forgot this stuff

AMD 1800+ XP
128 DDR on video
Win XP SP1
VDMSound 2.04 AND 2.1 tried

Steps taken
I have tried upping the memory little bits at a time, but Master of Magic says it needs the same about everytime like its not seeing that I upped it to the max or anything.

Games tried. . .
Dune (works)
XwingCD ( Does NOT work)
Master of Magic (Does NOT work)
TieCD (Does NOT work)

I had a similar problem on a similar system. Here' something else for you to try. Go to your "WINDOWS\system32" folder and find the "config.nt" file there. Open it with note pad and make sure the following lines are in it (probably at the bottom):

dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys /INT15=1024
files=60

Another thing I would make sure of is that you have the latest VIA 4in1 drivers and that Windows is fully updated. In fact, I would just make sure you have all of your drivers updated, unless you have some specific reason for using an older version of a particular driver. Catalyst drivers for the Radeon are updated every month so make sure you have the latest of those as well.

Also try disabling any usb support in the bios.
(they tend to break ems support)

Well, I tried both and says same thing.... still needs a full 2700K of EMS memory even though the drop down list can be set to MAX and it never changes... tried it with just 30** of EMS and still no go... guess maybe this program just cant help me... =(

No program can help you if the hardware is not willing. 😀

Something in your hardware (something in the BIOS) is interfering with EMS emulation. If you can't isolate that something you're stuck with full-fledged PC emulation (DosBox/Bochs/VirtualPC/VmWare...)

Cheers,
V.

Jason wrote:

OK, I have. . . .

Gigabyte 7N400L Motherboard

Jason, first you should have in mind that, in order to provide EMS memory to DOS programs, Windows needs to find a free 64kB memory area in the upper memory region, between 640kB and 1MB. This is how the original EMS memory cards worked in the original PC-XTs and this is still the only way to simulate it under Windows if you are not using full hardware emulation (like DosBox does) or virtualization (like VMWare and VirtualPC).

However, several modern motherboards do not present any free memory in this region, making it impossible for Windows to emulate EMS memory when you run DOS programs. From previous threads like this one and this one, it looks like motherboards based on NVidia chipsets (like your GA-7N400L) have this kind of limitation.

You may try to disable some features in your BIOS that could release the appropriate memory blocks, like support for USB keyboards (somteimes called "USB legacy support" in the BIOS), this usually works for some boards but I am not sure it will do the trick for you. If it doesn't, then I am afraid there is no other solution except DosBox, VMWare or VirtualPC.

Regards,

That same config.NT file in our windows/system32 folder says it can provide Expanded Memory Support. How?

It's funny, using VDMSound, i can get Dune 2 to play all the sounds except the intro music. If i use setup to set the digitized samples to adlib gold, i get the intro music, but then the speech and sound effects are gone! So it must be memory problem?

cheers

suns

http://www.peterhawkes.com/DOS/himem.sys

http://www.peterhawkes.com/DOS/emm386.exe

some links to himem.sys and emm386.exe files for download if you're missing them !!!

Peter Hawkes
http://www.peterhawkes.com/

http://www.peterhawkes.com/DOS/himem.zip

try that, but then change the file extension to .sys after you download it.