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Cannot enable EMS under Win2K...

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Reply 62 of 117, by Nicht Sehr Gut

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NStriker wrote:

I have QEMM9 lying around, but I don't think it has a program with it that allows me to peruse the memory. What was it called, do you remember?

It's the Manifest program, MFT.EXE. The majority of files installed with QEMM are for use by DOS. Unfortunately, QEMM 9 (97) doesn't seem to like any machine with more than 256 Megs of RAM and really unstable with Win98 or higher (Seems ok on Win95 and Win95B).

If you want the files without really installing it, you can "virtually" install it under "Virtual PC" (make sure you have the UNDO option switched on), then drag the QEMM directory back to your "real" PC. Do NOT let it restart your Virtual PC. Shut it down and discard changes, otherwise you'll get a never ending series of "unrecoverable processor" errors as QEMM tries to hit the hardware for more memory.

NOTE: MFT.EXE will run as both a DOS and Windows executable
Runs fine in DOS, Win98 and XP (Win95B complained about missing files).

Should look like this

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Reply 63 of 117, by Unregistered

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I've been gone for a few days, and it looks like I've got lots to respond to. 😎 Prepare for a long post.

Originally posted by Snover
Bahaha, anything Intel is *so* not state-of-the-art. VIA K7T266 is t3h r0x0r.

Hey, good for you if you want to be a specific CPU company hardliner, but I personally just go for what's best at the time. Athlons kicked the crap out of the P4 for a very long time, and many of the things Intel have done with their architecture have been questionable from an immediate performance perspective, it's true. But at the specific time I built this system, overclocking a 1.6A or 1.8A Pentium 4 based on a 400MHz FSB to 2.5GHz or more a beat out the Athlon in most things and was cheaper, at the time. I'm not saying it still does, did before that moment, or ever will again, but right then when I happened to be buying it did. Also, the AMD Thoroughbred line looked bleak, and the upgrade path looked hazy. Things may have changed, now, certainly.

Originally posted by vladr
Any point in having the 266 (DDR) one? Back when I purchased my ABIT KT7A the benchmarks showed a measely 5% improvement for 266 vs. 133.

Well, on an AMD system DDR is all you're going to get anymore. DDR has become standard hardware. And I think it's more than a 5% increase now, as the memory controllers have matured and become more efficient. The VIA KT266A and KT333 memory controllers can pretty much completely saturate the CPU bus, they're so good. I can't give you exact number off the top of my head, though. Should you upgrade on an AMD path, you don't have a choice, anyway.

As far as Intel and P4s are concerned, they're bandwidth hungry like nothing else. They've gotta have DDR (dual channel DDR coming soon) or RAMBUS. The CPU will choke on anything less.

Originally posted by Snover
Here's an interesting thing I found while I was randomly perusing old sites I'd made in the past. It's an EMM386 line. It might help.

Thanks. I'm already using a line similar on my dual boot setup. There, under true DOS, I can get the page frame into E000 just fine.

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
Did you ever try this on a dual-boot? Running UMBPCI on your actual chipset instead of the virtual one?

Sure did. It actually didn't get and more UMBs free than EMM386 did, but it does use much less memory itself, and that's a definate bonus. Very nice if I'm just playing a game that doesn't need EMS (need to use EMM386 at that point, anyway).

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
That's a very bad thing, but not surprising as the last thing a RAID developer's going to be concerned about is EMS memory.

True enough. But as you can see from some of my MSD images, the RAID ROM wouldn't be an issue if I could figure out why E000 to EFFF isn't getting used. I actually see that on my wife's system E000 to EFFF is also not being used. Completely different systems, similar problems (though in her case the ROMs are small enough to allow a page frame below E000).

Originally posted by Snover
I still think having I=E000-EFFF FRAME=E000 should allow for enough room.

Aye, it would, and it does. I've gotten it to do that under DOS on my dual boot. The problem that remains is a Win2K command prompt. With that, as far as I'm aware, you cannot use any such line to force the page frame.

Originally posted by Snover
Oh, and rejoice, this is the first four-page post (with default viewing settings)! *cheers*

Woo-hoo! And yet this thread has nothing to do with VDMS. Whoops. Oh well. 😁 My bad.

Originally posted by DosFreak
Hey I know! Let's create a list of all boards incompatible with EMS!

Not a bad idea. Assuming it's the motherboard, of course. Not that I can currently fathom what else it is.

Originally posted by Nicht Sehr Gut
It's the Manifest program, MFT.EXE. The majority of files installed with QEMM are for use by DOS. Unfortunately, QEMM 9 (97) doesn't seem to like any machine with more than 256 Megs of RAM and really unstable with Win98 or higher (Seems ok on Win95 and Win95B)........

Yeah, I noticed it doesn't count higher than 256mb. Though it was odd as well as annoying, since you can't skip the QEMM9 memory counter. I found MFT on the disk. I'll give it a whirl and see what I come up with. Thanks!

P.S.- Holy crud that's a long post!

Reply 66 of 117, by DosFreak

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Whoah! .JPEG rules Free AA! 😎

I wonder... WPCREDIT allows you to change hidden BIOS options. Perhaps that may help in this case?

I noticed before that you said that you didn't have any Shadowing options in your BIOS, I've noticed this before in some cases and WPCREDIT has helped.

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Reply 68 of 117, by NStriker

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I like PNG and GIF. Nothing like lossless, high-ratio compression. Under 4K, baby! 😁

WPCREDIT does work in Win2K. I used it once before to tweak some settings to get my Vortex 2 stable in Win2K. It's a program to edit the PCI registers, if I recall correctly. I'm not sure what registers would have to do with shadowing, and I'd rather not randomly change them without having at least a vague idea.

I suppose I could look around for that. Though if the settings didn't show up in the Award BIOS mod program, I dunno if they even exist on this board. I'm willing to try, of course! 😉

Last edited by NStriker on 2002-09-03, 05:24. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 69 of 117, by NStriker

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Snover wrote:

Oh, and if you don't want this to be in VDMSound, sobeit! Mwaha!

I don't mind it being in the VDMS forum. It's gotten plenty of attention from knowledgable people there. But hey, wherever you want it, oh mighty admin. 😜

Last edited by NStriker on 2002-09-03, 05:28. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 70 of 117, by Stiletto

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NStriker wrote:

I suppose I could look around for that. Though if the settings didn't show up in the Award BIOS mod program, I dunno if they even exist on this board. I'm willing to try, of course! 😉

I tried using: Award Bios Editor
http://awdbedit.parodius.com/
- created by an acquaintance, Breakpoint.

I also downloaded and paged through the motherboard's manual, too. The only option I can find having to do with the Video BIOS seem to be Video BIOS Cacheable and Video RAM Cacheable under Advanced Chipset Features. Video BIOS Shadow under Advanced BIOS Features seems not to exist. Puzzling.

MODBIN doesn't list it either. Of course, it doesn't list those features at all.

It's a pity your chipset isn't currently supported by TweakBIOS, which supports the I840 but not the I845/I845E.
http://www.miro.pair.com/tweakbios/

I wish I knew a utility like TweakBIOS that supported your chipset.

Maybe the inexistence of Video BIOS Shadow is a question for the fellows of the BIOSMods.com forum?

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do the Fandango!" - Queen

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Reply 71 of 117, by Snover

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I like PNG and GIF. Nothing like lossless, high-ratio compression. Under 4K, baby!

Except that Unisys is evil so you should never use GIF files. (I may be hypocritical with this site, but vBulletin dislikes PNG files, so I'm kinda stuck with it for now. 😒)

Yes, it’s my fault.

Reply 72 of 117, by Stiletto

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Stiletto wrote:

Video BIOS Shadow under Advanced BIOS Features seems not to exist. Puzzling.

See? See? http://www.noticias3d.com/articulos/200207/it7/6.asp

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Reply 73 of 117, by NStriker

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Snover wrote:

Except that Unisys is evil so you should never use GIF files. (I may be hypocritical with this site, but vBulletin dislikes PNG files, so I'm kinda stuck with it for now. 😒)

I love how they charge a licensing fee to include GIF encoding support in software. But I suppose it's one evil against another when I'm, er... "Borrowing" the software I use, anyway. 😉

The board doesn't seem to mind having PNGs as attachments, so I assume you mean it doesn't like them for actual site graphics. A pity, since I believe GIFs only do 256 colors (dithering the rest). Not that that's usually an issue with background graphics.

Reply 74 of 117, by NStriker

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Stiletto wrote:

Yup, that'd be my BIOS, for sure. I'm pretty certain the caching options are for caching those BIOSes into the L2 cache. At least, that's what the manual said, I think. And they didn't help when I turned them off a week back. Pity.

Reply 75 of 117, by Stiletto

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...At this point...

At this point, I'd recommend contacting ABit. NStriker, are you willing to do this?

Another thing you could try is posting on USENET: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit

(If you don't have a good USENET provider, you can always use Google Groups...)

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

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Reply 76 of 117, by DosFreak

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Well, my EMS don't work no mo'.

Was playing around with NOLFB with my VESA games and decided to give a couple of my EMS games a whirl while I was at it. Unfortunately they would not work! I checked my config's and everything checked out but EMS would not enable. 😠 This was in XP.

I then booted into NT4 Workstation & 2K Advanced Server. SAME thing. No EMS whatsoever.

Now my XP installed was reinstalled a month ago so I hadn't tested any EMS games in that install nor the one before that...

Now my 2K AS install has been on there for about 2 months and I could swear that I had tested some EMS games on there before but it's hard to be certain.

Now my NT4 Workstation install has been on there for 6 months. I HAVE tested EMS games on that install and they did work just fine.

So...this is NOT a software problem. We knew that already but now we can be 100% certain (well mabye 😉 ). Okay, now that software is out of the way we can look at hardware:

The ONLY hardware that has changed in my computer since 6 months ago (the last time I *think* I tested an EMS game):

Radeon 9700
Replaced Corsair PC2700 1GB with Corsair PC3200 1GB
Added some new USB devices (scanner,External USB2 HD) All bios options remained the same.
No Bios updates.
No bios changes except memory timings for new memory.

So tonight/tommorow I'm gonna switch out the 9700 with the GF4. If I get my EMS back then we may have finally pinpointed the problem.

Wouldn't it be funny if the 9700 enables more VESA modes than the GF4 but if the 9700 disables EMS?! HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA! 😁

NStrike what vid card do you have in your system?

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Reply 78 of 117, by DosFreak

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Well I switched the cards and it's still the same. So I went back to testing out games for my List and just shifted to thinking about the prob to the back of my head.....

About 15mins later I popped open Device Manager and Noticed that the Memory Range that EMS uses is used by my AGP to CPU Controller driver. Disabled it but still a no go. Gonna try different VIA AGP drivers later tonight.....

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Reply 79 of 117, by Stiletto

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Damn. I was hoping for an update from NStriker. Still, this isn't good. And the Knowledge Base at Microsoft hasn't helped us at all yet, in this thread. This is so weird.

Might be worth contacting Microsoft support, such a weird problem as this. This is the third time we've seen it now, right? Just never on your PC. hmm....

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto