I'm unhappy that I couldn't get DOS UMB/EMS memory at all in Windows mode, but, otherwise, the system works. Apparently, to run most DOS programs, I have to switch to DOS mode. My MSDOS.SYS file has the DOS DriveSpace drivers disabled. If I boot to DOS mode, how do I temporarily enable these drivers without editing the file twice every time I boot to DOS mode?

Why are you using drivespace at all? drive space is chaep so using compression is pretty pointless nowerdays, especially as you can use fat32 with win98se.

Im running win95 osr2 dos on my p233 and have dos high,umb in config.sys. also try a program called umbpci which gives a bit more memory and doslfn can be useful so it shows long file names under dos.
Even back in the day, lots of software needed to run in pure dos rather then dos prompt under windows, so I have my system not booting into windows by default, and then I can run win95 (or 3.11 but thats a whole other subject) from the dos prompt.

You're right. I have many floppies and Zip disks from an old Win98SE minitower whose hard drive was worth only 2.1GB formatted. It was actually a 20GB hard drive, but only the first 11% was usable: while formatting, the rest of the drive was nothing but bad sectors. 🙁 So, at the time, I had to use a lot of removable media. Besides that, I like floppies. I also like Zip disks and flash drives. That's why I have so many of such compressed. My current Win98SE system has about 127GB total formatted hard drive space, so I don't need them anymore, but, as I said, I like floppies and Zip disks.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-20, 15:25:

Apparently, to run most DOS programs, I have to switch to DOS mode. My MSDOS.SYS file has the DOS DriveSpace drivers disabled. If I boot to DOS mode, how do I temporarily enable these drivers without editing the file twice every time I boot to DOS mode?

I don't know much about DriveSpace and I'm a bit confused as to why it can be controlled from MSDOS.SYS but you can also apparently install the driver from CONFIG.SYS (or at least I found some DEVICEHIGH= line in some documentation for Windows 98). If you can get it working via CONFIG.SYS without it being in MSDOS.SYS (maybe this is more likely to work since your boot drive isn't compressed), then I suppose you could:
- set up a CONFIG.SYS menu, where one of the options includes a DEVICE[HIGH]= line for DriveSpace and one doesn't; and/or
- set up a shortcut in Windows which is configured to start in MS-DOS mode and which has such a DEVICE[HIGH]= line in the shortcut's CONFIG.SYS.

Maybe the second option is a better way to start out just to make sure that loading it via a CONFIG.SYS works without actually editing the actual CONFIG.SYS, but the menu option might be nicer so you can get into DOS mode with or without DriveSpace without having to boot into Windows first.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-21, 00:19:

I have many floppies and Zip disks from an old Win98SE minitower whose hard drive was worth only 2.1GB formatted. It was actually a 20GB hard drive, but only the first 11% was usable: while formatting, the rest of the drive was nothing but bad sectors. 🙁

I wonder if it wasn't that the drive was bad beyond that point, but that the BIOS didn't support drives larger than that or something? I'm not sure that that is a typical BIOS capacity threshold though (I think they're 504MiB and about 7.8GiB but I'm not exactly sure).

Besides that, I like floppies. I also like Zip disks and flash drives.

Is it like people say about vinyl records, that part of the appeal is the "ceremony" of getting them out and putting them on the turntable, even though everything might be instantly available digitally? I only use floppies with my old machines because I'm too lazy to have set up networking clients and/or network booting, but using floppies does bring me some nostalgia too!

About DriveSpace, the driver is part of Windows 98 and, as such, can be controlled by MSDOS.SYS. I don't want to use another compression program, as I have hundreds of floppies and Zip disks compressed with DriveSpace. I used to have a DOS laptop and use JAM and 2M to compress floppies. I have a lot of floppies compressed that way and want to use them, but, the last time I ran JAM on a Win98 computer, I got an error. 🙁 Regarding floppies: I think so. I especially like compressing them because of what I get by compressing them.

DOS
Paul Houle's doskey
http://paulhoule.com/doskey/

Vim text editor (16-bit version for DOS is faster and lighter)
https://www.vim.org/download.php

FDformat (more compatible than 2M in my experience), you can format standard DS/HD floppies to 1.72MB and you don't need a TSR for compatibility. They're bootable too.
https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet … til/fdfrm18.zip

Norton Commander (alternatively Necromancer's DOS navigator http://www.ndn.muxe.com/download/)
https://winworldpc.com/product/norton-commander/55x

CTMouse (small mouse driver from FreeDOS)
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/fr … ml/ctmouse.html

That will make your DOS experience a lot better.

Win9x
7zip 9.22
https://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/fil … 22.exe/download

Notepad++ 5.0.3
http://download.notepad-plus-plus.org/reposit … 3.Installer.exe

Daemon Tools 3.4.7 (+Windows Installer 2.0)
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/ … 21/instmsia.exe
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/ … 1/daemon347.exe

nusb33e.exe - USB 2.0 support
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/ … 621/nusb33e.exe

IrfanView 4.4.4 (+ all plugins)
http://web.archive.org/web/20170309185826if_/ … ew444_setup.exe
https://archive.org/details/irfanview_444

GNU CoreUtils 3.5.0 (+ required MSVCP60.DLL 6.0.8168.0 https://www.dll-files.com/msvcp60.dll.html)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32/fil … utils-5.3.0.exe

Foxit Reader 2.0.1606
http://www.oldversion.com/windows/download/fo … reader-2-0-1606

K-Meleon 1.5 with TLS 1.2
http://o.rthost.win/gpc/files1.rt/K-Meleon1.5 … 4en-US.tls12.7z

I hope this helps!

I downloaded some of them. Thank you. 😀

Never had much luck with nusb33e - I tried xsuppusb and it seems to work better, at least for me.

I believe I have nusb36e, and it seems to work fine, but on an older Win98SE tower, either it or the computer's USB ports stopped working. 🙁 Other than that, it works.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-26, 13:26:

I downloaded some of them. Thank you. 😀

You're welcome. That's my personal selection. There's always more software out there, of course 🤣

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-26, 14:27:

I believe I have nusb36e, and it seems to work fine, but on an older Win98SE tower, either it or the computer's USB ports stopped working. 🙁 Other than that, it works.

I had problems with nusb36e too, that's why I recommended nusb33e.

Robbbert wrote on 2023-05-26, 13:50:

Never had much luck with nusb33e - I tried xsuppusb and it seems to work better, at least for me.

XSUPPUSB is designed for Win95.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/177518-xusbsupp- … indows-95-osr2/

It lacks many functions:
"This package does not provide a driver for USB-HID or USB peripheral devices such as keyboards, mice, or joysticks."

It's better to stick to Windows 98SE if you have at least a Pentium and at least 32 MB of ram.

I looked up the difference between nusb33e and nusb36e

NUSB333E contained two "Driver Stacks." One driver stack is for USB Mass Storage Devices. The other was for USB 2.0 hardware (controllers/ports/hubs) in your machine if it has USB 2.0 capability. Windows 98SE does not have a "Driver Stack" for either of these types of hardware "out of the box."

USB Storage Drivers, USB2.0 Hardware Drivers, and the USB 1.1 Hardware drivers that do come with 98SE are three separate entities. Each of these does a different job.

The difference with NUSB36E is that it also updates the USB 1.1 Hardware drivers to the Windows ME versions. The "USB Storage Drivers" and the USB 2.0 Hardware Drivers are all the same as before.

Updating the USB 1.1 files allows for the use of more "USB Composite Devices" (which I don't have enough knowledge about to describe properly) on some machines and in certain configurations. This feature has really not been tested much in "applied" situations, because those situations seem to be uncommon, or they have not been reported/discussed here.

So, NUSB36E contains THREE "Driver Stacks," each independent and for different hardware devices. Drivers for USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 ONLY provide support for devices INSIDE your machine, not External devices. The only External Devices supported are USB Mass Storage Devices.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/43605-maximus-de … rivers/page/51/

I haven't heard about computers that don't work with 33e and need 36e, but I've had problems with 36e.

I have a problem: EMM386 causes an Out of Memory while Windows is loading, and both QEMM and JEMM crash the computer as soon as Windows starts. 🙁

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-26, 23:41:

I have a problem: EMM386 causes an Out of Memory while Windows is loading, and both QEMM and JEMM crash the computer as soon as Windows starts. 🙁

Create a startup menu by editing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, so you can select between QEMM, JEMM, or whatever third party memory manager you want and use it in a isolated way from Windows.

In case you don't know how to do it, refer to this explanation and ask here to fine tune.
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/ques … windows-and-dos

I advice you to boot Windows without loading or modifying anything. I personally only load the aforementioned doskey and change the PATH variable.

This way you can create your separate configurations for EMM, QEMM, JEMM, and all the other MMs you can think of 🤣

You'll need this too
"How to get Windows 95 and 98 to boot to MS-DOS"
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000132.htm

I can do that, and I know how to. However, I want to be able to run at least some DOS programs from within Windows.

What programs do you have problems with if you boot with an empty CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT? 🤔
I have come across many games which only run in pure DOS mode, in that case you need to exit Windows or restart the computer in DOS mode.

Harry Potter wrote on 2023-05-17, 14:23:

On my current Win98se setup, I have QEMM97, but it didn't work properly in DOS mode: As soon as Windows starts, the computer crashes with an Invalid Instruction error, and QEMM only registered 256MB on a 1GB system. That's good enough for DOS mode, though. 😀 I can manually optimize a DOS configuration but want to know if I can get QEMM to optimize such a configuration automatically.

1 gig is a lot for Win98 but Win98SE can handle it. I'm not familiar with QEMM97 but it seems like it's not compatible with that amount of memory. Did you study the manual?

I still think that a boot menu with multiple configurations and a clean Windows startup is the best way to go 🤷

I admit that I have as of yet not tried a DOS program, but some of them should work. I really want UMBs and EMS memory before trying the software. I can both set up a multi-config startup and use a PIF file and have done those before but want to have most DOS programs work from Windows mode.

I think you'll find this setup quite suiting to your expectations
https://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm

I thank you for the link, but the problem I'm having is that every time I try to create UMBs, Windows refuses to load. EMM386 gives me an Out of Memory error, and both QEMM and JEMM crash on me as soon as Windows starts. 🙁

Did you try the exact memory configuration as it's written in the link provided?

... using Microsoft's HIMEM.SYS v3.95 High/Extended MEMory Manager, Uwe Sieber's UMBPCI.SYS v3.90 Upper MEMory Extender + HIRAM.EXE v1.9 (to load HIMEM.SYS in the Upper Memory Area = UMA), with ALL devices/drivers/TSRs loaded in UPPER Memory, which gives me 629 KB of FREE conventional [low] memory [RAM], maximum available on any X86 IBM compatible PC/AT clone using a color VGA video card, and 38 KB of FREE upper memory.

There's no mention of QEMM and JEMM.
Just try it and see if you're satisfied.