This forum is for DOS games on *modern* systems. You should ask old hardware and driver/configuration questions in Marvin, the Paranoid Android

Ah, sorry. I didn't realise where I'd posted. Can a mod move my thread at all?

Thread Moved

Trying to understand your setup. I'm not sure where dosstart.bat comes into it?

Normally if you have a "exittodos.pif" this points to command.com and I the advanced properties you enter the autoexec.bat and config.sys settings.
no need for external batch files

I thought if you had the advanced properties set to "use current config" it would use the current autoexec and config.sys but would also run dosstart.bat? If, like you say, you choose to specify the autoexec and config.sys in the advanced properties it would use that and NOT then run dosstart.bat. That was my understanding? I've re-enable the MX300 SB Emulation because I couldn't use the mpu-401 otherwise but I don't have any conflicts that I can see. I'll double check.

I just don't understand what actually happens when restarting in dos from Windows and how it's any different from booting "to" dos.

If I leave the exittodos.pif advanced settings to "use current MS-DOS config", then it should go straight to DOS, yet, if I specify autoexec and config.sys in the advanced properties it'll restart my whole machine from scratch, which is what I don't want. I've read that restarting in dos from Windows (without fully rebooting the machine) can give better game performance because the Windows drivers "might" be setting write combining which may then remain set when going to dos. Does that make sense? I know I can add MTRRLFBE to my autoexec and be done with it but it's annoying having an issue for a reason I don't understand. I don't understand the reasons why running diagnose would hang straight away after shutting down /restarting to DOS but works perfectly fine booting up into dos.

I have IRQ 5, DMA 1 and 5 reserved for legacy ISA in the Bios, which my SB16 is using and my MX300 uses IRQ 7 and DMA 3 for SB Pro emulation.

Just frustrating 😤

EDIT: I'll post up my current autoexec and config.sys and assigned Windows resources later, I'm just supposed to be working from home atm 🍵 🍵

Ah ok rekon that's your problem and you kind of knew it all along 😀

"I've read that restarting in dos from Windows (without fully rebooting the machine) can give better game performance because the Windows drivers "might" be setting write combining which may then remain set when going to dos"
This is true and 100% correct, but it those same windows drivers "might" conflict with pure dos drivers someone is trying to load!

Doing a clean boot into dos flushes out everything from memory and basically a dos based system again rather then a complicated mess of mixed WIn9x and native dos drivers confusing each other.

and what? vogons isn't what were supposed to be doing when WFH 😉