Programs like topbench complain about being in protected mode if I install that unofficial dos 7.1, with with freedos they're fine. Ideally I'd be able to run dos 7.1 in real mode because it comes with a lot of sound card drivers that auto-install, especially pci ones that work under dos.
There's a lot of things broken in DOS 7.10 I suggest PC-DOS, if you can find some form of 7.1 as it comes with FAT32 support.
"How can I ensure I'm running in real-mode dos?"
By not loading memory managers like QEMM, EMM386 or JEMM. 😉
But if you really want to be sure, you can run programs like NSSI or WCPU (WhichCPU, by Holin) to check.
I've attached the latter program for you, since it is hard to find nowerdays (no idea where I originally got it from 😅) .
- The only other version I was able to find was an early one from about 1992 (v0.50).
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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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wrote:Ideally I'd be able to run dos 7.1 in real mode because it comes with a lot of sound card drivers that auto-install, especially pci ones that work under dos.
PCI DOS sound card card drivers do not work in real mode. Period. [EDIT: Pretty much, anyway.]
Also, there's nothing particularly magical about those drivers that would require you to keep running that unofficial DOS 7.1. You could easily copy the relevant files out of the installation and use them with a non-unofficial DOS, though at this point even if you didn't want to use official downloads, you could probably find those DOS drivers elsewhere.
Have a look this DOS Starter Pack: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos-starter-pack.html
Might be for you, might be not, take a look 😀
PCI DOS sound card card drivers do not work in real mode. Period.
What about a Vortex 2? I recall I could load its dos driver without any protected mode enforcing UMA manager.
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wrote:PCI DOS sound card card drivers do not work in real mode. Period.
What about a Vortex 2? I recall I could load its dos driver without any protected mode enforcing UMA manager.
You may be right about that. http://www.flaterco.com/kb/audio/PCI/ suggests it doesn't work very well, though, as does Aureal Vortex 2 / TB Santa Cruz aka Videologic Sonic Fury unter DOS .
Or what about Yamaha PCI cards, especially with SB-LINK?
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
Fair enough. I should not have been so emphatic.
http://www.flaterco.com/kb/plague/PCPCI.jpg
That seems to me a somewhat unlikely scenario, though.
Good evening, everyone. 😀
Since this thread is about protected-mode and DOS, I hope you don't mind if I do add something to this..
V86 might work better on 586 and later systems, since they got support for "Enhanced V86 Mode".
While on a 386/486 systems you may get reduced performance, when you load EMM386 and alikes.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think later 486es may also support that (VME)..
Anyway, I noticed a notable performance drop on one of my old 386 system when EMM386 was loaded (can anyone else confirm ?).
It didn't happen on my Pentium 133, though. And in my virtual machines (VPC2007) I even got a huge performance boost instead..
I guess this is because of how thinks are internally beeing handled. A real-mode VM apparently has to be handled differently,
so an emulation layer is required to handle certain conditions. And if you load EMM386 inside of a DOS VM (which enables V86),
the real-mode environment nolonger has to be provided through the VM software,
thus the normal x86 virtualization mechanisms are beeing working again.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode
http://www.rcollins.org/ddj/Jan98/Jan98.html
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
wrote:Good evening, everyone. :) Since this thread is about protected-mode and DOS, I hope you don't mind if I do add something to thi […]
Good evening, everyone. 😀
Since this thread is about protected-mode and DOS, I hope you don't mind if I do add something to this..
V86 might work better on 586 and later systems, since they got support for "Enhanced V86 Mode".
While on a 386/486 systems you may get reduced performance, when you load EMM386 and alikes.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think later 486es may also support that (VME)..Anyway, I noticed a notable performance drop on one of my old 386 system when EMM386 was loaded (can anyone else confirm ?).
It didn't happen on my Pentium 133, though. And in my virtual machines (VPC2007) I even got a huge performance boost instead..
I guess this is because of how thinks are internally beeing handled. A real-mode VM apparently has to be handled differently,
so an emulation layer is required to handle certain conditions. And if you load EMM386 inside of a DOS VM (which enables V86),
the real-mode environment nolonger has to be provided through the VM software,
thus the normal x86 virtualization mechanisms are beeing working again.Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode
http://www.rcollins.org/ddj/Jan98/Jan98.html
That's funny you should mention this about performance drop.
I have found, that running Superscape with emm386 and all drivers set up on a 486 class system, drops the framerate from 66.8 to 55.5. I did not finetune the system, so it is only the difference from running normal startup and running without the system loading config.sys and autoexec.bat (pressing F5 upon boot)
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Those cakes make you sick....
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Yes, I have heard that line before about protected mode being slower. Specifically, that's (supposedly) one of the advantages of UMBPCI, which provides access to upper memory blocks but keeps the CPU in real mode:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/umbpci_e.html
wrote:Good evening, everyone. :) Since this thread is about protected-mode and DOS, I hope you don't mind if I do add something to thi […]
Good evening, everyone. 😀
Since this thread is about protected-mode and DOS, I hope you don't mind if I do add something to this..
V86 might work better on 586 and later systems, since they got support for "Enhanced V86 Mode".
While on a 386/486 systems you may get reduced performance, when you load EMM386 and alikes.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think later 486es may also support that (VME)..Anyway, I noticed a notable performance drop on one of my old 386 system when EMM386 was loaded (can anyone else confirm ?).
It didn't happen on my Pentium 133, though. And in my virtual machines (VPC2007) I even got a huge performance boost instead..
I guess this is because of how thinks are internally beeing handled. A real-mode VM apparently has to be handled differently,
so an emulation layer is required to handle certain conditions. And if you load EMM386 inside of a DOS VM (which enables V86),
the real-mode environment nolonger has to be provided through the VM software,
thus the normal x86 virtualization mechanisms are beeing working again.Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode
http://www.rcollins.org/ddj/Jan98/Jan98.html
It says software has to be written specifically to take advantage of Pentium (and later 486's) VME. So EMM386 from dos6.22 does not support it. Not sure about the version in Dos that ships with win98.
Both the 486 and Pentium66 I tested have shown better performance when booted clean. On the P66 the difference in tics regarding Doom is 1537 to 1514 - a marginal 1%+ difference but a difference after all.
Dos version is 7.1 of Win98.
