we can raise that limit.

But I have never seen a game that needs more than 63 mb extended memory

(if we allow 128mb. a lot of people will set it. and then dosbox will become quite an resource hog.)
Until I see a game needs more than 63 mb extended memory (to run), the 63 mb limit will stay.

There's no point, as no DOS programs ever used that much. I'm pretty sure that XMS and/or EMS is limited to that much as well.

Oh well...that's good enough for me. I just didn't know. Works for me

@HunterZ:

I think EMS is limited to 32MB using EMM386 (maybe 64MB max. when using a third party util like QEMM) but when using XMS you could take advantage of ALL installed Extended Memory. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

eL: Sounds reasonable. I haven't researched it much myself, as I never had problems with too little memory in DOS application in DOSBox that weren't due to some weird bug or setup issue.

On the other hand, I have never needed more than 64MB under real MS-DOS, not even running demanding games like Quake.

Quake isn't that demanding. At least, I ran it playably on a 120MHz 486 with 16MB of RAM.

I even once ran two copies simultaneously in Linux on that machine and connected them in a LAN game. Of course it was unplayably slow due to the CPU, but it didn't complain about memory 😀

Programs can access a lot more memory than 64MB through
the EMS/SXMS/VCPI interfaces, only int15/ah=88 and the
standard XMS are limited to 64MB.
But as Qbix said there's no reason to raise the limit if
nothing uses it.

Qbix wrote:

we can raise that limit. […]
Show full quote

we can raise that limit.

But I have never seen a game that needs more than 63 mb extended memory

(if we allow 128mb. a lot of people will set it. and then dosbox will become quite an resource hog.)
Until I see a game needs more than 63 mb extended memory (to run), the 63 mb limit will stay.

Redguard from 1998 use more. It also need Glide.

I can run Redguard in pure DOS without any problems (with a Voodoo2 card) when I have 128MB RAM in the comp, but if I only have 64MB the loading of the world map will halt and never finish. It works fine with the intro and the small ship level at the start of the game, though.

I should try the game with 64MB and DOS/32A someday and see if it makes a difference, but I doubt it.

I wonder if the map loading and unable to finish is a PC problem and not a ram limitation problem?

Too bad virtual machines don't support Glide. Can the Glide wrappers be used with Software OGL? Might be a good way to test.

VPC 9x
Software OGL
Dgvoodoo
Redguard.

Then try different memory amount. Would try it myself but I think my copy of RedGuard is corrupted.

I wonder if gulikoza has worked on Glide for DosBox latelysBox Glide. Could patch that into ykhwong's build which support higher than 64 (IIRC) and see if there's any diff.

or (and it just occured to my slow brain), use Dgvoodoo/GlidOS with 9x/NT and simply limit the amount of DPMI memory allowed.

Of course we should also lookout for .SWP files to see if RedGuard is using HD space for memory.

dos32a and glide don't work since dos32a does not support the loading of glide2x.ovl

I have seen the same problem with redguard but at the time I did not pay attention to it. I can try with ykhwong's 128MB patch and see if it makes any difference...

According to wd ykhwong's patch is not complete...it actually does not do anything 😀.

But wd sent me his patch and I can confirm that Redguard does not load with memsize=32 (this is what I usually have set). The load progress bar will stop at 34% and my cycle-o-meter drops to 1000 cycles so the game hangs. But it will load fine with memsize=63 and even more so with memsize=127. 32 & 63MB were tested w/o wd's patch so it's safe to say that RG does not need more than memsize=63 in dosbox.
I also tested with memsize=48 just to be sure 63 is not the limit and it also loaded ok. That is if the save game I' trying to load exposes this RG problem...the ship level will load with 32 as well so I think it does.

That's great news 😀

Wierd that it works with 63MB in DOSBox, but not with 63MB in real DOS 😕 Where did you start with your save? You did start on the big island and not in a smaller level, like a house/dungeon/ship, right?

And when will you have the Glide thingy ready for public use? *hint* *hint* 😁

Actually I don't know where I started it as I don't know the game. But feel free to send me your save via pm and I'll test it.

Well, there's still a lot of work to be done in the area of cross-platform compatibility but it'll be ready when TPTB say it is 😉

gulikoza wrote:

Actually I don't know where I started it as I don't know the game. But feel free to send me your save via pm and I'll test it.

Done 😀

same behaviour. Works with 48, hangs with 32MB 😀

gulikoza wrote:

same behaviour. Works with 48, hangs with 32MB 😀

That's great 😎 Wierd, but great 😁

Now I'm gonna poke around with my 64MB DOS comp and figure out why it didn't work there 😜

Is this "hang on 32MB" issue a DOSBox bug or a Redguard bug or a DOS4GW bug?