VOGONS


First post, by Warlord

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This probably isn't hard to do but I ended up using diskpart in windows 2003 to align them to 1024 and formated them fat32 with 2003 I used assd tool to verify they were both aligned. I used BTTR BOOTMGR because of all the boot managers I tried its the only one that never complained about CHS and LBA ligning up or out right refusing to cooperate like PQ Boot from pq magic. It's also so small it fits in the bootsector and can hide partitions on the fly. Using somthing like Linux or any newer version of windows also borked my partitions and made them unreadible.

I needed to used 2003 or XP to format becasue they support Fat32X and multiple primary fat32x partitions. Other tools just use normal fat32 which doesn't always work on old computers. FAT32X enables partitions to exist beyond 1024 cylinders.

I wanted to do this becasue I don't have access to ISA in this one computer and have a Yamaha XG in it. If youre familiar with it you know that the drivers are kinda bad but when your game doesn't matter it works great well. I wanted 2 sperate windows installs on with VXD drivers and one with WDM drivers. Each set of driver offers its own quikyness and 1 will work with some games and not work with others.

For example DUKE3d work fine with WDM drivers if you used default settings in 9x native dos box but will crash windows if you use VXDs. Doom on the other hand will work good with VXDs in 9x native dosbox and glitch out with WDMs. The Dos drivers can work in real dos mode on either partitions so this way I get maximum compatibility a XG can give.

I Probably could of not bothered with aligning the partitions but you just get way more performance with them aligned.

Reply 1 of 4, by Joseph_Joestar

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Warlord wrote on 2021-10-20, 06:27:

For example DUKE3d work fine with WDM drivers if you used default settings in 9x native dos box but will crash windows if you use VXDs.

I noticed that games like Duke3D and Tyrian don't crash under Win9x when a YMF7x4 card is connected through SB-Link, despite using VxD drivers.

Unfortunately, SB-Link is rarely present on motherboards where it would be most useful i.e. the ones with no ISA slots.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 4, by Jo22

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I'm speaking under correction, but I vaguely remember
FAT32 can't be properly aligned the way NTFS can be.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/151798-does-fat3 … &comment=968582

Long story short, aligning a FAT32 partition itself is not enough.
Even if the partition is aligned, there's no guarantee that the data is stored with the alignment, too.
That's what "Fat's bizarre size shifts the clusters" hints to.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 4 of 4, by konc

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Warlord wrote on 2021-10-20, 06:27:

I Probably could of not bothered with aligning the partitions but you just get way more performance with them aligned.

What you didn't consider unfortunately is that in FAT partitions data begin right after the table(s), whose size is not a nice round cluster number.
Even changing the root directory drives a FAT partition out of alignment (if it ever was really aligned)