VOGONS

Lack of stability of some DOS games on real hardware

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First post, by mattrock1988

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Hi all,

So I have a curious issue that I’ve been encountering on my new retro throwback Windows 98 PC build.

Real mode 16-bit DOS games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem 1/2, and Monster Bash, work flawlessly under both Windows 98 and MS-DOS Mode. However, games that use a DOS extender seem to give me some stability issues.

Under Windows 98, if I launch Quake from the desktop, the game assumes Windows 98’s DPMI host and runs with zero problems. But whenever I dip down to MS-DOS mode and it uses CWSDPMI, Quake will run for around a minute or so before hard locking up, requiring that I press the physical reset switch on my PC to reboot, since CTRL+ALT+DEL does not respond at all and the sound from the sound card loops the last 20 milliseconds of audio over and over forever until I reset the PC.

Does anyone know what could possibly be causing this to happen? I tried stripping down my AUTOEXEC. BAT and CONFIG.SYS down to absolute bare essentials and still was unable to change the outcome. I also changed the memory manager from the native HIMEM.SYS to HIMEMX.SYS and force limited my available memory to 64 MB, down from 256 MB, in case there were compatibility issues with DOS games.

I also tried FastDOOM and got a similar result under MS-DOS Mode. Ran fine for about a minute or so before hard freezing and requiring a forced power reset.

Any thoughts on what I could do?

My system specs are in my signature.

Retro PC: Intel Celeron Mendocino @ 500 MHz, TYAN Tomahawk BX, 6 GB IDE Quantum Bigfoot, 256 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce MX 440 AGP, ESS AudioDrive 1868F ISA

Reply 1 of 3, by Jo22

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Hi, QEMM 9 is Windows 9x compatible and has its own himem.sys/DPMI and 64 MB limit (I think)
It also can work together with Microsofts himem.sys.
Another DPMI host I know of is the one in Helix Multimedia Cloaking.
It can co-exist with himem.sys and QEMM, too.
But these are just some random thoughts, of course. Maybe there are better alternatives, even.

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Reply 2 of 3, by mattrock1988

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I haven’t considered QEMM and will investigate accordingly. Though to be frank, I was getting hard locks even when using Microsoft’s native HIMEM, which should be the most compatible of the bunch to begin with.

Retro PC: Intel Celeron Mendocino @ 500 MHz, TYAN Tomahawk BX, 6 GB IDE Quantum Bigfoot, 256 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce MX 440 AGP, ESS AudioDrive 1868F ISA

Reply 3 of 3, by igully

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QEMM97 (its last version) has a 256 MB RAM limit. But be warned that QEMM is sometimes too aggressive at trying to squeeze the last byte of ram for you, resulting in some instability. Also it has trouble with dealing with programs that slow down a processor speed on purpose. Otherwise, it is a great product if it fits your needs.

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