up.

'sqlpme /noior' runs ok and loads (I hope) the nessesary
protected-mode code.
But 'ior w' fails with the following error:

IOR: special function error failure
IOR: ORA-0418: instance table is full; cannot start another ORACLE instance

I looked up the error in the manuals, and did a 'ior c',
'ior w/notemps', 'ior c', 'ior w', and similar things, but nothing
helped. I tried to start Oracle with and without the usual drivers, including himem. Nothing helped.

Please, could someone give me an advance how I can recover the database to be able to extract the data? I think (and hope) that making a new database eludes the problem, but I would be happy to save my data from the (old) database.

Thank's in advance.

Edgar Hoch

--
Edgar Hoch   

Systemadministrator at
Institut fuer maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung (IMS)
University of Stuttgart, Germany
Tel.: +49-711-121-1390, Fax: +49-711-121-1366
EMail: Edgar.Hoch_at_ims.uni-stuttgart.de