Cyberdyne wrote on 2024-07-22, 15:31:

UMBPCI + HIRAM + HIMEM + if needed EMSMAGIC. This confoguration works for me for most DOS games. Only Windows 1.x/2.x somehow do not like the EMS that emsmagic provides.

Sounds good, but here on the Vortex86, I get when UMBPCI is loading:
"The chipset is unknown!"
And "mem" reports:
Largest free upper memory block 0k
So UMBPCI is not working (it should give way more UMBs, right?)

Then, if I install HIRAM, with the results that can be seen on the attached screenshot, "mem" reports:
Largest free upper memory block 8k

Finally, if I load, let's say, "EMM386 /NOEMS" instead, I get:
Largest free upper memory block 135k

Then, with 135k UMB, I can load emsmagic and it will load in UMB as intended, BUT it hangs while detecting audio, which is what motivated this thread in the first place.

In the end, it was fixed by loading SMARTDRV in CONFIG.SYS like this:

1DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
2DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS /TESTMEM:OFF
3DEVICE=C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /DOUBLE_BUFFER
4DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF
5DOS=HIGH,UMB
6FILES=30

Yep, SMARTDRV was the key to bring the compatibility up to pair with the Vertex86 DX!

Lemmings 2 works, Elder Scrolls: Arena works, etc.