Why not use MSD and Manifest to look where the ROM area is, and start by experimenting with conservatively setting memory ranges, expanding them by trial and error?

retardware wrote on 2021-09-25, 16:07:

Why not use MSD and Manifest to look where the ROM area is, and start by experimenting with conservatively setting memory ranges, expanding them by trial and error?

Wasn’t aware of those. I’ll track them down and give them a shot.

deepthaw wrote on 2021-09-25, 16:03:

I suspect the GeForce bios is just occupying too much memory

This is the problem, I have two AGP GeForce cards and their Video BIOS takes about 64KB of the upper memory segment. So you can't use C800-CFFF range for anything, you can only use the D000-EFFF range no matter which memory manager you use.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-25, 16:37:

deepthaw wrote on 2021-09-25, 16:03:

I suspect the GeForce bios is just occupying too much memory

This is the problem, I have two AGP GeForce cards and their Video BIOS takes about 64KB of the upper memory segment. So you can't use C800-CFFF range for anything, you can only use the D000-EFFF range no matter which memory manager you use.

Do you have a config line that already works with one of those cards? It’ll be less of an issue once my isa sb16 comes in and I don’t need EMS to emulate sound in DOS.

deepthaw wrote on 2021-09-25, 17:57:

Do you have a config line that already works with one of those cards? It’ll be less of an issue once my isa sb16 comes in and I don’t need EMS to emulate sound in DOS.

Yes, I have one on my Slot 1 computer with QEMM. For simplicity sake I will display the CONFIG.SYS line for EMM386 which can help with your situation.

1DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM FRAME=D000 I=E000-EFFF

This config line assumes that there are no other ROM devices located around D000-EFFF range.

I used the MS-DOS 6.22 directory since I don't know which version you are exactly using, you can also include I=B000-B7FF but will break compatibility with monochrome video modes. For QEMM I suggest adding X=F000-FFFF in addition to the other parameters because that's the ROM BIOS location and without this it causes stability issues.

Gmlb256 wrote on 2021-09-25, 18:05:

Yes, I have one on my Slot 1 computer with QEMM. For simplicity sake I will display the CONFIG.SYS line for EMM386 which can hel […]
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deepthaw wrote on 2021-09-25, 17:57:

Do you have a config line that already works with one of those cards? It’ll be less of an issue once my isa sb16 comes in and I don’t need EMS to emulate sound in DOS.

Yes, I have one on my Slot 1 computer with QEMM. For simplicity sake I will display the CONFIG.SYS line for EMM386 which can help with your situation.

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1DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM FRAME=D000 I=E000-EFFF

This config line assumes that there are no other ROM devices located around D000-EFFF range.

I used the MS-DOS 6.22 directory since I don't know which version you are exactly using, you can also include I=B000-B7FF but will break compatibility with monochrome video modes. For QEMM I suggest adding X=F000-FFFF in addition to the other parameters because that's the ROM BIOS location and without this it causes stability issues.

That caused a restart at boot. Reinstalled QEMM and ran MFT. Looks like my Ultra66 ide controller is sitting right in prime real estate.

So I’m guessing I either need to: use BW area, switch back to Radeon, or remove the Ultra66 controller.

deepthaw wrote on 2021-09-25, 18:29:

So I’m guessing I either need to: use BW area, switch back to Radeon, or remove the Ultra66 controller.

Removing the Ultra66 controller will fix it in this case without changing anything. If you want to use the B000-B7FF range as UMB without removing the HDD card then use the following parameters.

1FRAME=D800 I=B000-B7FF I=E800-EFFF

You will get less UMB this way though.

One more thing, does your motherboard has ROM around the E000-EFFF range? I recall this with a Gateway motherboard and it didn't allow me to use most of that address range.

If the EMS requirement can be satisfied by 4.0 spec (not compliant with 3.2), then you could try
P0=B000 P1=B400 P2=D800 P3=DC00
Before that, try the HIGHSCAN parameter to see if it can allocate into the E000 block - it only needs to find one more page ... E000-E3FF and it could allocate a D400 page frame

EMM386 can use E000-EFFF for the page frame. Add 'M9' to the command line

Thanks all, I ended up just removing the Ultra66 card and now emm386 auto ram just works with no further tweaks. Qemm inevitably locks up the computer if I try running optimize but the other utilities look great so I’ll keep it on the hdd.