VOGONS


First post, by Tmp2k

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So I have a system that boots every version of windows. It's going well on the most part but I'm struggling to install the ES1370 drivers on Win3.1. They require EMS and have added EMM386 to config.sys. This causes the system to hang and I'm guessing it has something to do with the 3GB of RAM installed.

I'm not sure if it's just the SB16 DOS emulation that requires EMS but if I disable EMS and the call to .BAT file Windows will boot, however most the sound related app cause errors anyway.

Is anyone familiar with getting these cars to work in Win3.1 or how to get EMS to work with 2GB RAM?

Reply 1 of 5, by Tmp2k

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The problem I had was the setup had added emm386 to my config sys but it had pointed it at the windows directory not the dos directory. This caused the PC to freeze on boot.

Changing it to C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE worked for me and I now have working audio.

Reply 2 of 5, by Weebob

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Good work. A system that boots every version of windows.... sounds interesting 😁

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Reply 3 of 5, by Tmp2k

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It's been an interesting journey but I've got them all on there now, just working out a few kinks. Getting them booting wasn't too hard, but I want them all running properly, i.e. working sound and at 1280x1024 with the ability to run games etc. At the moment I've used 2 sound cards and a 3.5mm Y cable but I've just seen a card in a different post that works form win3.1 to WinXP and has DOS SB16 drivers, so that might be another option.

Reply 4 of 5, by Hamby

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I believe DOS emm386 (at least up to 6.22?) limits you to 64mb.
I've been reading that QEMM lets you have up to 256mb.
I'd be shocked/thrilled to discover that either one could access 2GB of ram!

I'd be very interested to learn how you managed this massive multiboot project.
Does it really boot every version of windows from Win 1.0 to Win 10?
Did you use FreeDOS for the DOS underpinnings of Win 3.1? Or just MSDOS 6.22?
Does that include "sub-versions" like ME?
Perhaps you could add DesqView to the mix?

Really exciting!

Reply 5 of 5, by Tmp2k

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So far the list is... DOS 6.22/Win 3.1, Win95C, Win98SE, WinME, Win2K, WinXP, Vista, Win7 Win10 (Also running Mini WinXP / WinPE as a recovery OS)

I haven't added Win8/8.1 as it's very similar to 7 & 10 and not very interesting, but it could be added. I haven't gone back before Win3.1 as that's the OS I grew up with, but I might add them for completeness. I haven't added NT as it's another OS I have no history with.

I've gone through a lot of multiboot systems to get to this point and learnt a lot of tricks to get such different OSes running natively on the same hardware but I've never had an issue with DOS/Win3.1 having too much RAM. It just uses what I can, which seems to be 32MB according to mem. I@'never gone into it as it just works. Win9X needs to be patched to work with large amounts of RAM, or tricked into thinking there's only 512MB - there's pros and cos to each, but it gets tricky when you use things like SBLive! that loads soundfonts into RAM.

I used grub4dos to multi boot as it can create virtual primary partitions from logical drives, so you could run the whole thing form one HDD which is my ultimate goal.

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