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First post, by davidsaunders

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Most of my old DOS programs require at least 96MB XMS, and some as much as 256MB. DOSBOX does not allow more than 64MB to be configured. In every other way DOSBOX meets the requirements of my old software, so does anyone have a simple fix for this problem? I really do not want to dig through the source code to figure this one out.

Reply 1 of 22, by filipetolhuizen

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Some versions will allow a maximum of 128mb, allowing some of your programs to run. This is my favourite: http://ykhwong.x-y.net/

Reply 3 of 22, by davidsaunders

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What:...

Do you not remember in the mid nineties when the high end boxes were being built to run the extreme high end DOS games and Graphics software. At that time those who could afford it were playing the plethora of games based on the Krystal game engine that required a minimum of 128MB to pull off its speed tricks. I remember in 1995 building my first 486DX4 with 128MB of ram to play DOS games that would not run with any less. (yea I was at that one of the rich brats that could afford that kind of thing).

Reply 6 of 22, by keropi

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What are those games that need so much mem? never heard of one...

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Reply 7 of 22, by Dominus

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Please name them.

Edit: Krystal game engine? This topic is the first real hit for this...
And crystal game engine seems about newer engines, for example the new Deus Ex

Last edited by Dominus on 2012-01-14, 15:34. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 9 of 22, by davidsaunders

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It was definitely native DOS (used Unreal Mode).

Also the Krystal engine fell out of use around 1999, I did not know that there is a newer Engine with the same name (and worse graphics by the looks of it).

There were hundreds of open source 3d first person shooters written for Krystal. Krystal used huge tables and every dirty trick in the book to accomplish extraordinary 3D graphics (even by today's standards). It was written in hand optimized asm by Zeten, and truely open source (the licence restricted it from being used for anything commercial). For all things traditionally float it used fixed point math and some huge tables for trig functions. It also used some mirrored projection tricks to speed things up (all of these tricks took a lot of RAM, and made initial load time a bit slow as it created the tables).

Reply 11 of 22, by Dominus

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hundreds of them but none with any name...

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 12 of 22, by davidsaunders

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There names included:
"Kill My Boss"
"Shoot Some Aliens"
"Shoot"
"Invade"

And many more equally non-inventive names, These were made mostly by hobby coders, and distributed on the various dial up BBS systems.

Reply 14 of 22, by Dominus

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So do you have them and can you attach them?

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 16 of 22, by leileilol

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Sounds a lot like hipster bullshitting right now. Especially with this

davidsaunders wrote:

I remember in 1995 building my first 486DX4 with 128MB of ram to play DOS games that would not run with any less.

Never saw anything of the sort - i've only see a few games that demand 24mb, and that was around 1998, not 1995. In 1995, most (all, rather) game developers were targeting the 4mb and 8mb DOS machine. Whatever this "128mb requiring" 1995 game is right now with the pretentious names that was posted up seem fictional.

In 1995, high-end gaming was limited to SGI Workstations where games like BZFlag were played on $10,000 computers with Intergraph hardware using IrixGL. They didn't use 128mb ram, either.

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Reply 17 of 22, by Freddo

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leileilol wrote:

Sounds a lot like hipster bullshitting right now. [snip] In 1995, most (all, rather) game developers were targeting the 4mb and 8mb DOS machine. Whatever this "128mb requiring" 1995 game is right now with the pretentious names that was posted up seem fictional.

Indeed. I can't think of any game from 1995 that even required 16MB, they were satisfied with 8MB.

The only DOS game I'm aware of that require more than 16MB of RAM is Redguard from 1998. And that's mainly because Bethesda was so far behind the tech race releasing a game for DOS while everyone else were releasing DirectX games for Windows, and their game engine XnGine being crap. Todd Howard at Bethesda (studio director) consider it the biggest mistake of his career to release Redguard for DOS using outdated tech and that it's unfortunate a DirectX patch never happened.

I also know of a few other games that want to take advantage of more than 16MB of RAM, such as Battlespire from 1997, but it's not required to run the game. If Battlespire can't detect more than 16MB RAM it will create a swapfile.

Reply 18 of 22, by VileR

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for an engine that "fell out of use around 1999", it's curious that all those hundreds(!!!) of games coded with it would be restricted to the BBS circuit and have zero presence on the internet, along with the engine itself.

I guess that this secret cabal of elite high-end PC owners was simply trying to keep this knowledge from leaking... since Deus Ex 3 in 2011 has "worse graphics" than what they were playing in 1995, and all. Everyone else would've just gotten jealous.

....or thought they were trolling. OH WAIT

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