VOGONS


First post, by aazard

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What is "SMALLIDE.SYS" I see used/briefly mentioned in this video? I Googled the crud out of it to no results...

video: seen at approx. 16m50s to 17m00s
https://youtu.be/oD_m6q7uLu4?t=1015

It looks decently smaller than Acer's "VIDE-CDD.SYS" & M$'s "CDROM.SYS", with smaller memory footprint.

Thanks for any replies.

Aazard -
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Reply 1 of 7, by igully

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The cd driver with the smallest memory footprint is Jack Ellis' XDVD2.SYS which uses 1,984 bytes of RAM on my system.
It requires a 386 or better processor.

Jack has been an optimization freak since quite some time with several cd drivers under his belt between other interesting DOS creations.

Reply 2 of 7, by aazard

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igully wrote on 2024-09-12, 02:42:

The cd driver with the smallest memory footprint is Jack Ellis' XDVD2.SYS which uses 1,984 bytes of RAM on my system.
It requires a 386 or better processor.

Jack has been an optimization freak since quite some time with several cd drivers under his belt between other interesting DOS creations.

Thank you, Do they have a variant for pre-386 (XT/AT) systems?

Have you heard of "smallide"?

Aazard -
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Reply 3 of 7, by igully

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Here you go.

I can't remember much of it, just that it had a memory footprint of about 2.5KB.
The Russian driver was a bit tighter, but did not work on all atapi systems.

But always have in mind that memory footprint is just one of many variables: you also have size, compatibility, etc. to consider.

Attachments

  • Filename
    SMALLIDE.rar
    File size
    2.23 KiB
    Downloads
    47 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 4 of 7, by aazard

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igully wrote on 2024-09-12, 03:11:
Here you go. […]
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Here you go.

I can't remember much of it, just that it had a memory footprint of about 2.5KB.
The Russian driver was a bit tighter, but did not work on all atapi systems.

But always have in mind that memory footprint is just one of many variables: you also have size, compatibility, etc. to consider.

Wow, thanks! What dark corner of the internet was that hiding in?

Russian driver? I feel I may be missing a piece of info about this mention

Aazard -
Mono Planar Mortal & Unascended Master
Retro Enthusiast & L3 Trouble Shooter
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Reply 5 of 7, by igully

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You are missing probably one of the greatest, and late to the party, DOS implementations made by the Russians, PTS-DOS (later Paragon DOS).

They mostly coded it in assembler and its efficiency shows. It had many interesting features, but unfortunately was never tidy/polished enough to become a real contender when the computing world was already transitioning towards Windows 95/98. Also some of the original developers left Russia to create their own company in Germany where they continued their work with Paragon DOS. Both the Russian company, Psytechsoft, and Paragon are still very much alive and they still sell their DOSes which are very much related despite their past disputes.

There is a generic ATAPI driver they crafted, called "PTSATAPI.SYS" which had a memory footprint of just a tiny bit above 2KB (version 1.4 is their latest as far as I recall). It did not work for all cd-roms out there but it did the job pretty well for most.

There is a lot of underappreciated content in the PTS/Paragon DOS scenario, IMHO.

Reply 6 of 7, by aazard

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Wow... "Late to the party" Russian Clone DOS's, Chinese Clone DOS's, seem very well made! Sadly many seem to require 286 or 386 cpu's at a minimun.

Thank you for adding to my archive, I hope to share it, well organized and sane (which I find "rare" for a retro-ware site/post/repo...non-pedantic sanity). Finding clean, detailed, organized sources is priceless

Got a few to share, here are is an image the "choice" compiled Optical drivers:

This is info I got from CDU/CDA:

There are currently 3 types of optical drive programs commonly used under DOS 1. VIDE-CDD.SYS file size 11K, memory occupies 5K, […]
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There are currently 3 types of optical drive programs commonly used under DOS
1. VIDE-CDD.SYS file size 11K, memory occupies 5K, and the light drive identification capability ★★★★ drives the loading speed relatively fast

2. OAKCDROM file size 41K, memory occupies 30K light-driven identification capability ★★★ drive loading speed average

3. TRICD.SYS file size 19K, memory occupies 7K light-driven identification capability ★★★★★ drive loading speed is slow (can recognize light-driven model)

4. PTSATAPI.SYS file size 4K, memory occupies 2K light-driven identification capability ★★★★★ Drive loading speed fast (can recognize the optical-driven model and IRQ) is strongly recommended for everyone to use!

The version number I extracted from PT-DOS is 1.4 (2004). Ibid.: P

&&

Originally posted by Wengier at 2006-5-11 23:53: I have recommended PTSATAPI.SYS before, and later found that there is a problem with compatibility, so I still use VIDE-CDD.SYS. It is now recommended that QCDROM.SYS (the latest version 2.0 was only released a few days ago), which only accounts for 2KB memory, but compatibility seems to be much better than PTSATAPI.SYS, and supports UltraDMA.

dos-backups-v0-mtvv9m9hqeod1.png?width=604&format=png&auto=webp&s=31f00a3e72b1e35cc52bbaf306cdafd5f515c454

Attachments

  • Filename
    DOS Drivers_good.zip
    File size
    414.02 KiB
    Downloads
    45 downloads
    File comment
    Various DOS Drivers
    File license
    Public domain

Aazard -
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Reply 7 of 7, by Jo22

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igully wrote on 2024-09-12, 13:18:

You are missing probably one of the greatest, and late to the party, DOS implementations made by the Russians, PTS-DOS (later Paragon DOS).

Here's a quick review of it.
It's from an old computer TV show that aired in my country :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9zTFaPpvOU

aazard wrote on 2024-09-12, 16:46:

Wow... "Late to the party" Russian Clone DOS's, Chinese Clone DOS's, seem very well made! Sadly many seem to require 286 or 386 cpu's at a minimun.

Sure. Unfortunately, you can't really optimize if you stick to old version of 8086 instruction set that 8086 and 8088 use. Too limited. 🤷
The intel 80186, 80286 and the NEC V20/V30 support the updated "8086-2" instruction set (not to be confused with the -1,-2,-4.. speed ratings).

There also was a late 32-Bit version of PTS-DOS or Paragon DOS, I believe.

Edit: It's generally recommended to have a 386+ CPU when it comes to optimized 90s era software.
The 80286 was the bare minimum to 90s software often. Some simple DOS drivers did use 386 instructions by accident, even.
That's why EMU386 was made in first place.

Using a 386 or NEC CPU might also prevent crashes when using certain applications developed on a 386 PC or higher.
The early CPUs have bugs that are fixed in later versions. Here's an example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FC-tcwMBnU

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