VOGONS


First post, by dkarguth

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System specs:

386DX-20
387-33 Math Coprocessor
16 MB SIPP RAM
Chips and Technologies NEAT Chipset
Oak Technologies VGA
Serial/Parallel/Gameport Card, generic
Trantor SCSI card
Toshiba SCSI CD-ROM
Maxtor 200 MB SCSI HDD
IDE/Floppy controller, generic
3.5 inch Floppy Drive
5.25 inch Floppy Drive
4 GB Flash Memory Module (replaces IDE HDD)
Soundblaster AWE32
Intel Etherexpress 8/16 LAN Adapter
56k Modem

The problem started when I installed my SCSI card, as the ASPI and CD-ROM drivers took up too much conventional memory, and Wolf3d refused to run. It suggested getting an extended memory manager, so I got QEMM.
I went through the setup process and it optimized a lot of my drivers, but it had no effect, Wolf3d still refused to run. The only way I can get it to run is to comment out half of my drivers. Why would it do this? I was under the impression that Wolf3d could use extended memory? Is there a workaround to make it load anyway?

"And remember, this fix is only temporary, unless it works." -Red Green

Reply 1 of 6, by cyclone3d

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Post the contents of your config.sys and autoexec.bat.

The "auto optimization" features of memory managers are pretty much absolute crap.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 2 of 6, by retardware

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cyclone3d wrote:

The "auto optimization" features of memory managers are pretty much absolute crap.

+1

Also post screenshot of MSD's output of the "Memory" analysis.

Reply 3 of 6, by jesolo

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A rule of thumb that I follow - always load those device drivers or tsr's that take up the most memory first into your Upper Memory Area followed by the ones that takes up the least memory.
Thereby, should you have too many device drivers or tsr's, then you hopefuly only end up with those that takes up a small amount of conventional memory.

However, you need to load HIMEM.SYS & EMM386.EXE in your Config.sys file in order to make the Upper Memory Area available for use for device drivers or tsr's.

As requested above, let's first take a look at your startup files, since you could be loading device drivers or tsr's that are not needed.

Reply 4 of 6, by .legaCy

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That's why i love PhilsComputerLab dos startup pack, it gives you a lot of flexibility on your setup, maybe using the principle of the PhilsComputerLab dos startup menu you can make "presets" of drivers for your need.

Reply 5 of 6, by jesolo

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.legaCy wrote:

That's why i love PhilsComputerLab dos startup pack, it gives you a lot of flexibility on your setup, maybe using the principle of the PhilsComputerLab dos startup menu you can make "presets" of drivers for your need.

Here's a write up I did a couple of years ago on this topic: How to create a boot (start up) menu under Windows 9x/ME

Reply 6 of 6, by K1n9_Duk3

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dkarguth wrote:

Why would it do this? I was under the impression that Wolf3d could use extended memory?

Wolf3D needs around 520k of conventional memory, otherwise it simply won't start. The game can use extended and expanded memory, but I think that's only used for storing sprites, wall textures and digitized sounds (a.k.a. the contents of VSWAP.WL6). And whenever the game wants to access a specific sound, sprite or wall texture, it needs to copy it from extended (XMS) memory into a main memory buffer, since it's a real mode program and can't access your computer's entire memory all at once.

PC Speaker/AdLib sounds, music, level data and a few other images all have to be loaded into conventional memory. On top of that, Wolf3D actually generates some new code for scaling the wall textures to the appropriate size, so that it ends up with a dedicated scaling routine for every possible wall height in the 3D view window. I don't know exactly how much memory this requires, but I guess it's a lot. And this, too, must fit in the conventional memory. I don't think it would have been possible to move these scaling routines into EMS or XMS without causing any issues.