VOGONS


First post, by Grayshazzle

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Hello everyone, this may come off as a shockingly dumb question as I haven't even installed 98 on my machine yet but I just wanted to know before hand what stands out about these specially. Like why couldn't autoexec.bat be built into config.sys because isn't that the file that boots anyways. Also I am not sure but I think himem.sys is a DOS driver for memory config, but not sure. I didn't want to obviously go ahead and think I am correct without talking to the experienced ones first so some clarification would be nice. Also when I boot my Windows 98 machine up eventually, do I even need to configure much? I went simple with 98 SE and am using the 7.1 DOS that comes with it. With DVD drivers, does the Windows 98SE version (7.1) come with the drivers already that works in their version of DOS unlike having to manually configure it in 6.22? And lastly do I even need to do any memory configuration, for my machine, I have the max official amount of RAM on 98, 512mb SDRAM, so I am not sure if there is any playing around I need to do with configurations like DOS and such. Thank you all guys and I appreciate the answers as well you have been giving me on other posts of mine, just curious in all of this as I have never really experienced Windows 98 as a kid along with DOS and would really like to learn so my future builds will be much easier. Thanks!

Reply 1 of 9, by Errius

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Don't worry about that stuff if you are just going to run Windows 98. It will take care of everything for you. Pure DOS memory management is a headache which you do not want to get into.

It's useful to load device drivers and programs separately, hence CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

HIMEM.SYS allows DOS to use memory over 1 MB. EMM386.EXE allows you to load DOS programs into the memory area between 640 KB and 1 MB.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 2 of 9, by Grayshazzle

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Errius wrote on 2020-11-28, 20:23:

Don't worry about that stuff if you are just going to run Windows 98. It will take care of everything for you. Pure DOS memory management is a headache which you do not want to get into.

It's useful to load device drivers and programs separately, hence CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT.

HIMEM.SYS allows DOS to use memory over 1 MB. EMM386.EXE allows you to load DOS programs into the memory area between 640 KB and 1 MB.

Thank you for the info, I WILL be using DOS as well too so do I really need to configure anything? I have 512mb of RAM too. Also, if I was just to setup driver support for DOS (in which, do I need to if it's built into Windows 98SE/7.1 DOS?), which would be best to use, config.sys or autoexec.bat? I am trying to keep my build as clean as possible and don't want to go overboard on config as I am still new. Just want it too be efficient and clean, thank you.

Reply 3 of 9, by Errius

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Are you sure you need pure DOS? It's not the same as running games in a DOS window in Windows. Most DOS games will run just fine under Windows.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 4 of 9, by Caluser2000

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Errius wrote on 2020-11-28, 22:49:

Are you sure you need pure DOS? It's not the same as running games in a DOS window in Windows. Most DOS games will run just fine under Windows.

No they don't. Some have to boot to pure Dos to run. Sometimes they will not reboot to win98x when you exit the game causing some headaches.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
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Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 5 of 9, by Grayshazzle

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Errius wrote on 2020-11-28, 22:49:

Are you sure you need pure DOS? It's not the same as running games in a DOS window in Windows. Most DOS games will run just fine under Windows.

That's what I was saying, I am not installing pure DOS.

Reply 7 of 9, by Caluser2000

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Plain Dos isn't hard if you know what you are doing. Same goes for any Operating system really.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 8 of 9, by OzzFan

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Technically it is possible to just use a single configuration file in DOS. The CONFIG.SYS INSTALL= statement can be used to load almost anything you would put into AUTOEXEC.BAT, save for SET= statements. But honestly it is better to just leave them as separate configuration files to avoid any potential headaches with software installers that don't like putting everything into CONFIG.SYS.

* the INSTALL= statement is DOS version-specific. I think it was introduced in DOS 5 or it may have been version 6.

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Reply 9 of 9, by dr_st

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On my Win98SE I was really doing fine with a single config - no boot menu or anything, BootGUI=0, and if I wanted to run Windows, I'd just do so manually by typing WIN.

That worked well because I did only used standard DOS drivers, and common CD/mouse drivers that Windows recognizes and that don't interfere with its native drivers. That will not work if you have something fancy in DOS mode, like hard drive UDMA drivers, and maybe even some USB ones.

In that case - the common suggestion of using a two-choice boot menu - one for DOS, one for Windows (essentially empty, loading no DOS drivers at all) would be good.

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