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Tiny mouse driver ?

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First post, by Jo22

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Hi, i've got a question about mice drivers..
I'm currently using good old MS Mouse driver 6.24BZ ('88) with a serial mouse and it works like a charm.

The only downside is the amount of memory it takes, since I've got no free upper memory blocks in that particular PC to load it into.
So my quesion is, is there any good replacement ? I know of CuteMouse, but it seems my copy of Windows /386 doesn't like it
and it still requires more than 3KiB of RAM.

If you know any other little, but compatible driver, please let me know. PS/2 compatibility is not required.
In case there is any Windows-friendly CuteMouse fork without any PS/2 code, without any comand-line switches
*and* a little memory footprint of 1-2KiB, I'm also interested. 😀

Edit: I hope I'm posting this in the right forums. If not, please feal free to move.

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Reply 1 of 25, by Cyberdyne

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Cutemouse maybe? And if you know litle programming, then you can streamline it even more.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 3 of 25, by akula65

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Helix Software Company released a commercial application called Multimedia Cloaking in 1994. The package included "cloaked" substitutes for CD-ROM extensions, Disk/CD-ROM cache and mouse drivers. For the mouse driver, this meant a 1K stub in conventional memory and the bulk of the (Logitech Version 6.33) driver in extended memory.

More info on Helix's "cloaking" is available here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Protected_M … rvices#CLOAKING

If you do get a copy of Helix Multimedia Cloaking, application updates are available here:

Helix Software Files

Reply 4 of 25, by Jo22

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Thanks fellows, I solved it for now! ^_^

akula65, also thank you very, very much for that link about Multimedia Cloaking!
I'm just using a 286 PC here, but I'm fascinated by the article nevertheless.

If only more people knew about it, most of the memory issues back then would have gone away.
Anyway, I keep my eyes open for a copy of it. It could come in handy for that 386 I always wanted to build..

In the meantime, I'm using himem286.sys (1K) and mouse.com (4K) from PTS-DOS.
Both Windows /386 and Windows 3.10 do run fine with them so far.

And I can finally play Frederik Pohl's Gateway without getting a memory warning. Yay!

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"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//

Reply 5 of 25, by cyclone3d

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akula65 wrote:
Helix Software Company released a commercial application called Multimedia Cloaking in 1994. The package included "cloaked" sub […]
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Helix Software Company released a commercial application called Multimedia Cloaking in 1994. The package included "cloaked" substitutes for CD-ROM extensions, Disk/CD-ROM cache and mouse drivers. For the mouse driver, this meant a 1K stub in conventional memory and the bulk of the (Logitech Version 6.33) driver in extended memory.

More info on Helix's "cloaking" is available here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Protected_M … rvices#CLOAKING

If you do get a copy of Helix Multimedia Cloaking, application updates are available here:

Helix Software Files

This is the first time I have heard about this, despite being am available low memory Nazi back in the day.

I actually used some viewer that would show me the free RAM and contiguous blocks and then I would load stuff in different order and manually specify stuff with EMM386 to get the most possible available.

And.. there just happened to be a copy of Netroom 3 on eBay with the original manual. Looks like I should be able to update it to 3.04 based on the other thread.

I wonder how much free low memory I can achieve with this.

MWAHAHAHAHAHA 😈

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Reply 6 of 25, by Jo22

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Multimedia Cloaking was featured in one episode of The Computer Chronicles. 😀
https://archive.org/details/LosingMe

"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//

Reply 7 of 25, by akula65

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It's also worth mentioning that, in the first (wiki) link I specified above, there is a statement that

The Logitech DOS mouse driver since MouseWare 6.50 was enabled to take advantage of CLOAKING as well, thereby reducing the mouse driver's memory footprint visible to DOS applications from 27 KB to 1 KB.

This may reflect a technology exchange between Logitech and Helix Software. It means that you may be able to use the cloaking for your mouse without having to get Helix Multimedia Cloaking. I have not checked to see whether this statement about MouseWare is true or not, but it's great news if true.

Reply 8 of 25, by cyclone3d

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Another thing to note is that I was looking at the 3.04 update readme and it lists a 286 compatibility mode switch "-286"

So it looks like it would actually work on a 286 setup.

From what I can tell, it looks like I should be able to get very close to 640k free low memory by using cloaking AND loading everything else high.

I think the highest I ever got back in the day from playing around with loading stuff in specific order and using UMBPCI was a little less than 620k. That was also on one specific system. ~580k free was doable on most systems.

I also don't remember any of the Logitech drivers having cloaking natively incorporated, but I may have to revisit that to find out for sure.

A really interesting thing that I saw when looking Helix up is that the cloaked drivers are supposed to run faster because they are running in 32-bit mode instead of 16-bit mode. Makes sense but not sure that it actually makes any real world difference.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
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Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 9 of 25, by NJRoadfan

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I managed to get QEMM's advertised 634k free conventional memory in the past. Netroom likely requires a 386's MMU resources, all the cloaked drivers definitely required it. Also, QEMM had a similar feature called "stealth".

286 machines usually required specific chipsets and special drivers to unlock UMBs.

Reply 11 of 25, by cyclone3d

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NJRoadfan wrote:

I managed to get QEMM's advertised 634k free conventional memory in the past. Netroom likely requires a 386's MMU resources, all the cloaked drivers definitely required it. Also, QEMM had a similar feature called "stealth".

286 machines usually required specific chipsets and special drivers to unlock UMBs.

Great... now I am going to have to try QEMM as well. I think when I tried it way, way, way back in the day, some of the stuff I wanted to run had issues with it.

Edit: After reading the information about QEMM, the "stealth" feature sounds like it is just QEMM loading itself into the UMA.

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Reply 12 of 25, by NJRoadfan

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The stealth feature relocated ROMs in the UMB region (via the EMS page frame) to free up more regions to load TSRs and drivers. It had it share of compatibility problems though.

Reply 13 of 25, by cyclone3d

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NJRoadfan wrote:

The stealth feature relocated ROMs in the UMB region (via the EMS page frame) to free up more regions to load TSRs and drivers. It had it share of compatibility problems though.

Ok, so totally different then how Netroom works.

I'm gonna haveta dig up how I used to do it back in the day and see how some of the different options compare.

QEMM looks to be a lot more tedious to set up than Netroom from the example config.sys that is listed on the QEMM wiki.

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Reply 14 of 25, by elianda

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I never had compatibility problems due to QEMMs stealthing. If something did not run it was always some other option.
If you don't want to read the docu, I would recommend to use Optimize. The diagnostic routines after the passes are quite sophisticated and will setup a good config. Use only Partial for DOS-Up.
(If you really want to go for 'full' then you definitely should read the docu for implications)

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Reply 15 of 25, by oeuvre

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QEMM works magic but some stuff like Dr. Sbaisto don't like it. I get 635K free on my DOS system and keep my older AUTOEXEC.BAT + CONFIG.SYS around just in case. Even with that setup, I had it at 623K free

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Reply 16 of 25, by Cyberdyne

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You need qemm only if you have pre Pentium machine. UMBPCI and HIRAM combination gets better results, and does not put your pc to virtual086 mode.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 17 of 25, by elianda

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There are a few exceptions to UMBPCI usage:

UMBPCI generates the UMBS from Shadow-RAM and not from XMS. Often DMA in Shadow RAM is not supported which lets floppy disk access fail and disallows to load caching drivers like smartdrv to Shadow-RAM.

UMBPCI does not provide a VCPI interface that some drivers may require, e.g. Megaem.

UMBPCI has no direct support for some applications as QEMM has, like disc compression drivers (drive space, double space, stacker etc.) and network stuff (netware) etc.

UMBPCI requires a supported chipset. Well I guess this is mostly a blocker for me, as I have a lot pre Pentium systems.

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Reply 18 of 25, by Cyberdyne

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UmbPCI can be used with those DMA idiotic chipsets quite easily.

SmartDRV can not be loaded high, the floppy access can be remedied with LOWDMA.SYS and usually thing that use DMA are sound, and those are loaded later in the normal memory area.

Of course VIA Apollo PRO is better, but you can use it in a BX chipset also.

And yes 486 there are more to choose from.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.

Reply 19 of 25, by red_avatar

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Sorry to dig up this topic - I actually used Cutemouse but its compatibility with DOS games is rather iffy. In fact, the first game I tried, the mouse went haywire when I pressed the right mouse button. I had to revert back to my old PS/1 mouse driver. Anyone know another low-memory mouse driver?

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