swaaye wrote:

And I don't think DEVICEHIGH does anything when loading EMM386?

It might. There's always the HMA provided by HIMEM.SYS in addition to the UMBs provided by EMM386.

I don't think DEVICEHIGH can use the HMA. UMB-only as far as I know.

DonutKing wrote:

I haven't looked into aftermarket memory managers like 386MAX or QEMM because I heard many games are not compatible - can somebody provide comment on this?

I have been using QEMM since early 386 times and never went back.
From my experience these compatibility issues are some urban myth.
The changes in EMM386 with MSDOS7+ introduce probably more incompatibilities to DOS games / tools than QEMM had to EMM386.

Compared to EMM386 the QEMM suite is a beast in terms of memory management features. If you play with it blindly, without knowing what you do, it will bite back.

As basic hint:
Begin using QEMM just as EMM386, no extra features.

If you run into problems with games, first enable the recommended settings for gaming configuration.

If UMBs are not sufficient, enable Stealth, Mapped Mode with Optimize and let Optimize do the memory layout analysis. Stealthing is a quite proven technology and usually does not introduce incompatiblities.

For gaming configurations, do not use DOS-UP.
(only DOS=HIGH,UMB in config.sys)
DOS-UP moves parts of DOS to UMBs and most programs that access DOS-data directly run into problems here.
You do not have to enable QDPMI if you don't need it. Nowadays most programs requiring DPMI come with cwsdpmi already.

I guess I have to write a small guide for Qemm someday.

UMBPCI is really good. The best part is that it will put the machine in real-mode, and it works in a pure XMS environment.

One problem I've noticed is that the floppy drive won't be able to read the disk as long as this UMBPCI is running. It will either display general drive failure or typing "dir" will display rubbish on the screen with beeps. I think it's mentioned in the readme file.

As for me, I tend to keep both UMBPCI and EMM386 AND QEMM 8. I always keep a basic configuration bootblock - HIMEM only without additional enhancement TSRs - for testing purposes and for some games wihich are picky with smartdrv or ems.

in the readme it explains what do do about the floppy failure it is chipset related, the VIA MVP3 chipset I use does not need that fix and floppy works fine...

elianda wrote:

I have been using QEMM since early 386 times and never went back.

I used 386Max exclusively until Win95 came along and was incompatible with it. I liked how it came with tons of documentation about tweaking conventional memory. It certainly was much better than memmaker too. And it was very cheap. I found it at a local store on clearance I think. I paid probably $20 for it.

These days I just use EMM386 because it's simple and easy and I just don't run that many drivers/TSRs/utils to need to tweak as much.

Malik wrote:

UMBPCI is really good. The best part is that it won't put the machine in real-mode, and it works in a pure XMS environment.

You mean protected mode. 😁 Real mode is good for old games from before the extender era.

I remember those days when I used DOS(386- early pentium era), I had a disk with QEMM. I used also memmaker, but qemm was way better. Using that, it is still very clear in my mind the exact amount of free conventional memory I had. 634kB! It was really great back then. And as far as I can recall, I had no compatibility issues.

UMBPCI is quite nice, but the drawback is that it works only on certain PCI chipsets. So it is only useable in a small range of system choices.

Yes UMBPCI won't do me much good on an EISA 486 board.

I'm tempted to try QEMM and see how it compares to these tweaks.... I have a 386DX board here so maybe when I've finished with this 486 I'll try and get that going with DOS5 and QEMM 😀

swaaye wrote:

Malik wrote:

UMBPCI is really good. The best part is that it won't put the machine in real-mode, and it works in a pure XMS environment.

You mean protected mode. 😁 Real mode is good for old games from before the extender era.

You're right! Thanks for correcting me. I've edited my post above so that it will not confuse the readers. 😀
(Thanks to Valnar too, for correcting me.)

swaaye wrote:

elianda wrote:

I have been using QEMM since early 386 times and never went back.

I used 386Max exclusively until Win95 came along and was incompatible with it.

My 486 used to have a config.sys boot menu that let you choose between booting to Win95 with a minimal set of DOS drivers installed (pretty much just himem.sys), and booting to DOS with a decent configuration for pure-DOS games (himem, emm386, smartdrv, mouse driver, CD-ROM drivers, etc.).

I was able to accomplish this because it was possible to disable auto-loading of Win95 during boot and launch it manually from a DOS prompt by running win.com, as Win9x still sat on top of DOS just like Win 3.x did.

Yup you just edit msdos.sys and set bootgui=0. Time honored tweak.

I always set up my retro boxes with at least two menu options. One to go into Win9x with a basic config and one for DOS with the necessary drivers. In the past I have also setup options w/ EMS, w/o EMS and w/o EMM386 entirely. But in the end there's really not much benefit to this complexity so I'm just sticking to an all-inclusive DOS option with EMS now.

Since we're already discussing about memory management, just would like to add in about uram.

URAM

Besides UMBPCI and HIRAM, you can also try URAM, especially for 486 and lower systems.

Similar to UMBPCI, it leaves the system in Real-mode and provides UMB in an XMS environment.
And similar to UMBPCI, the drawback of not being able to read floppy drives (in certain chipsets) also applies here. ("dir" shows no files found message.)

Otherwise, it's quite good, better than MEMMAKER and while not as good as QEMM, can almost rival it. (See the salvaged coventional memory below, when used in conjunction with DOSMAX.)
I'm using this in my 486 system :

AOpen AP-43 motherboard - the same chipsets used in the ASUS' SP3 boards - SIS 496/497.
i486DX2-66
16MB FPM DRAM
All Shadow Rams ENABLED.

The bios info:

The config.sys file showing the placement of uram device
Usually, all you have to do is just to copy & paste the exact parameters - the dots and the 7s.

URAM loading:

The MEM command displaying the free memory available. Notice that I'm using both the smartdrv and the messy decks, missy ducks, or MSCDEX, if you prefer. Hehehe..

In addition to URAM, I use DOSMAX, mainly to move dos kernel to the UMB, and to load command.com into umb and also the envimax command to move the environment into umb.

The autoexec.bat file showing the placement of the envimax command. Also please note that I didn't add any extra parameters to make sure that the TSRs are loaded into the UMB.

The MEM command when BOTH URAM and DOSMAX are running :

630kb of conventional memory, and real-mode too! 😀

Prisoner of Ice hi-res running under this configuration:

*ENVIMAX, STOPMAX, SHELLMAX are all part of the DOSMAX. All the files are in the DOSMAX archive.

http://www.mdgx.com/umb.htm

Could you give some comment on the compatibility of loading the DOS Environment and command.com high?
For me this looks similar to QEMMs DOS-UP feature which causes compatibility problems with some programs.
So without you get around 620 K (same applies when using QEMM btw.).

Where do you really require the 630 K?
By using DOS-UP with QEMM I get around 704 K with my 386 System, by enabling VIDRAM probably even more. From my experience this just introduces compatibility issues while it is not really necessary at the same time.
So I usually stick to ~620K and enable Stealthing if I get short on UMBs.

You might get into problems if the the available conventional memory crosses the 640k boundary, since real-mode games are programmed with the 640kb in mind, but I'm not sure.

QEMM putting the system in protected mode, might cause problems with real-mode games.

I can't remember which games are problematic in the presence of UMB in general. Enthusiasts-created UMB-providers address many of the shortcomings of commercial ones, like maintaining real-mode, for instance.

If someone can mention the games which are problematic, I might try with this configuration and see.

The 630kb I got above was with the default setting. I didn't add any extra parameters.

DOSMAX has four components that are used above :

1.STOPMAX (in config.sys) - Prevents DOS from loading high.
2.DOSMAX (config.sys) - moves the TSRs including dos kernel command.com, and sub-units like FILES, STACKS to UMB.
3.SHELLMAX (config.sys) - helps to move the shell directive's memory footprint to UMB.
4.ENVIMAX (used in autoexec.bat) - Loads environment variables' memory footprint in UMB.

You don't need to load all to make dosmax work. The main component is DOSMAX itself. The rest are accessories, which help to free up more memory, except STOPMAX, who's function is to prevent DOS from loading into high memory area.

You can forego DOSMAX alltogether, and use only URAM - which provides real-mode UMB and a minimum of 621kb conventional memory available, depending on the chipset.

Regarding which program require 630kb - I don't know really. I don't think there's a program that requires that much. I just feel happy and nice seeing so much of free conventional memory. Maybe seeing so many game manuals emphasizing on more conventional memory required thingy, that I'm excited seeing so much kb available! 😀

Prisoner of Ice! Oh boy that brings back some memories...

Will have to play it again 🤣

Yeah well, let's see this calculation:

1Module, die den Speicher unterhalb 1 MB verwenden:
2
3    Name       Insgesamt     = Konventioneller  +  Hoher Speicher
4  --------  ----------------   ----------------    ---------------
5  SYSTEM        4381    (4K)    1007869  (984K)   42939638 (419332
6  QEMM386        784    (1K)        784    (1K)          0    (0K)
7  DPMS          1952    (2K)       1952    (2K)          0    (0K)
8  LOADHI         112    (0K)        112    (0K)          0    (0K)
9  COMMAND       5184    (5K)       2064    (2K)       3120    (3K)
10  FILES         3872    (4K)          0    (0K)       3872    (4K)
11  MSCDEX       15408   (15K)          0    (0K)      15408   (15K)
12  DOSKEY        4160    (4K)          0    (0K)       4160    (4K)
13  CTMOUSE       3344    (3K)          0    (0K)       3344    (3K)
14  STACHIGH     12224   (12K)          0    (0K)      12224   (12K)
15  SLCD         38352   (37K)          0    (0K)      38352   (37K)
16  ANSI          4272    (4K)          0    (0K)       4272    (4K)
17  LASTDRIV      2304    (2K)          0    (0K)       2304    (2K)
18  SMARTDRV     28816   (28K)          0    (0K)      28816   (28K)
19  KEYB          6224    (6K)          0    (0K)       6224    (6K)
20  DOS-UP         224    (0K)          0    (0K)        224    (0K)
21  DOSDATA       5424    (5K)          0    (0K)       5424    (5K)
22  FCBS           272    (0K)          0    (0K)        272    (0K)
23  WKBUFFER       528    (1K)          0    (0K)        528    (1K)
24  INSTALL        160    (0K)          0    (0K)        160    (0K)
25  Frei        651152  (636K)     645632  (631K)       5520    (5K)
26
27Speicher-Zusammenfassung:
28
29  Speichertyp           Insgesamt       =     Verwendet     +       Frei
30  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
31  Konventioneller      655360   (640K)       9728    (10K)     645632   (631K)
32  Hoher              42940980 (4193455   42940925 (4193450       5520     (5K)
33  Adapter RAM/ROM      393216   (384K)     393216   (384K)          0     (0K)
34  Erweiterung (XMS)  33375120 (32593K)    3752848  (3665K)   29622272 (28928K)
35  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
36  Insg. Speicher     33554432 (32768K)    3281008  (3204K)   30273424 (29564K)
37
38  Insg. unter 1 MB   42947533 (4194095   42941022 (4193459     651152   (636K)
39
40  Insgesamter Expansionsspeicher (EMS)               32620544 (31856K)
41  Freier Expansionsspeicher (EMS)                    29622272 (28928K)
42  Maximale Gr”áe fr ausfhrbares Programm             645552   (630K)
43  GrӇter freier Block im hohen Speicherblock            2416     (2K)
44  MS-DOS ist resident im oberen Speicherbereich (High Memory Area).

Oh and Stacker without anything else takes up 80K.

I haven't run into any problems using DOSMAX yet, and I've been trying out quite a few different games on this box.

If I don't use DOSMAX I still have 616kb of free conventional memory, which is still plenty. So DOSMAX is only saving me ~10kb.
I might actually leave it off for now since the benefit is pretty minimal, compared to potential compatibility problems. Once I get a network card in here though I might need to re-enable it to get back above 600kb.

Maybe some more realistic configuration:

QEMM without DOS-UP, no Stealthing just specific support for Stacker:

1Module, die den Speicher unterhalb 1 MB verwenden:
2
3    Name       Insgesamt     = Konventioneller  +  Hoher Speicher
4  --------  ----------------   ----------------    ---------------
5  MSDOS        16957   (17K)      16957   (17K)          0    (0K)
6  RSTRCFG        128    (0K)        128    (0K)          0    (0K)
7  QEMM386        784    (1K)        784    (1K)          0    (0K)
8  DPMS          1808    (2K)       1808    (2K)          0    (0K)
9  COMMAND       5184    (5K)       5184    (5K)          0    (0K)
10  ANSI          4240    (4K)          0    (0K)       4240    (4K)
11  KEYB          6224    (6K)          0    (0K)       6224    (6K)
12  STACHIGH     12224   (12K)          0    (0K)      12224   (12K)
13  SLCD         38400   (38K)          0    (0K)      38400   (38K)
14  MSCDEX       15408   (15K)          0    (0K)      15408   (15K)
15  SMARTDRV     28816   (28K)          0    (0K)      28816   (28K)
16  DOSKEY        4160    (4K)          0    (0K)       4160    (4K)
17  CTMOUSE       3344    (3K)          0    (0K)       3344    (3K)
18  Frei        651488  (636K)     630080  (615K)      21408   (21K)
19
20Speicher-Zusammenfassung:
21
22  Speichertyp           Insgesamt       =     Verwendet     +       Frei
23  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
24  Konventioneller      655360   (640K)      25280    (25K)     630080   (615K)
25  Hoher                134224   (131K)     112816   (110K)      21408    (21K)
26  Adapter RAM/ROM      393216   (384K)     393216   (384K)          0     (0K)
27  Erweiterung (XMS)  32371632 (31613K)    2749360  (2685K)   29622272 (28928K)
28  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
29  Insg. Speicher     33554432 (32768K)    3280672  (3204K)   30273760 (29564K)
30
31  Insg. unter 1 MB     789584   (771K)     138096   (135K)     651488   (636K)
32
33  Insgesamter Expansionsspeicher (EMS)               32620544 (31856K)
34  Freier Expansionsspeicher (EMS)                    29622272 (28928K)
35  Maximale Gr”áe fr ausfhrbares Programm             629984   (615K)
36  GrӇter freier Block im hohen Speicherblock           16848    (16K)
37  MS-DOS ist resident im oberen Speicherbereich (High Memory Area).

Now the identical configuration, just Stealth Mapped Mode enabled ST:M

1
2Module, die den Speicher unterhalb 1 MB verwenden:
3
4    Name       Insgesamt     = Konventioneller  +  Hoher Speicher
5  --------  ----------------   ----------------    ---------------
6  MSDOS        16957   (17K)      16957   (17K)          0    (0K)
7  RSTRCFG        128    (0K)        128    (0K)          0    (0K)
8  QEMM386        784    (1K)        784    (1K)          0    (0K)
9  DPMS          1808    (2K)       1808    (2K)          0    (0K)
10  COMMAND       5184    (5K)       5184    (5K)          0    (0K)
11  STACHIGH     12224   (12K)          0    (0K)      12224   (12K)
12  ANSI          4256    (4K)          0    (0K)       4256    (4K)
13  DOSKEY        4160    (4K)          0    (0K)       4160    (4K)
14  CTMOUSE       3344    (3K)          0    (0K)       3344    (3K)
15  SLCD         38384   (37K)          0    (0K)      38384   (37K)
16  MSCDEX       15408   (15K)          0    (0K)      15408   (15K)
17  SMARTDRV     28816   (28K)          0    (0K)      28816   (28K)
18  KEYB          6224    (6K)          0    (0K)       6224    (6K)
19  Frei        718528  (702K)     630080  (615K)      88448   (86K)
20
21Speicher-Zusammenfassung:
22
23  Speichertyp           Insgesamt       =     Verwendet     +       Frei
24  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
25  Konventioneller      655360   (640K)      25280    (25K)     630080   (615K)
26  Hoher                201264   (197K)     112816   (110K)      88448    (86K)
27  Adapter RAM/ROM      393216   (384K)     393216   (384K)          0     (0K)
28  Erweiterung (XMS)  32304592 (31547K)    2862544  (2795K)   29442048 (28752K)
29  -----------------  -----------------     ---------------     ---------------
30  Insg. Speicher     33554432 (32768K)    3393856  (3314K)   30160576 (29454K)
31
32  Insg. unter 1 MB     856624   (837K)     138096   (135K)     718528   (702K)
33
34  Insgesamter Expansionsspeicher (EMS)               32440320 (31680K)
35  Freier Expansionsspeicher (EMS)                    29442048 (28752K)
36  Maximale Gr”áe fr ausfhrbares Programm             629984   (615K)
37  GrӇter freier Block im hohen Speicherblock           87424    (85K)
38  MS-DOS ist resident im oberen Speicherbereich (High Memory Area).

So you see that the remaining conventional memory is identical, just available UMBs go up from 21 kB to 86 kB. (131 kB to 197 kB as complete available size).

Well I just bumped into my first compatibility problem.

I was using UIDEJR.SYS for my CDROM driver. Return to Zork would freeze up whenever it tried to play digital sound after the intro movie. You could still move the mouse and I found that if you ejected and reinserted the CD it would pick up again. But it would continue to freeze up all the time.
Looked to me like a CDROM driver issue so I tried swapping drivers. The Toshiba TAISATAP.SYS driver didn't detect my Sony drive 🙁 I tried the official Sony DOS driver, ATAPI_CD.SYS which worked perfectly although it took up nearly 30kb of memory.
I finally settled on VIDE-CDD.SYS which worked with the drive, and made Return to Zork function properly. It also only took up 5KB of memory, a little more than UIDEJR.SYS's 1KB but still pretty respectable.