Wow, how?! I'm struggling to get more that 550K in FreeDOS 1.2 with only minimal drivers installed.

I came across this post as I am currently in the process of looking for the right version of QEMM to download along with a guide to using it. Any help would be gratefully received.

Thanks

oeuvre wrote:

Played around with QEMM for MS-DOS. Got 635K conventional free. Before that I was able to get 615K free, so that's quite a jump.

https://www.hastebin.com/raw/ojedamagak

I used QEMM 7.5 and installed it, default settings. Also let its do its thing for optimization so really it did all the work for me.

Before, it was like so

https://www.hastebin.com/raw/qotijecece

The old config.sys + autoexec.bat

https://www.hastebin.com/raw/idilakuvos

Substituting MSCDEX for SHCDX33F makes quite a difference as well as the I=B000-B7FF in the EMM386 line. Afterwards I used DOS 6.22's MEMMAKER command. Works pretty well.

Here are my CONFIG.SYS + AUTOEXEC.BAT for the QEMM setup.

https://www.hastebin.com/raw/ohatuwuzep

Today I tried the fastest config I ever built myself with the components I find.. a modern-for-me Athlon 64 X2 5200+ with 2GB Corsair 5-5-5, a Radeon R5 and SSD SATA3 on am2 board and Linux.
Me and a dual core cpu @ 2,7Ghz... 🤣...

Found 2 brand new old stock iwill slocket II adapters for coppermine cpu's. Started modding one and a Tualatin Celeron 1300 and now the combo is fully working, tested on an Asus P3B-F.

Happy with that! Never did this mod before 😎

Spent the evening 2 days ago sorting my 486 desktop out sound-card wise and fixing the 2 problems of moving from Windows 95 DOS to MS-DOS 6.22 after making the FAT-32 drive it's own entity.

Main issues with the sound card was that I replaced the Vibra 16 value with a AWE64 Value because the Vibra just could not provide enough power to the Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad from the Game port, so I switched to the AWE64, but good freakin, GOD that thing is LOUD. I use unpowered Creative Labs speakers of the 486 era with that thing and by god got blown across the room - the last time I flew into the guitar rack behind me was 2 years ago getting jumpscared by Nightmare Bonnie my first time playing Five Nights at Freddy's 4. So it looks like I need to dig up a pair of powered speakers now, 🤣. Though I am tempted to use the older beigey early 2000's set I have with a sub on it (might go well with the chorus and reverb - I LOVE Chorus and Reverb effects, on my guitars AND my computers - and the AWE64 has that built in).

First thing was sorting out why Mixerset and AWEUTIL did not work - because the AUXDRV.DRV driver was not being loaded, because the DRV subdirectyory under SB16 was not loaded, so I just copied all the drivers to the root in the end to prevent having to add another bloody "PATH" statement to AUTOEXEC.BAT. Now everything works there. Next will be tweaking memory files till I can free up more DOS RAM so I can get Dragon Warrior IV working in NESTICLE (Yep, I prefer my old DOS emulators - I do some NES ROM Hacking from time to time).

Lastly was fixing 2 issues with Windows For Workgroups - "Incorrect DOS Version" using Command Prompt, and the fact my WBIDE driver was crashing (driver for my PTI-255W card) when I opened file manager stating 32-bit DISK Access accessed File Manager or somesuch in a way it did not like.

The problem with Command prompt - it was still pointing to some old version of COMMAND.COM from Windows 95 - so I had to use PIFEDIT to change the PIF for Command Prompt to use Command.Com in the root directory of C:\, now that's working again.

Next was File Manager - which after a few crashes I figured out it was WINFILE.INI that had a problem - a bunch of errant information had been written, most of it pointing to the CD-ROM (maybe I should put that on the other channel of the controller), and for some reason a FM driver had been added to the "addons" section - I took all that crap out - changed it to not save previous session, and I am all set. Now the 486 works 100% - next things to do are L2 Cache, CPU, and RAM upgrades.

Have a taker for my Compaq Portable 486, so I spent last night photographing it and showing it works. I'm sick and tired of looking for a screen for it, I've spent about 3 years looking for that bloody screen, been to ETI, RapidTech, and a bunch of other parts warehouses online looking for that screen, even asked a place in china about one, and everybody says "out of stock" despite their site stating they have them in stock. Been almost willing to blow as much as $200 on it. I'm done trying, and I can't justify getting on E-bay and spending $50 on a LCD panel that may or may not work with that particular computer. Someone else has a screen and needs some plastic and other parts so they can part it out, I'm done.

Next up will be getting rid of my Pentium 4 and that old Gateway Socket 5 Box (once I'm done souping it up Win9x Gaming - it's too redaundant - the newer 9x stuff works on 10, and my 486 being the weirdo it is likes to run the stuff designed for a Pentium to handle (really strange since this one is a DX2-66 and NOT overclocked).

Working on a review of the MeeGoPad, an older Intel Compute Stick with 3000 series Atom CPU. I am amazed by the value. It sells for USD 80 and it's a complete PC with 2 GB RAM, 32 GB storage, wireless and Windows 10.

I was very impressed by the performance, my last encounter with Atom goes years back to the first Aspire One. Gaming is limited, but with the right games you can play DOS, Windows and various emulators. It handled SoundFonts as well as MUNT without any issues.

I'm shopping for a PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 system.
Have my eye on a TurboDuo on Ebay.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Working on a review of the MeeGoPad, an older Intel Compute Stick with 3000 series Atom CPU. I am amazed by the value. It sells for USD 80 and it's a complete PC with 2 GB RAM, 32 GB storage, wireless and Windows 10.

I was very impressed by the performance, my last encounter with Atom goes years back to the first Aspire One. Gaming is limited, but with the right games you can play DOS, Windows and various emulators. It handled SoundFonts as well as MUNT without any issues.

Sweet! Looking forward to the review.

I've completed repairs on my Olivetti Pcs 86 (a pretty 'modern' Nec v30 ibm pc clone)

Troubleshooted power supply problem. Fuse blew out, checked everything and i did find that the main power transistor (a bu508 if i recall correctly) was shorted. Soldered a spare from an old swiching tv power supply and the pc came back to life.
Replaced the faulty 'hard drive card'... well yes there was a really long 8 bit card with a metal frame, with MFM controller and a 20 mb hard drive bolted at the end of it. Never seen one in my life til now. Replaced with ide to cf adapter with xt-ide rom, and a 64 mb cf card.

Treated the front yellowed plastic with concentrated hydrogen peroxide , excellent results obtained!
Replaced the 720k floppy with a 1.44 one. Jumper settings modified on the motherboard.
Added 2 megs of ram.

Replaced the old 3.5 volt lithium battery with a cr2032 in its socket, far away from electronic parts. Despite the lower voltage, it passes the initial diagnostic screen.

This x86 clone has some interesting feats: Integrated Paradise vga. Ps2 connectors for keyboard and mouse . Nec v30 cpu. Expansion slots for ram.

And now playing some Larry 😀 hyuk hyuk

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Working on a review of the MeeGoPad, an older Intel Compute Stick with 3000 series Atom CPU. I am amazed by the value. It sells for USD 80 and it's a complete PC with 2 GB RAM, 32 GB storage, wireless and Windows 10.

I was very impressed by the performance, my last encounter with Atom goes years back to the first Aspire One. Gaming is limited, but with the right games you can play DOS, Windows and various emulators. It handled SoundFonts as well as MUNT without any issues.

If you're still working on this, can you maybe have a peak at Lakka or it's brethren on the stick, either as part of the review or as a followup? It's sounds like this would be a much more versatile emulation platform than a Pi 3 running RetroPie.

Too late 😊

Not sure about running Lakka, when you can run RetroArch on the supplied Windows 10. But yes, the review includes a bit of RetroArch.

Followup video? I'll be here to watch!

I'm not a big fan of Windows as an appliance. Too much extra stuff.

I'd love to follow up with a faster model (next generation Atom), but not sure if I can get one.

Yesterday i found a 6800ultra agp at the scrapper, it missed a heatsink/fan and a cap. Bought it together with some other hardware and hoped it would still work.
Did a quick test with a small fan and it posted without artifacts (without the cap!) and i shut it off.

Grabbed a donor 6800gt (dead card, same caps and awesome zalman cooler) and the soldering gear and set it all up on the table.Then i looked at the clock and decided it was time to go.

Went to 2 birthday parties in the evening and came home in the middle of the night after way too much beer and a lot of fun 🤣 Time for bed!

Came in, saw the soldering station and the card on the dining table, felt way ''over confident'' and thought oh what the..... and fired up the soldering station...

It is a big smd/alu cap so the only way to attach it (for me) is to have it floating so i can reach the connections. I didn't do the best job in the world (and did it 3 times!) but i can't do it any better when completely sober 🤣
I Attached the zalman and started up my testbench.

It runs 3dmark 03 perfeclty fine and after a few runs and monitoring the temps with Rivatuner it was REALLY time to go to bed 😎

Not really retro, but... 😉

Finally managed to clean the price label adhesive off the Cooler Master case I picked up. That stuff was tough, and I couldn't remove it without seriously scuffing the black paint, so I'll have to repaint the case - tempted to go with IBM dark blue if I can find something similar to it.

Noticed small black Pentium pro sticker on one old Compaq PC at my workplace... so I loaded a copy of Speedsys on a floppy disk and it really is in there 🤣 Must have been quite expensive back in the day.

Abusing my 486 DX2-66.....seeing what it can handle, I'm kind of shocked....

Played Diablo for a few hours on Sunday, not a single slowdown even with a lot of characters on screen, so I think it's safe to say, if you have a 486 DX-2 66, and gobs of memory and hard disk, and a fast interface for them, and a decent graphics card, Diablo is indeed doable on a 486 sub-100MHz PC without an issue. Actually, I think I'm getting addicted to Diablo again.

Also took Quake for a spin, performance is pretty close under 95, and under DOS 6.22 it's a bit slower but I think I can tweak that. Brought out Duke Nukem 3D, not sure why LGR's 486 was having more issues with it aside from maybe VRAM. My biggest problem was getting used to NOT having WASD for my movement controls (which used to be counter intuitive to me back in the days when WASD just became a thing). Nice to finally be able to use that Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad though.

With most of my hardware work out of the way, decided to pop in the 20GB Windows 95 install drive into the 486 last night and try some multi-track recording, surprisingly, it did start to work, and not to shabbily I might add, but it was still a little too slow - however, I think there are some "buffer" adjustments I can make that might allow me to do such things. QuartzAudiomaster Free though would pop up a message "Your system is too Slow" after a short bit, but tracks did record and play - to a point. But then again, might be able to fix that with some settings changes because I remember using the same to record on a Pentium 75 back in the 2000's as smy first DAW under Windows 98 SE and I recall there was some buffer tweaking and other stuff to make it not conk out mid recording - I know it sounds nuts, but I love such ridiculous challenges.

creepingnet wrote:

Brought out Duke Nukem 3D, not sure why LGR's 486 was having more issues with it aside from maybe VRAM. My biggest problem was getting used to NOT having WASD for my movement controls

You can customize the keyboard controls in setup.exe to a WASD setup.

Finally I finished my latest build for late ms DOS era : C333/Geforce2ti/Voodoo2/SB32/YMF724. I had many issues with incompatibility/driver problems, e.t.c, but now it's stable.
I will play Dark Forces and Tekwar this night...

Received some screws for drives/cases/interface cards. Used some screws to secure my "new" beige-fronted NEC DVD writer to my Gateway's case, pulled the old ISDN dial-up adapter out of it, then went on to install a Realtek Gigabit NIC in the same computer, discovered that the interface card screws didn't fit the slots as the screws are 3 mm diameter and the slot holes larger, sorted that out, and went onto the software installation. After a few reboots I can now browse the web from my Gateway Pentium II machine. Setting up broadband on that machine was quite a lot faster than on my XP Pentium 4 machine - weird. Now to find an older browser that is safer than IE 4 and that works on Windows 98SE. I think I still have various versions of Opera on CD...