Intel SE440-BX2 and EMS memory \ VOGONS

Intel SE440-BX2 and EMS memory

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First post, by mattrock1988

Posted on 2016-07-28, 22:22

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Greetings:

So I have an issue I'm not sure if anyone has solved yet. I built another Pentium III build based around a slot 1 SE440-BX2 board, primarily because I heard of how legendary these boards are for DOS and Win9x gaming. However, I noticed I have far fewer UMBs available than I did on my VIA Pentium III build. Is the Intel BIOS simply consuming more addresses in HMA for BIOS related functions? I see no way to free this up.

I can use the NOEMS switch on EMM386, but I obviously get no EMS memory for some of my games this way. Running with the RAM setting yields me 540K free conventional memory after all necessary drivers are loaded. MEM /F states I only have one 7 KB block of UMB, with 6 KB used and 1 KB free. That seems awfully low.

I also tried loading EMM386 with the FRAME=NONE option and, despite allocating some EMS memory, games that rely on EMS crash and reboot the system. Any ideas?

For reference, my system specs are as follows...

Intel Pentium III Coppermine @ 1GHz
384 MB SDRAM
32 GB DOM
Windows 98 SE with custom "Exit to Dos" PIF configured

~~Retro PC: Intel Pentium III @ 1 GHz, Intel SE440BX-2, 32 GB IDE DOM, 384 MB SDRAM, DVD-ROM, 1.44 MB floppy, Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4600 AGP, Creative SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, Aureal Vortex 2~~
I only rely on 86box these days. My Pentium 3 PC died. 🙁

Reply 1 of 10, by collector

Posted on 2016-07-29, 02:47

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Ask in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

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Reply 2 of 10, by mattrock1988

Posted on 2016-07-29, 05:38

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collector wrote:
Ask in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

Should I have this topic moved or should I open a new post?

Reply 3 of 10, by PhilsComputerLab

Posted on 2016-07-29, 05:57

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mattrock1988 wrote:
collector wrote:
Ask in Marvin. This forum is for DOS games on modern systems.

Should I have this topic moved or should I open a new post?

Someone will move it soon enough 😀

You mentioned Windows 98. Did the VIA Pentium III build also run Windows 98?

Because I know that with DOS 6.22 you do get a bit more memory, but not sure if it's related to your issue.

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Reply 4 of 10, by mattrock1988

Posted on 2016-07-29, 06:59

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Yes they both run Windows 98 SE.

So you think perhaps MS-DOS Mode on Windows 98 is a bit more hoggish on memory than plain Jane MS-DOS?

Reply 5 of 10, by PhilsComputerLab

Posted on 2016-07-29, 07:00

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mattrock1988 wrote:
So you think perhaps MS-DOS Mode on Windows 98 is a bit more hoggish on memory than plain Jane MS-DOS?

Yes it is. But it isn't much, I wrote it down somewhere, it was certainly not enough to make games not work under MS-DOS mode.

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Reply 6 of 10, by Stiletto

Posted on 2016-07-29, 17:04

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Moved.

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Reply 7 of 10, by stamasd

Posted on 2016-07-29, 19:22

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Instead of EMM386 try to use Jemmex.exe or QEMM97.

Jemm (includes jemmex): https://web.archive.org/web/20141011223727/ht … th.de/Jemm.html
QEMM97: ftp://yesican.chsoft.biz/pub/dv/qemm97.zip or WinWorldPC

Last edited by Stiletto on 2020-03-02, 07:37. Edited 1 time in total.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 8 of 10, by Jorpho

Posted on 2016-07-29, 20:58

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There have been a couple of reports on this board of memory problems being caused by an old virus infection.

The fastest way to check would be to use a known clean boot disk.

Reply 9 of 10, by mattrock1988

Posted on 2016-07-29, 23:02

mattrock1988 Offline

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stamasd wrote:
Instead of EMM386 try to use Jemmex.exe or QEMM97.

Jemm (includes jemmex): https://web.archive.org/web/20141011223727/ht … th.de/Jemm.html
QEMM97: ftp://yesican.chsoft.biz/pub/dv/qemm97.zip or WinWorldPC

No Dice. Seems like I get the same lack in free UMBs on both alternate memory managers.

I wonder if the BIOS itself can be modified to free up slots traditionally reserved for shadow memory?