VOGONS


First post, by appiah4

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Pentium 133, 32MB system with MS-DOS 6.22. Config.sys and Autoexec.bat as below:

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AUTOEXEC1.JPG
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AUTOEXEC2.JPG
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Mem /C /P reports the following:

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MEM2.JPG
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Why can't I get DOS to load into HIGH or UMB? I really need the extra conventional memory for some games..

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Reply 1 of 20, by appiah4

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OK, so I had some pretty dumb mistakes in there; I shouldn't have had the SMARTDRV device in config.sys, that's a legacy driver from DOS 5.0 apparently, deleting that and removing the /L switch from the AUTOEXEC.BAT command got me up to 596K.. However, DOS is still in lower memory, and I can't figure out why..

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Reply 2 of 20, by DosFreak

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Check MSD
Check driver and TSR load order
Don't have anything loaded you don't commonly need.

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Reply 3 of 20, by appiah4

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DosFreak wrote:

Check driver and TSR load order

Any tips on what to look out for primarily?

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Reply 4 of 20, by keropi

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I also never succeeded loading high DOS 6.22 or the 7x win98se one but I do get more than 610kb of free base memory in my setups. I just use uram or the last byte or umbpci to create umb ram.
For your p1 use umbpci and a xms config, see how that goes.
Also all these creative drivers aren't really needed for games

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Reply 5 of 20, by Falcosoft

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Hi,
It seems there's some misunderstanding here.
1. The DOS=UMB command does not specify that DOS itself should be loaded to UMB. DOS cannot be loaded to UMB. Instead it specifies that DOS should manage UMB's so you can load device drivers and TSR's to UMB's.
2. The DOS=HIGH part specifies that some parts of DOS should be loaded to high thus freeing conventional memory. As you can see it works since you get the message 'MS-DOS is resident in the High memory area' as the last line of MEM command's output. Without DOS=HIGH working you would get at least ~60k occupied by DOS from conventional memory and you would get the message 'The high memory area is available' or 'HMA is not available' instead.

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Reply 6 of 20, by appiah4

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keropi wrote:

I also never succeeded loading high DOS 6.22 or the 7x win98se one but I do get more than 610kb of free base memory in my setups. I just use uram or the last byte or umbpci to create umb ram.
For your p1 use umbpci and a xms config, see how that goes.
Also all these creative drivers aren't really needed for games

Umm, URAM? UMBPCI? You lost me a bit here friend, are URAM and UMBPCI programs? What do they do?

Falcosoft wrote:
Hi, It seems there's some misunderstanding here. 1. The DOS=UMB command does not specify that DOS itself should be loaded to UMB […]
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Hi,
It seems there's some misunderstanding here.
1. The DOS=UMB command does not specify that DOS itself should be loaded to UMB. DOS cannot be loaded to UMB. Instead it specifies that DOS should manage UMB's so you can load device drivers and TSR's to UMB's.
2. The DOS=HIGH part specifies that some parts of DOS should be loaded to high thus freeing conventional memory. As you can see it works since you get the message 'MS-DOS is resident in the High memory area' as the last line of MEM command's output. Without DOS=HIGH working you would get at least ~60k occupied by DOS from conventional memory and you would get the message 'The high memory area is available' or 'HMA is not available' instead.

Thanks for the clarification this really puts things into perspective.

My question though is, why does my DOS have such a huge memory footprint (38K) while some people's DOS footprints are in the 9K-18K range? What is bloating the amount loaded into Conventional Memory?

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Reply 7 of 20, by konc

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appiah4 wrote:

My question though is, why does my DOS have such a huge memory footprint (38K) while some people's DOS footprints are in the 9K-18K range? What is bloating the amount loaded into Conventional Memory?

Files, buffers, lastdrive, stacks, all those and similar add to the "MSDOS" entry. REM them out temporarily to see the difference

Reply 8 of 20, by tayyare

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"MS-DOS is resident n high memory area" at the last line of MEM output means that you already successful about loading MS-DOS in ..well, high memory area. 🤣

I suggest using MEMMAKER. It sets my systems up generally better than what I can manually do. With all those extra commands like stacks, files, shell, last drive etc, it is not that uncommon to have a larger foot print.

Here is a good read: http://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm

Just a question: Why do you have so many drivers in your CONFIG.SYS regarding Soundblaster? Except the one that runs CTCM, all other three SB related lines are unnecessary I think.

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Reply 9 of 20, by appiah4

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konc wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

My question though is, why does my DOS have such a huge memory footprint (38K) while some people's DOS footprints are in the 9K-18K range? What is bloating the amount loaded into Conventional Memory?

Files, buffers, lastdrive, stacks, all those and similar add to the "MSDOS" entry. REM them out temporarily to see the difference

Which settings should I change to minimize that? What would your suggestions for things like stacks, files, buffers etc. be?

tayyare wrote:
"MS-DOS is resident n high memory area" at the last line of MEM output means that you already successful about loading MS-DOS in […]
Show full quote

"MS-DOS is resident n high memory area" at the last line of MEM output means that you already successful about loading MS-DOS in ..well, high memory area. 🤣

I suggest using MEMMAKER. It sets my systems up generally better than what I can manually do. With all those extra commands like stacks, files, shell, last drive etc, it is not that uncommon to have a larger foot print.

Here is a good read: http://www.mdgx.com/mem6.htm

Just a question: Why do you have so many drivers in your CONFIG.SYS regarding Soundblaster? Except the one that runs CTCM, all other three SB related lines are unnecessary I think.

I've already tried memmaker, it has done absolutely nothing 😀 As for the SB AWE32, I believe the lines are for:

CSB, STSB16 and CTMMSYS drivers were added to CONFIG.SYS by the AWE32 install CD. CSP driver is required for ASP. CTSB16 is required for SB16 emulation (I think, someone will likely correct me on this), as for CTMMSYS which is required for the PLAY.EXE software from Creative. All the lines in AUTOEXEC.BAT were also added by the installer. AWEUTIL /S initializes the card and sets global reverb and chorus, eats up no memory, MIXERSET prepares the mixer and eats up no memory, and CTCU is needed for PnP.

So yeah I could remove the CTSB16 and CTMMSYS drivers for a gaming-only configuration but that's not what I want to do.. My main issue is that MS-DOS footprint in conventional memory is too high.

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Reply 10 of 20, by Falcosoft

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appiah4 wrote:

My question though is, why does my DOS have such a huge memory footprint (38K) while some people's DOS footprints are in the 9K-18K range? What is bloating the amount loaded into Conventional Memory?

I don't think you have seen 9k footprint in case of regular DOS like DOS 6.22 . It's more likely that was Win9x (DOS 7x). Win9x's DOS part can load command interpreter and big part of the system to UMB's (if UMB's are provided with either EMM386 or UMBPCI). You can notice if this is the case since the MEM command lists 'SYSTEM' instead of 'MSDOS' as the first line and you can also see the 'SYSTEM' and 'COMMAND' parts occupy some upper memory.
Also DOS=HIGH is the default in case of Win9x. You have to specify DOS=LOW if you want to test Win9x's DOS part not loaded into high memory area.
Anyway you can try to install just Win9x's DOS part to see if this makes a difference for you (I recommend Win98 SE).

Edit:

I suggest using MEMMAKER. It sets my systems up generally better than what I can manually do...

I've already tried memmaker, it has done absolutely nothing

Memmaker cannot help here since basically all your drivers are loaded to UMB's already and you have still plenty free upper memory. Memmaker cannot do more.

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Reply 11 of 20, by konc

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appiah4 wrote:

Which settings should I change to minimize that? What would your suggestions for things like stacks, files, buffers etc. be?

As I wrote it's definitely the buffers, files, stacks, lastdrive, but not only. The environment space (command.com /e:xxx) is double the default for example, although I see you probably need it with so many SETs. Even maybe country.sys.
You need to play a bit with those, obviously not with things like a cdrom driver that are clearly loaded high. REM/disable a line or change a value, reboot, check the effect on MSDOS weight. You'll be surprised. 🤣 Then you can decide what to keep and with what values.

Edit: If you want to take the short path, just remove the buffers=40 line... That'll save you around 20KB from MSDOS entry

Reply 12 of 20, by appiah4

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Thanks for all the feedback, reducing buffers to 10 and moving SMARTDRV after MSCDEX did the trick and now I have 605K conventional memory free, and only 17KB for MS-DOS in conventional memory, which should be plenty enough for even more demanding games.

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Reply 13 of 20, by Justin1091

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I think you can use LASTDRIVEHIGH, BUFFERSHIGH, STACKSHIGH and FILESHIGH instead of without 'HIGH' behind them. That frees up a little memory. In Windows 98 DOS it works, I think it does in 6.22 also but I'm not sure.

Reply 14 of 20, by konc

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Justin1091 wrote:

I think you can use LASTDRIVEHIGH, BUFFERSHIGH, STACKSHIGH and FILESHIGH instead of without 'HIGH' behind them. That frees up a little memory. In Windows 98 DOS it works, I think it does in 6.22 also but I'm not sure.

Nope, not on 6.22 😉

Reply 15 of 20, by dr_st

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konc wrote:
Justin1091 wrote:

I think you can use LASTDRIVEHIGH, BUFFERSHIGH, STACKSHIGH and FILESHIGH instead of without 'HIGH' behind them. That frees up a little memory. In Windows 98 DOS it works, I think it does in 6.22 also but I'm not sure.

Nope, not on 6.22 😉

The funny thing is that on Win98 (at least SE) they are not even needed, since WIn98 loads them high by default if UMBs are available (unless you specify DOS=NOAUTO).

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Reply 16 of 20, by konc

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dr_st wrote:
konc wrote:
Justin1091 wrote:

I think you can use LASTDRIVEHIGH, BUFFERSHIGH, STACKSHIGH and FILESHIGH instead of without 'HIGH' behind them. That frees up a little memory. In Windows 98 DOS it works, I think it does in 6.22 also but I'm not sure.

Nope, not on 6.22 😉

The funny thing is that on Win98 (at least SE) they are not even needed, since WIn98 loads them high by default if UMBs are available (unless you specify DOS=NOAUTO).

Eeeeexactly, so true

Reply 17 of 20, by tayyare

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Just a nitpick that I just realized: MODE is not resident so no need for LH as far as I can remember (and LH is enough, no need for loadhigh 😊 )

It's a matter of taste of course, but I also suggest ncache and ndos (from Norton Utilities 8.0) instead of command.com and smartdrv, their conventional memory footprints are considerably less than their MS-DOS counterparts.

Last edited by tayyare on 2018-08-08, 07:54. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 18 of 20, by Justin1091

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dr_st wrote:
konc wrote:
Justin1091 wrote:

I think you can use LASTDRIVEHIGH, BUFFERSHIGH, STACKSHIGH and FILESHIGH instead of without 'HIGH' behind them. That frees up a little memory. In Windows 98 DOS it works, I think it does in 6.22 also but I'm not sure.

Nope, not on 6.22 😉

The funny thing is that on Win98 (at least SE) they are not even needed, since WIn98 loads them high by default if UMBs are available (unless you specify DOS=NOAUTO).

Really? I didn't know that. Good to know!

Reply 19 of 20, by appiah4

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tayyare wrote:

Just a nitpick that I just realized: MODE is not resident so no need for LH as far as I can remember (and LH is enough, no need for loadhigh 😊 )

It's a matter of taste of course, but I also suggest ncache and ndos (from Norton Utilities 8.0) instead of command.com and smartdrv, their conventional memory footprints are considerably less than their MS-DOS counterparts.

I didn't know that about MODE, I will change that. LOADHIGH is just a habbit, I think it looks cleaner this way.

Is NDOS 100% compatible with software, for example protected mode games etc?

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