Weeeell, here's my MSD memory information.

Just as a note, you can't really use the "default" LaunchPad setting or it won't come out like this -- you have to enable VESA... but leave everything else the same.

Ah. VESA. Yeah, now it's a full screen report. Thanks.

I have QEMM9 lying around, but I don't think it has a program with it that allows me to peruse the memory. What was it called, do you remember?

And I have an idea... If you disable EMS and run MSD, does that area between EB00 and EFFF show as "possibly available" for you guys, too?

Screw VESA; just go to the window's propertes and make it 50 rows high.

I disabled EMS and I got this (it's all "free"):

Oh, right. 50 rows would work too.

Interesting. Now, if you turned off UMB support it would show whether you had anything up in that range as only "possibly available", wouldn't it? That's what I really wanted to see.

Okay, fixed my links:
showthread.php?s=&threadid=45
showthread.php?s=&threadid=19

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=9q998 … .news.dfncis.de
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=uJEmw … 2540tkmsftngp05
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=9pft5 … .news.dfncis.de
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=9pfk6 … .news.dfncis.de
http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english … +%2F+IT7E&#Bios

Plus two more:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie= … base+address%22

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?sci … kb;en-us;Q78557

Perhaps editing your BIOS is possible. For example, Highpoint just released BIOS ver 1.22 for the HPT374:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/374drivers_down.htm

What's New since ver 1.21:
v1.22A 08/12/2002
* Fix 48bit LBA formatting issue
* Fix hptpro.sys problem on Windows XP system restore and sparse files
* use PMM to allocate BIOS memory
* Disable BIOS EBDA reallocation by default

v1.21A 04/25/2002
* Build for HPT374 controller integrited into the mainboard.
* Remove the buzzer function designed for RocketRAID 404 adapter since it will cause unexpected drive reset after a drive fails.

However, with embedded controllers, updating the Highpoint BIOS must be done by updating the motherboard's BIOS. This, usually, Abit would do for you eventually (which you can harass them about).

OR... you can modify on your own, which is an extremely risky business.

This site may help, although the content is out of date (last updated in June), the downloads and other tools should work. The links section is especially good, and the forum is quite active:
http://www.biosmods.com

My gut feeling is that this EMS problem is a BIOS issue, but that's just instinct talking. Maybe I'm wrong.

Note that Abit updated your BIOS in the beginning of August, too. I talked about version number 9W, but now it's the A4. It still uses the older Highpoint BIOS though.
http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/download/bios/it7.htm

But if it's an Award BIOS, you can indeed modify it. The tools are out there. I've fooled around with BIOS modification before, had a lot of fun, and learned a lot. I'm sure the guys at BIOSMods.Com can help you out. And perhaps it will solve your problem, perhaps it won't.

Stiletto, as the motto goes:

IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT.

I've had some *extremely* bad luck when upgrading my BIOS (eg. rendering the computer unbootable with the bus speed set to 133MHz), despite there being some relevant fixes that came with the upgrade (not just upgrading for upgrading's sake). I'm not saying that you're automatically going to run into trouble upgrading your BIOS, I'm just saying that you should really be wary of it. (Also, make sure you know EXACTLY what key/key combination/floppy disk you need to revert to the last version of the BIOS in case something DOES go terribly, terribly wrong.)

Here's me running without VDMSound or EMS.

Thanks, Stiletto! I'll give these things a look.

Don't worry, Snover, I'm prepared. I've rendered computers unbootable at least three times in the past and had to pull and replace my BIOS chip. It was annoying. I now own two different version of the RD-1 BIOS Saviour, though. One for old style 2MBit chips and one for 4MBit ones. Not only do I always have a backup BIOS this way, allowing me to reprogram the one my flash failed on, I can reprogram BIOSes for other people, as well.

Quite a handy tool, if I do say so myself. And I believe my motto has always been, "If it ain't broke, tweak it. If that broke it, fix it and try something else."

NStriker, if you do attempt this, please let us know what happens. I don't take any responsibility if you fry your chip. 😀

Colin, it sounds as if he knows what he's doing. In any event, good luck, NStriker!

Yea yea, I'm just trying to cover everyone's arse here. And to save the heartbreak of finding out that your new BIOS upgrade killed your system!! (That was really annoying, heh)

Ah... I haven't made a custom BIOS logo in a few years. Lost the files to do it, but now I've got them again. Thanks for the hookup on that website, Stiletto!

So, I've got my custom EPA logo, I've updated the built in RAID BIOS, removed the boot ROM for my integrated NIC that was also part of my system BIOS (with the thought that it may be getting shadowed and taking up room in the UMA), and flashed without issue.

Unfortunately, not everything went as hoped. I couldn't find any hidden options in my BIOS to allow me to configure shadowing. And the removal of the NIC's boot ROM didn't do anything (aside from not allowing me to boot off my NIC now, which I never did, anyway).

A thought does occur to me, however. An insight, only, and not anything that will actually help my situation. Are any of you running systems with an Intel 8xx chipset? If I'm not mistaken, the entire Intel 8xx line (like my 845E) have a 4MBit BIOS. Earlier Intel chipsets, AMD chipsets, and VIA chipsets all use a 2MBit BIOS, if I'm not mistaken again. Wouldn't it follow that more of my shadow RAM is being taken up by system BIOS shadowing just because my BIOS is bigger than the rest of yours? *ponder ponder*

-NStriker

Glad to hear it worked for you, but as to your question, I'm the last person you want to ask. My current home PC uses that state-of-the-art beast, the Intel 440FX chipset. w00t!

...smoking my ghetto PC...

Bahaha, anything Intel is *so* not state-of-the-art. VIA K7T266 is t3h r0x0r. 😁

OK, just disabling "dos=UMB" (UMB from LaunchPad) doesn't make a difference (still shows up as ...FFFFFF..., i.e. free UMBs, although DOS won't use them for LH). I also have to disable HIMEM.SYS to see a difference (see below):

Snover wrote:

Bahaha, anything Intel is *so* not state-of-the-art. VIA K7T266 is t3h r0x0r. 😁

Any point in having the 266 (DDR) one? Back when I purchased my ABIT KT7A the benchmarks showed a measely 5% improvement for 266 vs. 133.

BTW, to steer a little back to the topic: yes, the K7 chipset appears to be OK with Windows' EMS emulation (at least on my system). No RAID here, BTW.

V.

Here's an interesting thing I found while I was randomly perusing old sites I'd made in the past. It's an EMM386 line. It might help.

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF I=CC00-DFFF I=E000-EFFF I=F000-F2FF FRAME=E000

As you can see, there are many more memory locations for EMM386. Try to see if this works.

Good docs on EMM386 here, explains the whole FRAME thing:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/rhwatson/dos7/v-emm386-sys.html

Wow, Stiletto, great shit you found there. Too bad it's got a cyan background...ugh...
I imagine that if you can't fix your problem with the information there, you're screwed. 😒

NStriker wrote:

I've been messing with UMBPCI for a few days using Virtual PC. Aside from Virtual PC 5 being rather awesome, UMBPCI is very cool.

Did you ever try this on a dual-boot? Running UMBPCI on your actual chipset instead of the virtual one?
If you can't bring yourself to set up a dual-boot, then maybe just a DOS boot disk.

As you can see, there is no room for a 64K page frame. Very interesting...

That's a very bad thing, but not surprising as the last thing a RAID developer's going to be concerned about is EMS memory.