This finding of the best possible boot system becomes a bit of an obsession for some people.

For these people, 610KB of conventional memory free along with EMS and drivers in upper memory blocks just isn't good enough.

Anyway, it is best to customize the boot menu/drivers for each system. Some CD-ROM drivers don't work on some CD-ROM drives, and then you have the mess that is SCSI initialization.

Typically, you probably want these options:

a) Clean boot, no HIMEM.SYS or EMM386.SYS, but with sound initialized as long as you don't need a TSR for it.
b) HIMEM.SYS, but no EMM386.SYS, with hardware drivers loaded, sound initialized, DOS loaded high. Uses more conventional memory, but this is for software that runs protected mode but gets upset with EMM386.EXE or doesn't like running in 386 VM mode.
c) HIMEM.SYS, and EMM386.SYS RAM, with hardware drivers loaded high, DOS loaded high. Might not have as much conventional memory free depending on Upper memory use and if the EMS page buffer takes too much space.
d) HIMEM.SYS, and EMM386.SYS NOEMS, with hardware drivers loaded high, DOS loaded high. Should have the highest amount of conventional free memory. If this doesn't add more conventional memory over the (c) option, then you may decide to omit this one.
e) Start windows ... load HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, but only load hardware drivers where really needed (some PCI sound cards like the SB live)

There might be other configurations worth adding, I'm interested in hearing other peoples thoughts.

Thanks to the OP and to you sir, that was really informative and hopfully someone can chime in with something they've already come up with so we can use it.

Yes, I am aware that this varies from machine to machine, so I want to create a software that allows you to make adjustments to each of the possible settings, so that the user can decide what is best for him. But I want to organize the tools to use the best possible ones.

For example, suppose the cd driver "cd.sys" is the one that takes up the least memory, and is the best of all. But it didn't work on a particular computer. So I want to make sure I know who is the second best cd driver that uses less memory, to offer it as alternative number 2, and if it doesn't work, I want to know who is alternative number 3.

I want to develop something like a setsound.exe, that the user uses a menu to choose the best one for him, save the changes, restart the machine, and see how it goes. This avoids all the boring work of editing files, looking for topics in forums, and injecting files all the time into an old 486 that doesn't have usb ports.

The final idea would be a set of floppies, or cdrom images, that contain everything one needs, and the utilitarian that creates the autoexec and config.sys files configured with the desired programs.

canthearu wrote on 2021-09-12, 16:45:

This finding of the best possible boot system becomes a bit of an obsession for some people.

It may not be necessarily an obsession, mind you. 😀

There's even one game (Zone 66) that I know which even refuses to run with HIMEM.SYS loaded. UMBPCI (there are other similar software like this) is a good alternative for getting UMB while keeping real mode, however the way how UMB are created with UMBPCI relies of RAM shadowing (affect ISA DMA and whether the UMB area is cacheable or not depending of the motherboard chipset).

I've also seen some DOS games that are unable to run with more than 16MB RAM and to mitigate this one has to use a memory limiter or a RAM drive.

You don't need to load EMM386 prior starting Windows, since it has its own EMM that can be configured in SYSTEM.INI.

Rikintosh wrote on 2021-09-12, 17:08:

For example, suppose the cd driver "cd.sys" is the one that takes up the least memory, and is the best of all. But it didn't work on a particular computer. So I want to make sure I know who is the second best cd driver that uses less memory, to offer it as alternative number 2, and if it doesn't work, I want to know who is alternative number 3.

On one of my old computers I have to use GSCDROM.SYS (not one that uses the least memory) due to the CD music not working properly with several programs on a certain LG CD drive with different drivers. 😖

I used to be obsessed with this type of thing like 20 years ago.

That being said there are things like NetRoom 3 that let's you get above 640k free low memory.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-12, 17:24:

I've also seen some DOS games that are unable to run with more than 16MB RAM and to mitigate this one has to use a memory limiter or a RAM drive.

Is there a list of such games?

I know Aladdin won't work with more than 32 MB RAM, but I haven't yet encountered a game which needs even less than that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-12, 18:58:

Is there a list of such games?

So far, no. I haven't seen a list about this.

I know only one notable game which is Pirates! Gold. Using a RAM drive such as XMSDSK doesn't work and a memory limiter works with this successfully.

The only other game that requires this kind of workaround was a less known game called Fracas, even although that one uses an old version of the DOS/4GW extender the computer locks up with more than 16 MB RAM and replacing the extender with another one doesn't work at all. The sound code of this game doesn't work on SBPro compatible cards due to bad coding, only on SB16 compatible cards and BLASTER environment does nothing there.

Hmm Death Rally had a problem with modern systems with more that 8mb ram or so. (But they patched it.)

Regarding menus and such I stole mine from Phill and mad some additions..

Joakim wrote on 2021-09-12, 19:21:

Regarding menus and such I stole mine from Phill and mad some additions..

Phil's custom CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files are an excellent template for beginners when setting a menu. The one for Windows 98 SE MS-DOS mode even has the DOS=NOAUTO switch to avoid loading HIMEM.SYS for the "Conventional memory only" options.

Creating a list of games that don't work in the traditional way would be a good idea, I could put a section of "profiles" that contain the ready-made configuration for each of those games.