Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-06, 21:24:
I also just looked--although briefly--at 4DOS. Is it compatible with Win98SE? I will now try the Garbo mirror in my browser now. Thanks!
I have 4DOS 7.50 installed in Windows 98 SE. I don't remember where I got this, let me know if you can't find it. I might have gotten it from the author's site which was jpsoftware.com, not available now but it's on the wayback machine, see e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20060611221042/htt … om/download.htm
It's a Windows install - it shows up in Add/Remove Programs, and as far as I can tell it added a Start Menu folder because I wouldn't have called it lowercase "4dos" myself 😁
Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-06, 21:41:
I just found out that SmartDrv does not work in Windows 98 mode. 🙁
Windows does it own disk caching. See e.g. System Properties -> Performance -> File System... -> Hard Disk, it has a "Read-ahead optimization" setting.
Maybe there are third-party utilities which can provide their own caching - I suspect Norton/Symantec might provide one - but they'd probably have to be Windows 9x-specific.
Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-06, 21:56:
I am looking at the instructions for EMM386 right now. I need a list of my computer's RAM usage in DOS, i.e. what's used by the BIOS and hardware and what's available for UMBs. I remember using such a utility a long time ago. It came with an alternate memory manager.
EMM386 can sometimes figure that out for itself without you needing to tell it.
Since you've used QEMM before, possibly the utility you used in the past was Quarterdeck Manifest (the command name is MFT).
Harry Potter wrote on 2023-04-09, 13:00:
I also want a version of the ANSI.SYS driver for DOS mode. Any other ideas on what I can add to the setup to make it more fun?
I like using a .COM-style ANSI driver, it's more convenient to load on demand. PC Magazine released one. I think you can find many such ANSI drivers in places like simtel shovelware CDs. https://almy.us/dospage.html has one called NNANSI which I learned about because gog.com included it with some old Zork 1-3 games. I've never actually used NNANSI but the author has responded to many emails from me about XLISP-PLUS so I think he's pretty great!
Something you could add to make it more fun specifically in the area of ANSI is to have your DOS mode AUTOEXEC.BAT run "TYPE SOMEFILE.ANS" where SOMEFILE.ANS has some ANSI art in it (maybe Google "ansi art") or a menu or something.