Well...there's always QEMM.... BTW, out of curiosity: what's your current memory layout? Also, what are your current configs?

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:10:

Well...there's always QEMM.... BTW, out of curiosity: what's your current memory layout? Also, what are your current configs?

ahah you are always ready to sponsor qemm I will never understand why...

Nemo1985: I have the same UMB space problem on my Win98SE tower. 🙁 Worse yet, I can't get UMBs or EMS in DOS under Windows mode at all. 🙁 QEMM helped but only in pure DOS mode. It is very high-end and has a P4 processor and 1G memory.

Well...because I like it. 😀

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:08:

So the only thing you can do is to edit msdos.sys and remove DoubleBuffer=1 if present, then on windows part of config.sys add: […]
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Tempest wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:05:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 13:59:

It's not clear if you are going to use windows 98 or just the dos part, according to this some memory can be freed.
That's how my emm386 is configured: DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE RAM HIGHSCAN I=B000-B7FF

I'm using Windows 98 as well.

So the only thing you can do is to edit msdos.sys and remove DoubleBuffer=1 if present, then on windows part of config.sys add:
DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS

Anyway in my opinion you have some sort of problem because your umb is very small and even programs which fits it they get loaded in conventional memory.

Where is msdos.sys? I don't see it.

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:14:

Nemo1985: I have the same UMB space problem on my Win98SE tower. 🙁 Worse yet, I can't get UMBs or EMS in DOS under Windows mode at all. 🙁 QEMM helped but only in pure DOS mode. It is very high-end and has a P4 processor and 1G memory.

I don't use dos on such "new" machines, but in my opinion it's a very good reason to use xmgr instead of himem, then use the switches I've pasted you earlier with emm386 let's see if the situation improves, surely more recent hardware means less dos compatibility.

You need to make msdos.sys not hidden and not read only (it's in c:\): attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys, modify the file and restore the attributes with attrib +h +s +r

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:14:

Well...because I like it. 😀

Yes but nowadays we can use stuff which doesn't give the compatibility issues that comes with qemm.

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:18:

You need to make msdos.sys not hidden and not read only (it's in c:\): attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys, modify the file and restore the attributes with attrib +h +s +r

Ok but what will editing the file and adding the doublebuffer command to the config.sys actually do?

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:22:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:18:

You need to make msdos.sys not hidden and not read only (it's in c:\): attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys, modify the file and restore the attributes with attrib +h +s +r

Ok but what will editing the file and adding the doublebuffer command to the config.sys actually do?

Free another 2kb of conventional memory, from what I read double buffer is not used in dos programs while it may be necessary for windows, so no need to keep it loaded while using dos mode.

Thank you. I'd better try xmgr now. I'm not at my Win98SE tower now, so I can't try your suggestions, but I can Google and download xmgr. BTW, I don't have EMM386 for Windows but have two DOS startup disks, and the general-purpose one uses QEMM. 😀

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:24:

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:22:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:18:

You need to make msdos.sys not hidden and not read only (it's in c:\): attrib -h -s -r msdos.sys, modify the file and restore the attributes with attrib +h +s +r

Ok but what will editing the file and adding the doublebuffer command to the config.sys actually do?

Free another 2kb of conventional memory, from what I read double buffer is not used in dos programs while it may be necessary for windows, so no need to keep it loaded while using dos mode.

Ah ok. Well I have 613K free now which should be more than enough for any game (I think anyway). If I find a weird game that needs more I can always disable doskey and get another 5K back (618K total).

Is there a way to unload doskey from the command line or do I need to edit the autoexec.bat each time?

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:27:

Nemo1985 wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:24:

Tempest wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:22:

Ok but what will editing the file and adding the doublebuffer command to the config.sys actually do?

Free another 2kb of conventional memory, from what I read double buffer is not used in dos programs while it may be necessary for windows, so no need to keep it loaded while using dos mode.

Ah ok. Well I have 613K free now which should be more than enough for any game (I think anyway). If I find a weird game that needs more I can always disable doskey and get another 5K back (618K total).

Is there a way to unload doskey from the command line or do I need to edit the autoexec.bat each time?

That's more than enough for most games. I have no idea about the original doskey you should read the switches.

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:25:

Thank you. I'd better try xmgr now. I'm not at my Win98SE tower now, so I can't try your suggestions, but I can Google and download xmgr. BTW, I don't have EMM386 for Windows but have two DOS startup disks, and the general-purpose one uses QEMM. 😀

If you have no issues with qemm go for it. I personally find it too intrusive and the stealth mode has compatibility issues (as it could have xmgr, there is no bug free configuration I'm afraid).

Well, you could use CHOICE to ask to load DOSKEY, and if no, use GOTO to skip the line and add a label just after the DOSKEY command, like ":NODK." You need to also use IF to skip the line. Type "CHOICE/?" then "IF/?" for more information. You can also use multiple DOS configs and menu support to exclude drivers and TSRs that you might not need in a particular session. It's not too difficult to do but requires a lot of work. I don't have an URL to the information, but maybe somebody here has one.

Nemo1985: I actually do have compatibility issues with QEMM: my other DOS boot disk is for just USB flash drive access. It is incompatible with QEMM. 🙁 I made it out, as Windows was broken at the time, but I don't need it anymore. The main DOS setup works fine, though. 😀 I have an issue with sound there now. 🙁

Edit: I had to clarify that the mentioned other boot disk was what was incompatible with QEMM.

Harry Potter wrote on 2024-09-20, 14:37:

Well, you could use CHOICE to ask to load DOSKEY, and if no, use GOTO to skip the line and add a label just after the DOSKEY command, like ":NODK." You need to also use IF to skip the line. Type "CHOICE/?" then "IF/?" for more information. You can also use multiple DOS configs and menu support to exclude drivers and TSRs that you might not need in a particular session. It's not too difficult to do but requires a lot of work. I don't have an URL to the information, but maybe somebody here has one.

Good idea.

You don't need freedos drivers or qemm. I use emm386, MOUSE.COM, MSCDEX, VIDE-CDD, doskey, smartdrive and get them all loaded high.

The first order of business is to run MSD without emm386 and check the available memory map. Then run it with emm386 and check which ranges are used. If there are any safe ranges that are not included, then manually include them. Also, check the EMS frame and if it's not automatically positioned as high as possible, then do it manually.

If there's not enough available upper memory, then you can think about alternatives.

eddman's right.

Do some checks it's what Harry Potter and I proposed yesterday but apparently the user is satisfied with the result he actually reached.

eddman wrote on 2024-09-21, 10:38:

You don't need freedos drivers or qemm. I use emm386, MOUSE.COM, MSCDEX, VIDE-CDD, doskey, smartdrive and get them all loaded high.

The first order of business is to run MSD without emm386 and check the available memory map. Then run it with emm386 and check which ranges are used. If there are any safe ranges that are not included, then manually include them. Also, check the EMS frame and if it's not automatically positioned as high as possible, then do it manually.

If there's not enough available upper memory, then you can think about alternatives.

Can you elaborate on this a bit. I'm not sure how you check the memory map. I assume thats through one of the switches for mem (/c or /d)?

What's confusing me is that mem says I have enough upper memory to load doskey into it but it won't for some reason. I assume this is because there isn't enough contiguous free upper memory or something like that.

Someone (Harry Potter maybe?) was saying that my free UMB looked odd or off somehow. What can I do to check this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Diagnostics

Just type MSD and then select "Memory..."; it'd show you the memory ranges map/table. Post a screenshot of the map here if you're not sure which ranges are safe.