only thing i can think of is lastdrivehigh= e:
do you really need setver ?
aweutil with the /S switch shouldnt use any memory

try running memaker
or try an earlier dos version

Try the /C parameter to see what is taking up so much conventional memory. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with your configuration files, on the contrary, so maybe it's the core of dos 7? With this configuration in dos 6x you should be able to have more that 615KB free

@Davros, setver is running for any dos version sensitive games that require earlier versions of dos to run and aweutil unfortunately does use valueable dos memory unless someone can tell me how to get an awe32 working perfectly without it?

Konc, I assume you're talking about typing mem /c? If so, I've never tried this command so I'll give it a shot. I just find it strange because my other dos 7 windows 98 se builds use an awe64 gold which loads aweutil and also a sb16 which obviously doesn't require aweutil and they have a minimum of 590 something. All loading cute mouse and oakcdrom as well.

I always try to run just the core essentials being the cdrom drivers, mouse drivers and sound card drivers.

borgie83 wrote:

@Davros, setver is running for any dos version sensitive games that require earlier versions of dos to run and aweutil unfortunately does use valueable dos memory unless someone can tell me how to get an awe32 working perfectly without it?

SETVER is only needed when installing the SB16 DOS driver package to circumvent that moronic "Win95 check". Also, you can safely get rid of CTSB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS

Try replacing the CD driver with UIDE and mouse driver with Cutemouse (not the latest version but one before it), that should free up quite a bit. JemmEx should take less memory than EMM386, unless maybe you don't have any UMBs. What platform are you on?

If you want 627k free memory, have a look at the link in my signature 😉

@5u3, ok got rid of SETVER as well as CTSB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS. Released a fair bit of memory 😀

Any further recommendations?

Here's my latest results.

@jwt27, I have a sony driver that I haven't tested out as yet so I'm going to try that first and see how much memory it takes up. If that uses too much then I'll check out UIDE. Regarding cute mouse, I'm already using it but I believe mine is the latest version. Is there a reason why the version before it is better?

UIDE takes just 5K and can be loaded in UMB, so that's effectively zero bytes. Plus you can use your 400MB of XMS as disk cache, which would otherwise be wasted on dos.

Last version of CTmouse has some issues with Tyrian and some other games, where the game slows down or crashes while moving the mouse.

you sure about aweutil using memory
then why isnt it listed in your mem /c picture ?

before you can play music synthesis effects, you need to initialize
the AWE hardware by typing this command line:

AWEUTIL /S

NOTE: This command initializes the AWE hardware only and does not
leave the program resident in system memory.

Is there something in particular you are trying to run that requires an unusually high amount of free conventional memory?

Using SHSUCDX along with UIDE is also a good idea.

5u3 wrote:

Also, you can safely get rid of CTSB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS

If I'm not mistaken, you need at least the latter for games that use CT-VOICE.DRV, at least.

Jorpho wrote:

5u3 wrote:

Also, you can safely get rid of CTSB16.SYS and CTMMSYS.SYS

If I'm not mistaken, you need at least the latter for games that use CT-VOICE.DRV, at least.

Right, thanks for the hint. Great Hierophant has compiled a list of these games in his awesome blog. However, I don't think it is worth wasting precious base memory by loading these drivers by default when maybe 10 games need them installed.

Ok, so I replaced MSCDEX with SHSUCDEX and OAKCDROM with VIDE-CDD. Quite positive results so far.

Here's the latest:

Further to that, does anyone know of any games that require more than 599k of memory?

Curious as to whether I should try for more memory.

More memory is always better 😀

You can still replace DBLBUFF + VIDE-CD by UIDE, and HIMEM+EMM386 by either JemmEx or XMGR+UMBPCI.

I would really recommend the first option at least, your system will be so much faster with a large disk cache!

borgie83 wrote:

Further to that, does anyone know of any games that require more than 599k of memory?

I'm sure there are plenty of games you can play with 599k of memory that are a lot more fun than trying to get more than 599k of memory.

If you have the hard drive space and don't need CD audio, you can always get rid of the CD-ROM driver entirely and switch to SHSUCDHD, which will let DOS programs access ISO images stored on the hard drive.

Jemm also comes with its own CD-ROM driver which in theory can leave you with even more memory.

borgie83 wrote:

Further to that, does anyone know of any games that require more than 599k of memory?

Dune II with both Sound Blaster and Sound Canvas Selected.

Since you're interested in having the most conventional memory available for some reason, let's straighten up something: it doesn't really matter what you replace with what or how many drivers you load, as long as they get loaded into upper memory and not conventional. In some of the screenshots you posted earlier there are things loaded in conventional. See for example the following screenshot with a bunch of things loaded, free conventional mem is high because almost everything is loaded into upper mem.

Besides the theoretical discussion, there is no point is digging more into this, unless you're trying to run something specific that complains about insufficient memory, which I doubt. You should be OK (conventional memory-wise) to run most things with ~600KB. Perhaps just make that shsucdx load into upper for those last extra KB's...
Hope this helps.

@Konc, you'll notice that I do try to load whatever I can into the upper memory, hence the LH and DEVICEHIGH. I obviously wanted more memory because several games were complaining about requiring extra memory for example Halloween Harry and others that state that if you don't have a certain amount of memory available then the sound blaster wouldn't be able to be used and only the pc speaker would be available for use. As Gerwin states above, Dune II is one of those games.

@Jorpho, could you please give me a brief explanation on how to correctly use SHSUCDHD? What line do you use in autoexec.bat? Can it be used in addition to SHSUCDEX? I've come across this in the past and was curious to try it because I have several ISO images I'd love to be able to load in dos without having to burn them to disc.

borgie83 wrote:

@Jorpho, could you please give me a brief explanation on how to correctly use SHSUCDHD? What line do you use in autoexec.bat? Can it be used in addition to SHSUCDEX? I've come across this in the past and was curious to try it because I have several ISO images I'd love to be able to load in dos without having to burn them to disc.

To be honest, I've never actually tried it myself. Closer examination reveals that you do in fact have to use it at the same time as SHSUCDX, so in fact there is no memory to be saved (unless it's smaller than VIDE-CDD.SYS, in which case the difference is probably negligible). Complete documentation for both is provided in the "SHSUCD 3-2" link at http://www.oocities.org/jadoxa/shsucdx/index.html , which includes everything.

It looks like it's just a simple matter of typing
SHSUCDHD /F:[some iso]
SHSUCDX /D:SHSU-CDH
at the command prompt at any time.

I emphasize that this will not let you use a BIN/CUE that includes audio tracks.