Could be a memory manager issue, try switching from EMM386 to JEMMEX, or using HIMEM only

keenmaster486 wrote on 2021-07-12, 17:05:

Could be a memory manager issue, try switching from EMM386 to JEMMEX, or using HIMEM only

The config.sys for this Win98 install was empty, so I tried writing a DEVICE directive to load JEMMEX, but whenever I reboot into DOS mode the Windows XMS Driver loads first no matter what, and I can't find how to disable it. Do you have any guide you could point me towards on how to do this?

Would memory manager really interfere with the onboard video scaling if it's independent of system?

I've had memory managers do weird things like that before, yeah.

Try not restarting in "MS-DOS Mode", but placing menu options in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to either load or not load Windows (you'd have to modify MSDOS.SYS also, I believe)... OR you could just hit F8 as it starts booting and select "command prompt only" as a quick test.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2021-07-13, 15:07:

I've had memory managers do weird things like that before, yeah.

Try not restarting in "MS-DOS Mode", but placing menu options in your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT to either load or not load Windows (you'd have to modify MSDOS.SYS also, I believe)... OR you could just hit F8 as it starts booting and select "command prompt only" as a quick test.

Those still load the Windows XMS driver, I looked around but I couldn't find a way to disable that... Could be possible that's doing it then, but weird how none of my other Windows 98 installs ever showed similar issues. Is there anything else I can do short of a whole separate partition dual-booting MS-DOS 6.22? I'd like to keep the 98 system if at all possible.

EDIT: By which i mean even setting BootGUI=0 in MSDOS.SYS, then rebooting and loading Command Line mode in the F8 menu, Windows XMS still loads.

I don't know what you mean by "Windows XMS driver".

Do you mean HIMEM? Because HIMEM is fine. It won't cause those issues.

The one you need to get rid of is EMM386, but it might not even be causing this. It's just a first easy thing to try.

I guess neither do I know what I'm talking about because it's no longer showing up on boot, but I don't think it was HIMEM. I do remember it saying Windows XMS driver, it loading before JEMMEX and therefore JEMMEX saying a memory manager was already loaded.

I managed to get a DEVICE= directive loading JEMMEX.EXE successfully now, but it didn't change Keen 4's behaviour regarding speed and video zoom. The only change was that with JEMMEX loaded i could no longer load Windows 98, and had to remove it from MS-DOS mode in order to boot it again.

The only other thing I can image is perhaps a DOS S3 driver for the ViRGE card this laptop has could make a difference, was there ever anything for DOS? I can't find any in the VOGONS library, only Windows 3.1 and up.

No, there should be no DOS video drivers you will need.

I honestly do not know what your issue is here. Maybe just keep the scaling enabled?

Seems like that's the key then... Too bad the scaling is nearest-neighbor non-integer and looks terrible on the actual LCD screen!

So I did some more digging and it seems like there is an S3 Speed Up utility which should improve performance in certain video modes, and it needs the S3 VBE Core 2.0, however... the latest version of the VBE core that VOGONS has doesn't support the ViRGE/MX, which is what this laptop has. I also tried FASTVID and VESAFIX from that same utilities post, but neither made any difference.

I do notice that not only is the game a little faster when enabling scaling (which, I'm starting to think runs faster because the system is no longer worrying about perfectly pixel-doubling the image but rather just lazily stretching it all), it runs at perfect speed if I'm using it only with the external monitor, not outputting to the internal LCD. In that case, the external video is the same resolution as a regular desktop would be.

Are there any other TSR utilities that can "trick" the resolution or something to kick a game like Commander Keen into a video mode that the S3 ViRGE doesn't struggle with? For example, Duke Nukem 3D at full 800x600 runs perfectly as well...

EDIT: Also, I managed to make the Computer Setup disk from Compaq (which is a BIOS setup utility) into a bootable CD (since I only have a CD drive for it, not a floppy drive) and poked around in it, but there was nothing I could configure which seemed to indicate anything that could help here, mostly only enabling/disabling built-in features such as the modem and infrared.

Hi, I’ve got 7792 model and have no idea how enable scaling. Can you describe the process?

I only have small window 😀

Case solved. FN+T was my friend. Though mode13h games are still squeezed.