Re: XMSDSK works in DOS 6 but not in DOS 7+

Posted on 2021-08-13, 23:58

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I was doing some research about this since you are using a thin-client PC. There are some USB drivers for DOS that may or may not help with your situation. A site mentions ways to use the USB CD drive with MSCDEX. IIRC, back then I only tested something similar with a USB flash drives since I don't …

---

Re: XMSDSK works in DOS 6 but not in DOS 7+

Posted on 2021-08-13, 22:19

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Here is some information from Microsoft in archived site explaining why: https://web.archive.org/web/20080305062358/https://support.microsoft.com/kb/129998 Some programs expect the Msdos.sys file to be at least 1024 bytes in length. If it is not, these programs may not work correctly. For example, …

---

Re: XMSDSK works in DOS 6 but not in DOS 7+

Posted on 2021-08-13, 22:01

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

The [Options] are fine except for one little detail. MSDOS.SYS from the Windows 95 and 98 has some additional lines that does nothing and it is only used for compatibility as it needs to be more than 1024 bytes.

---

Re: XMSDSK works in DOS 6 but not in DOS 7+

Posted on 2021-08-13, 19:07

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Seems fine, tried to reproduce it with those settings and didn't hang up on me when booting from the HDD. XMSDSK has a command line switch called "/t" which forces XMSDSK to allocate at the top of the XMS memory above 16MB, this could help you since according to the README some computers hangs up …

---

Re: Problems with XHDD and non-UDMA disks?

Posted on 2021-08-13, 14:02

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Could you show the rest of CONFIG.SYS file and AUTOEXEC.BAT? I don't use XHDD but for the Intel chipset there is a driver which enables DMA bus mastering in case PIO is forced by the BIOS. For disk cache utility you can use FreeDOS LBACACHE instead if you don't want to use SMARTDRV. KILLER.EXE from …

---

Re: GET OFF MY LAWN (the YouTube channel)

Posted on 2021-08-13, 12:52

by

by Gmlb256

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

The thing is, it wasn't always that way! This inconsistency in hardware came about with the plethora of IBM-compatibles in the early 80s, but there were other companies back then like Commodore and Sinclair who developed PCs that did have fixed hardware. No consolification there! Because when …

---

Re: XMSDSK works in DOS 6 but not in DOS 7+

Posted on 2021-08-13, 03:17

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

XMSDSK v1.9i works fine in MS-DOS 7.1 on my Socket 7 computer with 64MB of RAM. Could you show how do you have set CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT?

---

Re: Non Intel CPU incompatibilities.

Posted on 2021-08-13, 02:11

by

by Gmlb256

in Milliways

in Milliways

One example of incompatibility is when Intel made the LOOP instruction slow to avoid problems with I/O delays. The LOOP instruction of AMD K6 CPUs behave the same as this: mov cx, 256 delayloop: dec dx jnz delayloop This caused issues with Windows 95 on faster AMD K6 processors and it required a …

---

Re: First PC build in 15 years (build log)

Posted on 2021-08-13, 01:51

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

According to some research in respect to the motherboard one manual doesn't mention any support for Pentium MMX, but I found an archived site of AOpen that mentions the jumper settings of the AP53 and that includes the Pentium MMX (as PP/MT). Does your motherboard has the jumpers mentioned on that …

---

Re: Sound lag in dos games

Posted on 2021-08-12, 20:44

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Does the BIOS has a setting to adjust the I/O recovery time and/or chipset related settings that affects the ISA bus? On the other hand, I have a 440BX motherboard with only one ISA slot that didn't work well with any sound card and replacing it with another motherboard fixed that for me.

---

Re: GET OFF MY LAWN (the YouTube channel)

Posted on 2021-08-12, 16:54

by

by Gmlb256

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

I agree with most of the thing you said about modern games especially with always online requirement, homogenization of the genres, the quality of single-player and patches with occasionally very large download sizes. The unskippable videos (I don't like them either) sometimes is used to disguise …

---

Re: How do I locate the address of the linear framebuffer in my VGA card?

Posted on 2021-08-12, 14:16

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

There is a very small performance gain when VGA Write Combining is enabled. Is this change unrelated to the PCI bus? It's CPU related. Also VGA write combining at least on P6 micro-architecture has some disadvantages depending of the card, when mode X is in use some images gets screwed up. I …

---

Re: Are Creative sound cards, especially X-Fi, really worth it for EAX games?

Posted on 2021-08-12, 13:14

by

by Gmlb256

in Milliways

in Milliways

Surround sound in Quake 2 RTX also breaks when using OpenAL - same problem. OpenAL is just borked. OpenAL on latest games only works with OpenAL Soft since they use extensions not found on the Creative ones such as AL_EXT_MCFORMATS. Surround sound is supported on the Creative OpenAL but they use a …

---

Re: Are Creative sound cards, especially X-Fi, really worth it for EAX games?

Posted on 2021-08-12, 12:39

by

by Gmlb256

in Milliways

in Milliways

As a former owner of a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium I can related some of the things. I can recommend the Daniel_K's X-Fi driver pack since they have less issue compared to the official ones. In my experience the official drivers had some issues such as attempting to use for X-Fi MIDI playback, I …

---

Re: I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream Display Problem

Posted on 2021-08-11, 21:47

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You're welcome!

---

Re: I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream Display Problem

Posted on 2021-08-11, 21:37

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I have found a manual of that game and says that there is a command line switch called VESA. Try it to see if it solves the problem on the S3 video hardware.

---

Re: I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream Display Problem

Posted on 2021-08-11, 21:20

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Probably the SVGA video mode is a non-standard one which predates VESA. Does the game support a VESA video mode? LineWars II has a similar thing where there is a accelerated S3 video mode that uses 800x600 but that only works on cards prior to Trio64 and this one checks if that mode exist or not.

---

Re: I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream Display Problem

Posted on 2021-08-11, 20:55

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Isn't the ASCII character thing related to the 8x14 font issue that happens on other games where the font is just garbage on some video cards? I'm not familiar with that game though.

---

Re: Why is Doom slow but Quake fast on my Tseng Labs ET4000?

Posted on 2021-08-11, 16:55

by

by Gmlb256

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

In this scenario the CPU is plenty fast. What then is responsible for Mode X being slow? Is it the Tseng ET4000 or the ISA bus? I'm not familiar with ISA graphics cards. Is it normal for them to struggle with Doom? Is it possible to summarize the Tseng ET4000 on the ISA bus as "unusually slow" at …

---

Re: Impractical Computing and Retrocomputing Ideas (Humour)

Posted on 2021-08-11, 15:41

by

by Gmlb256

in Milliways

in Milliways

Configure a HDD with nonsensical sizes such as m471. This actually happened to me when cajoling a 64GB HDD to work on a BIOS which supports up to 8GB and surprisingly worked, I used the correct settings from another motherboard which detected it without issues.

---