Re: win2k/cygwin cannot handle even moderately sized packs

So the problem is probably memory fragmentation.

probably.

You might have more joy if you allocated one HUGE chunk immediately on
startup to use for the pack, and then kept re-using that chunk.

Well, it is not _one_ chunk. The windows/cygwin abomin...combination
may take an issue with this: it seem to copy complete address space
at fork, which even for such a small packs I have here takes system
down lightly (yes, I tried it).