I haven't tried it yet, but if I understand the program correctly, it'll give me a good amount of UMBs to load stuff high, but... It's not an EMS manager.

I suppose it'd solve one problem, anyway. Thanks!

Well consider that majority of the battle to get EMS working to have a large enough block of free upper memory, if it solves the first problem, then the second is a cakewalk.

If you can confirm that UMBPCI does work with your chipset, type mem /c/p to check for 64K of free upper memory. If it's there, follow the steps at http://members.aol.com/axcel216/umb.htm to configure it for EMS memory.

Note that since you have a GeForce video card it's configured slightly different from everyone else.

Also, check out Axcel216's AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS setups. I tried these myself and it's amazing how much handy stuff can be loaded up when you've got (base) memory to burn.

Tons of data. Almost enough to turn you into a "DosFreak".

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. Works well. And I've gained a better understanding of things related to HMA.

Which made me look at my DOS prompt configuration on Win2K. Running MI.COM, I saw something interesting...

Paragraphs Bytes Type Owner
---------- ------ ---- -------------
---- Begin High (Upper) Memory ----
A000-CEFFh 192,512 Sys 0008h < DOS >
CF01-CF38h 896 Free 0000h < none >
CF3A-CF56h 464 Prog CF3Ah MSCDEXNT
CF58-CF5Fh 128 05B3h DOSX
CF61-CFFEh 2,528 Free 0000h < none >
D000-DBFFh 49,152 Sys 0008h < DOS >
DC01-DF10h 12,544 Sys 0008h < DOS >
DC02-DF10h 12,528 Sys DC02h ?? 51h
DF12-DFFFh 3,808 Free 0000h < none >

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

Intriguing...

You can always disable UMBs from CONFIG.NT/CONFIG.VDMS or from LaunchPad (that leaves all upper memory to EMS page frames), see if you can squeeze EMS in there (i.e. what will mi say this time?)

V.

Good idea, Vlad. I've removed UMB support in config.nt and I now get this:

A000-CEFFh 192,512 Sys 0008h < DOS >
CF01-CFFEh 4,064 Free 0000h < none >
D000-DBFFh 49,152 Sys 0008h < DOS >
DC01-DFFFh 16,368 Free 0000h < none >

Still no room for a page frame, as you can see. I tried setting DOS=LOW or just REMing the line entirely, also, but then nothing will run. Not even MI or MEM will run to give me a report.

Lemme see here, browsing the upper memory area using MSD I see:

1) Video ROM BIOS from C000 to CEFF.
2) CF00 to CFFF is free.
3) D000 to D7FF is being called RAM by MSD.
4) Option ROM from D800 to DBC0.
5) DC00 to DFFF is free.
6) E000 on up to EFFF is mostly free, but that's not generally usable anyway, right?

Man, the ROMs are just hogging the UMBs. That's kinda what I thought was going on, though I said so in a very verbose way in my earlier posts.

Can you check in your BIOS which of the video shadows (if any) are enabled? If any are enabled could you please disable them and try again?

V.

Try loading EMM386 using this line:

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF

B000-B7FF is a no longer used portion of memory. I can't remember what it was originally set for, but this has solved problems of getting EMM386 to work in the past for me.

Won't work under WIN2K/XP, but in any case it should be able to auto-detect and available segment. Video ROM shadow at 0xc000 definitely doesn't look too rosy.

B000-... was used by monochrome adapters like the Hercules. Now it's A000-... (colour adapters).

V.

Well, after searching my BIOS and playing with a DOS boot disk all day, I've found some things out.

1) My BIOS doesn't have an option for shadowing, so I can't turn it off. My old motherboard had it, so I know what it looks like. Must be part of Abit trying to leave behind legacy stuff.

2) The memory layout shown in MSD is exactly the same under a Win2K command prompt as it is when run from a DOS boot disk. So, like I said originally, Win2K is doing a pretty good job of mimicing what my upper memory is like under actual DOS.

3) The Option ROM taking D800 through DBBF is my RAID adapter. I'm sure of this because I disabled it and that ROM went away and became available UMBs. How nice of it to place its ROM smack in the middle of my upper memory area. Unfortunately, I can't exactly leave the RAID adapter disabled, because that's where my Win2K is installed.

4) I can place the page frame at E000 when booting off the floppy. Works just fine. Win2K apparently doesn't want to use that area, or I don't know how to make it do so.

5) I have a USB keyboard. It may be using some of the UMA. I can disable DOS support for USB keyboards in my BIOS, but obviously I can't test what that does with the boot floppy. I'll give it a try in a minute under Win2K's command prompt.

6) My wife's computer's video ROM in the UMA is a lot smaller than mine. Of course, that computer has a Riva 128 and I've got a GeForce 4.

So, overall, it seems that unless I can get Win2K to put the pageframe at E000, I'm probably boned.

Rats. Are you positively sure that the Video BIOS shadowing is not there anymore? because if it isn't there then yes, you are kind of boned unless you can relocate your RAID's address (especially if you don't need to access it directly from 16-bit apps, in which case if you can kick it above the 16-bit/20-bit address space...)

You can specify a B=... parameter in CONFIG.NT, but it seems to "stop" at 0x4000 (which i guess corresponds to 0x8000 + 0x4000 = 0xC000). You can try to specify 0x6000 for the heck of it, though.

V.

Well, there's good news and there's not so good news.

Disabling DOS support for my USB keyboard has freed up the D000 to D7FF area. That's 32K more UMBs, if I'm not mistaken. It shifted the RAID's ROM down, too, and it now occupies D000 to D3BF. That leaves all of D3C0 to EFFF free, which would be plenty of room if the darn page frame would just move to E000.

Unfortunately, setting EMM = B=0x6000 just gives an error. I tried B=6000, too, but that didn't work either. (Despite what the CONFIG.NT file says, it seem correct to write it without the leading 0x, otherwise any number gives me an error).

I don't have the slightest idea how to move the RAID's address. Being integrated into a new motherboard, it's totally jumper-free and there's no setting in the BIOS.

And I've checked, checked again, and then checked the manual, and there just isn't a shadow setting anywhere. Dang.

Try to put the frame at 0x8000 or 0xB000 (B=0 or B=3000). 0xB0000 may run into trouble with the text-mode video memory but it's worth a try.

Actually I just checked my machine (no EMS problems) and I also have the video BIOS at 0xc000. I have no idea where Bill put its EMS frame. No, wait: it says E000. WTF?! And no matter what B=... I specify, with or without UMB and the "RAM" option, is still goes to 0xE000. Grrrr...

V.

I was messing with B=... on my wife's computer, too, and nothing I did would move the page frame from it's C800 location.

I also noticed something else. If you put the line "echoconfig" in your config.nt and then run mem or whatever from the command prompt, it'll tell you the EMM line in config.nt is an unrecognized command. I dunno if that's related at all.

I know that "EMM = RAM" works because it does make a difference hwether the "RAM" is there or not. But as far as the R and B parameters are concerned, I don't have the slightest idea. But why does it put the page at 0xE000 on my computer (Win2k SP2) but not on yours?!

V.

PS: I used Norton sysinfo to get the address of the EMS page(s), which may not necessarily be reliable under Windows. What did you use (i.e. where can I download the program you used from?)

I have SP3 now, but it was the same under SP2.

I've been using MS Diagnostics 3.01 to see all my memory info. I suppose its results may be qestionable under Windows as well, but it seems alright.

I have to wonder if there are some unknown registry settings involving the NTVDM and EMS. Hmm...

See attachment for what Bill reports in my case. This isusing the default LaunchPad sttings (i.e. EMS + UMBs).

Can't you change the address of your RAID controller in your Device Manager [Properties > Resources]?

Unfortunately, I've already tried that, Snover. Not only am I not allowed to uncheck the "Use automatic settings" button in order to manually configure it, the resources don't even show the adapter as using and memory locations. Just a lot of I/O addresses and an IRQ.

Here's what my first meg looks like. A bit different, wouldn't you say?

P.S.- How'd you get it to give you a nice full screen report, Vlad? I had to do a quicky hack together of two screenshots, myself.

...whatever "Possibly available" means for Bill...

Back in the DOS days I used QEMM to view my memory info. Found it much better to use than MSD.