Sorry FalconFly.  This is merely a test.  I don't know if the sigs on this board support HTML.  It says it supports YABB code but I can't find anything about that in the help system.  And the preview function doesn't support sigs.

200 characters is too few for my purposes anyway really. :(

Scrap that then.  No HTML support.  >:(

And there's really no need to post to test, is there?  Since all my previous posts change when I update my profile (unlike certain other message board systems) all I have to do is go and look at one of them.  Sorry for the wasted space!  :(

Nah, doesn't matter ;)

You're right, the YaBB Forum directly takes all changes you make, so also earlier Posts are instantly modified as well :)

I'll see if I can crank up the Profile to like 500 Chars...
That should do (I hope ;) )

If you want to add HTML Code, there is a bunch of YaBB Tags, that allow easier access to widespread HTML Functions (e.g. Images etc.)
Those are also valid for Profiles (Signatures), and should allow you to do whatever you like...

Just have a look at the Help Page :
http://www.falconfly-central.de/forum/YaBBHelp/posting.html#yabbc

Greetings
FalconFly

Thanks for that, FalconFly.  I obviously didn't look for the YABB tag help in the right place  ::).  Just want to boast about my DOS set up in my sig, like always.  ;)

There we go.  Makeover complete.  ;D

Just say if you don't want links to shareware in the sigs, FalconFly.  I have no personal connection with either of the two shareware products or with any of the three freeware ones.  I just find them to be great programs!

I am very keen on running DOS games in DOS mode here.  That UMBPCI setup with FastVid is the way to run Duke Nukem 3D for example (more than twice the frames per second at 800x600 than other approaches and total stability - it's what it was coded for) and I run several other DOS games that won't run at all in Windows anyway.  But I do admit that my sig is a bit of a sly dig at Windows XP.  How soon we all forget the fantastic games of the past in order to have pastel colours and transparency on our desktops, eh? ;)

hehe, no, your Sig if perfectly fine ;)

FastVid?

The last time I heard of this one was in conjunction with speeding up Pentium Pro CPU's with Games... ?

After that, I ignored this Utility, since I never had a Pentium Pro...

Whould this be something useful for other CPU's/Purposes as well ?

Anyway, looks like an addition to the Download Pages ;D

PS.
With my Hand optimizations using standard config.sys and msdos.sys tweaks, I get 639k free lower RAM, and >100k upper remaining.
(All my Systems boot into a clean MS-DOS 7.0 (Win95) or 7.1 (Win98/SE), none is allowed to boot Windows ;D ... It's actually a mix of all DOS Commands from old Versions (V4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 6.22) that still worked ;) )

That's without Mouse and CD-ROM Driver though; don't know how much those would take off the lower mem ;)

Greetings
FalconFly

I also configured my Windows with two Configurations for DosMode (full memory an performance for my emulators). One with Himem only and one with Qemm. But with having more than 608 KB free  you sometimes need loadfix because some programs don't like that much memory. Also the stealth mode and the (very buggy qdpmi) of Qemm make some incompatibilities so i left them off. One advantage of Qemm against emm386.exe is more umb memory by default (using the f000-f7ff award bios setup area and the momochrome b000-b7ff but this can be compensated by using emm386.exe with "RAM=B000-B7FF RAM=C800-E7FF FRAME=E800-F7FF") and a litte bit more conventionel memory (emm386.exe uses 8K more). But there is one big problemwith emm386.exe: the vcpi memory used by dosextenders. Programs using cwsdpmi (mostly compiled with djgpp or nasm) only see 32MB physical memory with emm386 while qemm (8.03 and higher) gives them all free memory available. Also other DOS-extenders like DOS4G(W), PMODE/W, DOS32/A and CAUSEWAY see only 32MB with emm386.exe. The only extender immun to this problem seems to be WDOSX.By the way, using WDOSX instead of CWSDPMI with the VICE emulator on a 486/100 was 7 Frames faster :o

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
DOS4G(W) applications see a maximum of 64MB under QEMM. I don't know if this is a restriction of the dos extender.

FalconFly asked:

Quote:

FastVid?... Whould this be something useful for other CPU's/Purposes as well ?

It doubles my GeForce2's framerate in VESA mode DOS games on my P3.  I couldn't find anything about it working on a P3 anywhere but tests here show that it does.  It may just be because I've got an Intel motherboard (they're famously conservative with BIOS settings) and that, on other systems the tweaks that FastVid applies are already enabled though!  You could try it and test with VSPeed to see if you get any benefit.


Quote:

With my Hand optimizations using standard config.sys and msdos.sys tweaks, I get 639k free lower RAM, and >100k upper remaining.

:o  That's amazing!  Is that using DOS's himem.sys and emm386.exe?  I don't see how your system ends up just using 1K of conventional memory.  Although I could break into the lower 630s if only my motherboard didn't have a 2K Extended BIOS Data Area that it won't let memory managers move (and I've actually got QEMM, 386MAX, Netroom and Memory Commander installed here (how sad is that?  ;D).

nudgegoonies said:

Quote:

the stealth mode and the (very buggy qdpmi) of Qemm make some incompatibilities so i left them off.

Yes, I've found that QEMM's "stealth" doesn't work reliably here.  Indeed many of the special features of these older memory managers seem to have depended upon old hardware configurations.  They usually work well enough as replacements for emm386 but the more esoteric features are often buggy and unreliable.

Are there any programs that use DOS extenders that actually need more than 32MB (let alone 64MB)?  I have to admit that if I'm running a "modern" ;) game that uses a DOS extender I tend to just use UMBPCI.SYS and let the extender do the actual memory management.

I don't know anything about the limitations of DOS4GW.  I've been using it for years and have searched for information about it on occasion.  There's precious little out there for such a widely used piece of code.  It seems strange really.  Every other game I play must use DOS4GW but then I do play a lot of older games here!

Anyway it's nice to know that my sig doesn't baffle everyone.  I started using it in response to those who list their system components and overclocks.  My system is too slow to compete with that stuff so, as a kind of a joke, I put this stuff up.  I mean now we overclock.  Ten years ago we tweaked config.sys and autoexec.bat files.  And now, like I say, it's also a bit of a dig at Windows XP.  ;)

Well, what does the trick is the msdos.sys...

Here the relevant part of mine :

[Options]
BootGUI=0
DBLSpace=0
DRVSpace=0
DisableLog=1
LoadTop=1
Logo=0

Means :
- Windows is not automatically booting up
- does not load dblspace.sys
- does not load drvspace.sys
- does not write bootlog.txt file
- does load command.com high (this is already before config.sys and himem.sys are processed!)
- shows no annoying Windows Logo

A nice description can be found here :
http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?content=http%3A//www.plasma-online.de/english/help/solutions/msdos_sys_settings.html

I'll give my machine a quick reboot to see how much exactly it is, and having standard Win98SE Himem.sys and EMM386.exe NOEMS I=B000-B7FF loaded...

Greetings
FalconFly

Okay, I wasn't very precise about those 639k, it's a quite little less of course :P
(I should have written 639000 Bytes, and wasn't thinking in kilo's :( )

Here are my standard mem and mem /c printouts :

mem
Speichertyp      Gesamt  =   Belegt +   Frei
---------------      ---------         --------   --------
Konventionell      640K            18K       622K
Oberer                182K            34K       149K
Reserviert              0K              0K         0K
XMS-Speicher   260,922K       502K   260,420K
----------------  --------   --------   --------
Speicher gesamt   261,744K       553K   261,191K

Ges. unter 1 MB       822K        51K       771K

Max. Groesse fuer ausfuehrbares Programm       622K (637,264 Bytes)
Groesster freier oberer Speicherblock        129K (132,400 Bytes)
MS-DOS ist resident im hohen Speicherbereich (HMA).

mem /c

Module mit Zugriff auf Arbeitsspeicher unter 1 MB:

 Name           Gesamt      =  Konventioneller  + oberer Speicher
 --------  ----------------   ----------------   ----------------
 SYSTEM      34,096   (33K)      9,616    (9K)     24,480   (24K)
 HIMEM        1,120    (1K)      1,120    (1K)          0    (0K)
 EMM386       4,032    (4K)      4,032    (4K)          0    (0K)
 DBLBUFF      2,976    (3K)      2,976    (3K)          0    (0K)
 COMMAND      7,168    (7K)          0    (0K)      7,168    (7K)
 IFSHLP       2,864    (3K)          0    (0K)      2,864    (3K)
 Frei       789,392  (771K)    637,280  (622K)    152,112  (149K)

Speicherbelegung im Ueberblick:

 Speichertyp          Gesamt   =    Belegt   +    Frei
 ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
 Konventionell         655,360        18,080       637,280
 Oberer                  186,624        34,512       152,112
 Reserviert                  0             0             0
 XMS-Speicher      267,183,872       513,792   266,670,080
 ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------
 Speicher gesamt   268,025,856       566,384   267,459,472

 Ges. unter 1 MB       841,984        52,592       789,392

 Max. Groesse fuer ausfuehrbares Programm         637,264   (622K)
 Groesster freier oberer Speicherblock          132,400   (129K)
 MS-DOS ist resident im hohen Speicherbereich (HMA).

---

Now that's using FILES=70 and STACKS=32,512 , which is quite excessive (but required for some of my Batch Progams).

Using only standard STACKS=16,128 setting, I get this :

Speichertyp        Gesamt  =   Belegt +   Frei
----------------  --------   --------   --------
Konventionell         640K        18K       622K
Oberer                182K        20K       163K
Reserviert              0K         0K         0K
XMS-Speicher      260,922K       502K   260,420K
----------------  --------   --------   --------
Speicher gesamt   261,744K       539K   261,205K

Ges. unter 1 MB       822K        37K       785K

Max. Groesse fuer ausfuehrbares Programm       622K (637,264 Bytes)
Groesster freier oberer Speicherblock        143K (146,864 Bytes)  
MS-DOS ist resident im hohen Speicherbereich (HMA).

---

So in the end, only some above 637k, meaning >637000 Bytes, which was around the figure I had in memory ::)

I know there are some more Includes for the EMM386.exe, but I think they were (sometimes) problematic, which is why I abandoned them back in the past.
Some of it will work, however, so I'm sure I could reach 639000 Bytes if needed, although only fragmented memory, and not in one piece as desired...

PS.
Formatting of the .txt Files went to shit though, so sorry for the presentation ;)

Greetings
FalconFly

I havn't found a 4gw game or applicationthat uses more than 32MB (maybe for some applications it would be usefull).  In that point you are right procerus. But many emulators need more. I emulate a  68040 Mac System 7.5 with 96MB using the Fusion Emulator . Also MAME, RAINE, NEORAGE and some other, mostly arcade or 680X0 computer emulators need more than 32MB. I will check if any of my programs needs ems, otherwise i give this UMBPCI a chance ;)

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
I remember the time using Novell DOS7 on my NEAT with Harris 80286 20 (running at 25 in Turbo) together with 4DOS . The  ND7 HIMEM used SHADOW RAM and the system had HARDWARE EMS configured through BIOS. I had 622K free..

AFAIK no DOS game (written for the PC itself) ever actually needed more than 610K.  But this extra conventional memory thing becomes a whole game in itself. :D

Interesting to see that the author of UMBPCI has added some other older memory managers/utilities as downloads.  I've never heard of some of them but have to give them all a go!  ;)

If we discount Memory Commander (with a theoretical 715K of free low memory on this system - over 800K without anything loaded) because it uses the trick of extending conventional memory up over the video region (QEMM's VIDRAM performs a similar trick), because you can't run games like this, then QEMM wins any contest here.

My EMS setups with all the guff loaded give me this
QEMM                        629K
386MAX                612K
Netroom                621K
EMM386                607K

Netroom doesn't do badly because I use the "cloaked" mouse and MSCDEX drivers.  The 386MAX setup may improve with further tweaking.  But QEMM just does it with hardly any input from me.  It was further developed than the others though.

Frankly I have to admit that I mainly use UMBPCI so long as the game doesn't need expanded memory though.  And nudgegoonies is right in that QEMM gives 64MB of XMS whereas the others only give 32MB.  I would think this means that the limitation comes from the memory manager rather than from DOS4GW ???.  I had hopes for Netroom since its documentation says you can specify any amount of installed physical memory up to 256MB (an unheard of amount when it was written) but, if I specify more, it locks up on loading with a "divide by zero" error.  :(

As you may have gathered, I love this stuff and could go on and on for hours...  ::) :-[

....and it cost's you hour's to find a configuration that works with most of your programs :P ...

Being serious, i use only two configuraions. One with qemm as my standard and one with himem only. I check to tune the himem only with the UMBPCI because with all my drivers i only have 4??K mem free. I was also conservative with qemm and don't use dosdata, dosup, stealth, vidram, qdpmi etc; just DEVICE=D:\QEMM \QEMM386.SYS RAM ROM together with DOS=HIGH,UMB. I also use DOS' internal DEVICEHIGH and LH which makes booting a little bit faster.

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
Using more than 64MB, with either HIMEM or some EMM causes some programs to detect a negative value of memory. The installationprograms of SSI programs (PG. GNB3) quit with an error message complaining there is not enough extended memory. I have to install the by unarjing the archives directly. This seems to be the same type of problem that makes some programs to need loadfix  ;)

nudgegoonies said:

Quote:

....and it cost's you hour's to find a configuration that works with most of your programs

Now, now!  You make it sound almost as bad as Windows ;)

But you're absolutely right.  The amount of time I've spent tweaking DOS is out of all proportion (by a factor of several millions) to any benefit I've gained from it in terms of programs running better, etc.  The tweaking has become an end in itself!  It has no practical value whatsoever.  I do it just for fun. ;D

...Just like me  ;D

The mem problem with not detecting a used XMS value is definitive a qemm bug. Himem reports 127M XMS with 127MB XMS available while 0MB XMS used.. QEMM reports 64MB XMS with 127MB  XMS available while ? MB XMS used. 64-127 =  :-X

By the way... ( i think i listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers too much  ;) ) Never set MTRR to the Voodoo1 FRAMEBUFFER. I tried Carmageddon with MTTR set via SETK6D and it crashed. Usinfg SETKK6D on the ATI improves LFB Acces a bit (checked with vspeed) but it doesn't speed up any "real" application.

Regards,
Andreas

Interesting.  I do run some DOS glide games here with FastVid (by accident really since it's just part of the set up I end up applying to the Windows shortcut using Microsoft's Doswzcfg.exe kernel toy) but it's not supposed to do anything on an Intel chipset with a Voodoo2.  Maybe I should benchmark or look at fps to see.  I'll have to look to see how to get the frame rate in one of the games (3dfx Shadow Warrior is probably the best bet since Duke 3D supports this) since VSpeed won't help with glide.

I spend so much time tweaking and discovering such irrelevancies that I've taken to writing notes to myself, as well as making backups, to help set it all up again when I reinstall. :)

True!

But if I would only put half the effort into "real life" that I put into tweaking this machine I'd be a millionaire by now :).   Sadly nobody ever got rich by fiddling with a TSR's parameters in an autoexec.bat file.

Happiness though.  That's another thing entirely!  ;D

32K more!!! I remebered Qemm using the f000-f7ff (with most award-bioses) part of the BIOS (the bios setup program not needed at runtime is there) for umb. I made a suggetion to the author of UMBPCI and he opened the limit. Well, there is one disadvantage: Soft Reboot (Affengriff in german) does not work anymore, i think because the shadowram is not copied again and tthere are some routines at f000-f7ff that are needed for init at reboot. The version he sent me is v3.42 but it seems to be beta because it is not on his website yet. I'll try the version on the computes of my friends to give him some feedback.

Regards,
Andreas

32K!  :o

You're very privileged getting to help Uwe Sieber with UMBPCI.  It's the last DOS memory utility still under development and my favourite for XMS and memory extenders.

I watch its progress with interest since the last/fastest chipsets it fully supports will probably be the point where DOS legacy support effectively ends on the PC.  And that's the point where I keep a second system for DOS (and glide) compatibility!

I've levelled off the performance of my memory managers with EMS/Page Frame and all drivers loaded.  I decided I'd use SHSUCDX.EXE instead of MSCDEX.EXE where necessary and now I've got-

QEMM    629K
386MAX      627K
Netroom      624K
EMM386      623K

Coincidentally, if these were scores, this is about how I'd rate the programs overall for ease of use, interface and configurability.  It's also about what level they were developed to.  I have a particular soft spot for 386MAX (and, since no one else will read this, I'll tell you that if you were to send a polite begging email to the webmaster www.qualitas.com he will probably send you a link to a legitimate copy of the final version of the program!).  Notice too, when compared to my earlier "scores", that it's the Microsoft environment that benefits most from the substitution of Microsoft's own CD-ROM extensions with something third-party! ;D

Sorry for writing so late PROCERUS. I was fanatic configureing my 286 NEAT and my 486 but i always had compatibility problems after tweaking the last out of the 640K. I remember NovelDOS7,4DOS, NWCDEX, CLOAKING (DPMS) and CorelCDX making many problems of that kind so when i got Internet and a Pentium i only tewaked with the tools DOS7 has "onboard" and havn't searched the internet for that "dos-tweak" stuff. I know 386MAX and NETROOM only from the readme's of programs that don't run under VCPI. I really should give those tools you mention a try to clean the config.sys and autoexec.bat from M$  ;)

Regards,
Andreas