Hi,

Try replace all the DOS driver with Jack R. Ellis driver, you may have surprise.

1) QCDROM.SYS was very old, seriously outdated, try XDVD2.SYS
2) XHDD.SYS replace SMARTDRV.SYS, it's faster! It had Read-Ahead, DMA/caching overlap, and other new updates. XHDD also offers caches down to 2.5-MB, for 386 users."
3) HIRAM.EXE, please use latest UMBPCI.SYS with XMGR.SYS on Pentium-1 and later systems supported by UMBPCI.
4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore. Use JEMM386 available in the FreeDOS files on SourceForge IBiblio."
5) MSCDEX, I use SHSUCDX, Jack R. Ellis version (since Jason Hood gone) which work fine.

Wish everyone can play games or using DOS happily without the old and worn drivers.

http://optimizr.dyndns.org/dos/drivers.html

Rgds,
Johnson Lam.

johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

GigAHerZ wrote:

johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

You can get JEMM386, available in the FreeDOS files on SourceForge IBiblio.

JEMM doesn't work with Windows 3.x IIRC

In which case you can not use JEMM and let Win3x load EMM386.

GigAHerZ wrote:

johnsonlam wrote:

4) MAMMAKER, QEMM, don't need them anymore.

How can i get EMM memory without EMM386/QEMM?

Get a system that can allocate EMS in its bios setup routine like my Zenith Z286LP Plus.

EMS ISA card? Not sure how they play with a 386 MMU.

Never even heard of EMS ISA cards... those exist?

loads of EMS ISA cards. heaps for xt + 286.

oeuvre wrote:

Never even heard of EMS ISA cards... those exist?

I've got one that takes 8megs of dimms. They were widely used late 80s.

oeuvre wrote:

Never even heard of EMS ISA cards... those exist?

ROFL... EMS cards existed ONLY for ISA!

I want EMS cards for PCIe!

Sorry for the (relative) bump.

I'm playing with dos and I'm trying to make an image with config.sys and autoexec.bat fully optimized, I did try to use memmaker but it makes things worse.

The maximum result I was able to achieve is this one, 624kb free conventional memory and 136kb upper memory.
I'm not using umbpci and other tricks since I'd like this to work even on 486 system.

Here is the mi output:

Addr. Low area High area Program or device driver ----- -------- --------- -------------------------- 020Bh 1,024 […]
Show full quote

Addr. Low area High area Program or device driver
----- -------- --------- --------------------------
020Bh 1,024 .. IFS=
024Ch 1,152 .. Device=HIMEM Attr=A000h Name=XMSXXXX0
0295h 4,160 .. Device=EMM386 Attr=C000h Name=$MMXXXX0
039Ah 544 .. IFS=
03EBh 639,296 .. <largest free area>
---- Begin High (Upper) Memory ----
B166h .. 10,032 COMMAND /F
B3EAh .. 3,088 CTMOUSE
B4ACh .. 6,144 SHSUCDX
C803h .. 8,288 Device=DISPLAY Attr=C053h Name=CON
CA0Ah .. 5,008 Device=VIDECDD Attr=C800h Name=OPTICAL
CB44h .. 464 IFS=Can't in
CE0Bh .. 6,928 KEYB IT,,C:\DOS\KEYBOARD.SYS
CFBDh .. 4,672 DOSKEY
D0E2h .. 29,104 SMARTDRV C+ /N /Q /U

655,360 bytes (640k) total DOS 7.10 conventional memory.
639,296 bytes (624k) largest executable program. 131,104 bytes if loaded high.

EMM386 is present. High memory is managed by DOS.

0 bytes Extended (AT/286/386) memory, reported by BIOS.
2,631k bytes XMS 3.0 (3.65) memory: 2,632k used + 65,535k free. DOS in HMA.

384k bytes EMS 4.0 memory: 384k used + 0 free. No page frame.
Note: with no page frame, some programs will not detect or use EMS.

Considering it's without any sound driver but with mouse and cdrom driver and smartdrv, is it ok?
Thanks in advance.

@Nemo1985, you can use RDOSUMB, URAM or something similar instead of UMBPCI. Those are written in the nineties and support way older machines like 386 and 486.

GigAHerZ wrote:

@Nemo1985, you can use RDOSUMB, URAM or something similar instead of UMBPCI. Those are written in the nineties and support way older machines like 386 and 486.

Thank you for the tip, I will check them, on the other hand I wonder are they really necessary? Is there any program who needs more than 625kb of conventional memory?

600k is adaquate for the vast majority of Dos software. Having a lot of free conventional memory can also confuse some Dos applications.

Caluser2000 wrote:

600k is adaquate for the vast majority of Dos software. Having a lot of free conventional memory can also confuse some Dos applications.

Thank you so there is no need to hunt for more conventional memory.

I usually shoot for about 610k. It seems to be sufficient for pretty much everything.

What about upper memory, is it used just for loading that stuff or is it important to try to have as most free memory as possible?
Sorry for the dumb question.

Upper memory is mostly just for loading the TSRs to it, to free conventional memory.