I've posted about my old laptop before, and I have another question to ask.
I'd like some DOS IPX drivers for it, but I'm not sure they exist. The laptop uses an Intel PRO/100 CardBus II for ethernet. If for whatever reason I wanted to do an ipx match in boom in dos mode, I'd like the right drivers.
Loading stuff high with LH (autoexec.bat) and DEVICEHIGH (config.sys) is a first start.
Also, do a "MEM /F" command and see what memory regions are allocated to UMBs. You can then select to what region something will load with /L:X parameter, eg.
1DEVICEHIGH /L:2=C:\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd0001
or
1LH /L:1 = DOSKEY
Just beware that not every driver or TSR likes being loaded high. Also, if you can afford using "RAM" instead of "NOEMS" (it will reduce the UMBs to allocate the EMS page frame), use the "/E" switch with MSCDEX to reduce its conventional memory footprint somewhat.
One last question before I leave this thread to rest. Why does the Boom refresh daemon load faster in windows 98se2me than in dos 7.1 on the same computer? I would have thought that boom would load faster in its native environment.
Disk caching and IDE drives using MWDMA/UDMA are good suspects. SmartDrv might help a great real in DOS, but it can be a bit of a conventional memory pig (30kb).