No, no bumping 13 year old threads. Locked old topic, split this off to new one in Marvin.

I have the cd-rom running, but iam still look for an alternative (less memory consumption) for that mscdex.exe manager.. Does somebody knows any?

SHSUCDX is a widely used one. Honestly, MSCDEX usually works better for me, and you can reduce its memory consumption a little bit by enabling it to use EMS (I believe it is the /E switch).

SHSUCDX unfortunately has incompatibilities. I've tried it in the past and had problems running a few games.

Most software that requires a CD-ROM is capable of using XMS/EMS anyway in my experience.

Is SHSUCDX what FreeDOS uses? What about DR-DOS? Maybe you can lift their CD-ROM programs.

Is there a difference in memory consumption on version 2.22 and 2.23 of mscdex.exe?
So if i read it right, there isnt really an alternative for this mscdex.exe cdrom manager?

With 100% compatibility I'm not sure. Perhaps the utility included with DR-DOS is a good solution. Regardless, as long as you use /E (and have EMS) MSCDEX memory consumption isn't that bad, specially if you tweak your memory managers to get a decent amount of UMBs.

I have EMS option on that 286 Headland motherboard.. But did not installed an EMS driver so far.. I have installed 4MB of ram in this system.. But it can be split in different sections..
So there is a part for conventional memory, (iam also looking for an UMB driver) and it has also an XMS part and a EMS part on that 4MB of ram.

OT but is there any particular why reason you are using a 1x cdrom? They are very limited in the CD format types you can use.

My Magnavox 286 and 486 SX do not accept a slave IDE CD-ROM on primary & only MOBO
IDE. This is why I used proprietary Sony and Mitsumi CD-ROMs in them.

That's the reason I asked the question, to determine what setup he has. His machine may well be able to use slaved IDE or faster ide cdrom off a sound card ide header. I've certainly done that in the past using a 286.

In Robins case it just may be a "period correct" thing, which is ok as well.

Of course something like a parallel port Backback cdrom reader fuctions fine as well with faster cdroms. Something I use on my Zenith 286LP Plus due to the fact I can not install an internal cdrom reader because of its very small form factor.

As for the memory the driver uses a decent memory manager, such as QEMM might might help.