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Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

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Reply 200 of 298, by johnsonlam

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Hi,

Try replace all the DOS driver with Jack R. Ellis driver, you may have surprise.

1) QCDROM.SYS was very old, seriously outdated, try XDVD2.SYS
2) XHDD.SYS replace SMARTDRV.SYS, it's faster! It had Read-Ahead, DMA/caching overlap, and other new updates. XHDD also offers caches down to 2.5-MB, for 386 users."
3) HIRAM.EXE, please use latest UMBPCI.SYS with XMGR.SYS on Pentium-1 and later systems supported by UMBPCI.
4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore. Use JEMM386 available in the FreeDOS files on SourceForge IBiblio."
5) MSCDEX, I use SHSUCDX, Jack R. Ellis version (since Jason Hood gone) which work fine.

Wish everyone can play games or using DOS happily without the old and worn drivers.

http://optimizr.dyndns.org/dos/drivers.html

Rgds,
Johnson Lam.

Last edited by johnsonlam on 2019-05-18, 04:14. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 201 of 298, by GigAHerZ

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johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

Reply 202 of 298, by johnsonlam

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GigAHerZ wrote:
johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

You can get JEMM386, available in the FreeDOS files on SourceForge IBiblio.

Reply 205 of 298, by Caluser2000

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GigAHerZ wrote:
johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

Get a system that can allocate EMS in its bios setup routine like my Zenith Z286LP Plus.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 208 of 298, by BloodyCactus

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loads of EMS ISA cards. heaps for xt + 286.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 209 of 298, by Caluser2000

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oeuvre wrote:

Never even heard of EMS ISA cards... those exist?

I've got one that takes 8megs of dimms. They were widely used late 80s.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 212 of 298, by Nemo1985

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Sorry for the (relative) bump.

I'm playing with dos and I'm trying to make an image with config.sys and autoexec.bat fully optimized, I did try to use memmaker but it makes things worse.

The maximum result I was able to achieve is this one, 624kb free conventional memory and 136kb upper memory.
I'm not using umbpci and other tricks since I'd like this to work even on 486 system.

Here is the mi output:

Addr. Low area High area Program or device driver ----- -------- --------- -------------------------- 020Bh 1,024 […]
Show full quote

Addr. Low area High area Program or device driver
----- -------- --------- --------------------------
020Bh 1,024 .. IFS=
024Ch 1,152 .. Device=HIMEM Attr=A000h Name=XMSXXXX0
0295h 4,160 .. Device=EMM386 Attr=C000h Name=$MMXXXX0
039Ah 544 .. IFS=
03EBh 639,296 .. <largest free area>
---- Begin High (Upper) Memory ----
B166h .. 10,032 COMMAND /F
B3EAh .. 3,088 CTMOUSE
B4ACh .. 6,144 SHSUCDX
C803h .. 8,288 Device=DISPLAY Attr=C053h Name=CON
CA0Ah .. 5,008 Device=VIDECDD Attr=C800h Name=OPTICAL
CB44h .. 464 IFS=Can't in
CE0Bh .. 6,928 KEYB IT,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
CFBDh .. 4,672 DOSKEY
D0E2h .. 29,104 SMARTDRV C+ /N /Q /U

655,360 bytes (640k) total DOS 7.10 conventional memory.
639,296 bytes (624k) largest executable program. 131,104 bytes if loaded high.

EMM386 is present. High memory is managed by DOS.

0 bytes Extended (AT/286/386) memory, reported by BIOS.
2,631k bytes XMS 3.0 (3.65) memory: 2,632k used + 65,535k free. DOS in HMA.

384k bytes EMS 4.0 memory: 384k used + 0 free. No page frame.
Note: with no page frame, some programs will not detect or use EMS.

Considering it's without any sound driver but with mouse and cdrom driver and smartdrv, is it ok?
Thanks in advance.

Attachments

  • Filename
    files.7z
    File size
    890 Bytes
    Downloads
    100 downloads
    File comment
    autoexec.bat and config.sys
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 213 of 298, by GigAHerZ

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@Nemo1985, you can use RDOSUMB, URAM or something similar instead of UMBPCI. Those are written in the nineties and support way older machines like 386 and 486.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

Reply 214 of 298, by Nemo1985

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GigAHerZ wrote:

@Nemo1985, you can use RDOSUMB, URAM or something similar instead of UMBPCI. Those are written in the nineties and support way older machines like 386 and 486.

Thank you for the tip, I will check them, on the other hand I wonder are they really necessary? Is there any program who needs more than 625kb of conventional memory?

Reply 215 of 298, by Caluser2000

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600k is adaquate for the vast majority of Dos software. Having a lot of free conventional memory can also confuse some Dos applications.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 216 of 298, by Nemo1985

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Caluser2000 wrote:

600k is adaquate for the vast majority of Dos software. Having a lot of free conventional memory can also confuse some Dos applications.

Thank you so there is no need to hunt for more conventional memory.

Reply 217 of 298, by gdjacobs

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I usually shoot for about 610k. It seems to be sufficient for pretty much everything.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder