First post, by DonutKing
- Rank
- Oldbie
I'm currently building a DX2/66 box for old games. Shuttle HOT-407 motherboard, 16MB RAM, AMI Bios, S3 805 VLB video, SB16, 1GB Quantum hard disk (needed to load Dynamic Drive Overlay to get more than 504mb which takes up 6kb of upper memory).
When configuring AUOTEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS I normally just load himem and emm386, load all drivers and devices high (LOADHIGH/DEVICEHIGH) and I usually end up with ~617KB free conventional memory.
Once you start loading additional drivers like univbe, network card etc you start to end up with less than 590kb. Especially if you want EMS.
In the past I've setup a menu in config.sys to load different configurations but this time, for ease of use considerations I'd like to avoid this if at all possible- it would also save having to reboot and pick a different config if you wanted to play a certain game.
Some things I've tried so far are:
- -memmaker - tells me my configuration is already optimal
-changing order of items in autoexec.bat/config.sys - loading largest items first
-disable adapter ROM shadowing in bios. Haven't tried disabling video and system BIOS shadowing, is it worth doing this or best left enabled?
I haven't looked into aftermarket memory managers like 386MAX or QEMM because I heard many games are not compatible - can somebody provide comment on this?
I've had success so far simply using the AUTO RAM switch with EMM386 - even though it only gives me 589KB free conventional memory and I haven't installed a network card yet. Even so, I can run EMS games like Arena and then protected mode games like Doom2 without rebooting or having issues. Haven't run into a game yet that complains about insufficient conventional memory.
I would like to maximise my conventional memory though. So I'm wondering if there are any tips and tricks that might be shared?
Are there perhaps better drivers for mouse and CDROM that are a bit smaller? I'm using Microsoft mouse 8.7 and OAKCDROM.SYS fro mthe Win98 boot disk.
Univbe seems quite finicky, I've tried 5.3a and 6.53, and it seems to be quite tricky to load into upper memory. If I enable EMS then univbe only loads in conventional memory even though my largest UMB is 28kb and it only takes up 14kb in memory, and I load it first before any other drivers. I couldn't get 6.53 to load high at all so I'm currently using 5.3a.
Current CONFIG.SYS:
DEVICE=C:\dos\himem.sys
DEVICE=C:\dos\emm386.exe RAM AUTO HIGHSCAN I=B000-B7FF
DEVICEHIGH=c:\oakcdrom.sys /d:mscd000
DOS=HIGH,UMB
BUFFERS=10
FCBS=10,4
STACKS=9,256
FILES=40
LASTDRIVE=E
Autoexec.bat:
@ECHO OFF
LH C:\SDD\UNIVBE.EXE
LH C:\MSCDEX.EXE /d:mscd000 /l:d
LH C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE 2048
LH C:\MOUSE87.COM
LH C:\DOS\DOSKEY.COM
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS;C:\
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET SOUND=C:\SB16
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
C:\SB16\DIAGNOSE /S
C:\SB16\MIXERSET /P /Q