vide-cdd.sys v2.15 found here:

http://john.ccac.rwth-aachen.de:8000/ftp/mirr … /pccbbs/aptiva/

Back in the day I never had a game I couldn't get enough memory for, even if it meant sacrificing one thing or another in order to make it work. However, I came across a good guide a few years ago and have had a lot of success with it, if only I'd have known all this back in the early 90's! But then I was the only one out of my friends who even owned a PC... It's a long read and the authors english isn't tip-top, but it might help some people.

It's a good read!

I've been using DOSMax, UMBPCI.SYS and the like for years and just bought a Toshiba Libretto 100CT. I'm going through my whole optimization process on the boot files now.

One peculiarity. Has anyone seen this or know how to fix it?

If I load DOSMAX.EXE in the config.sys (DEVICE=DOSMAX.EXE) it loads all the appropriate parts high and seems to work fine, but I can no longer issue a ctrl-alt-del to reboot the laptop. In fact, doing so makes it freeze and no longer respond to any key press. I have to shut it off and boot cold. It works fine without DOSMAX, so that's the culprit.

Any ideas?

Edit: Fixed it. There are some additional parameters which can be used with DOSMAX to handle that.

DEVICE=C:\XYZ\DOSMAX.EXE N+ P- R- U02 U08 U09 U0A U0B U0C U0D U0E U70 U72 U73 U74 U76 U77

Are you using emm386? You can specify the altboot parameter for emm386 in your config.sys which changes the ctrl+alt+del handling:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722864.aspx

For my retrobox, most of my software doesn't need much of the lower 640k. The few games I have that require more conventional memory all handle mouse and sound themselves so I just simply reboot and hold down the shift key while doing so.

On a computer I had awhile ago, I just had separate autoexec and config.sys files that'd I'd use depending on if I wanted to use Windows or one of my fussy games. Then I wrote a batch file that'd rename the appropriate files when I wanted to change how the computer booted.

Alphakilo470 wrote:

On a computer I had awhile ago, I just had separate autoexec and config.sys files that'd I'd use depending on if I wanted to use Windows or one of my fussy games. Then I wrote a batch file that'd rename the appropriate files when I wanted to change how the computer booted.

That's what boot menus are for.
http://www.mindspring.com/~dmerriman/Bootup.htm

am I the only one who is using these small DOS replacement drivers?

- kbd.com (http://www.helmrohr.de/ftproot/Kbd.zip)
- doskey (http://paulhoule.com/doskey/index.php)

Which version of QEMM should I use for a 486DX4 100?

I see no reason why you couldn't run whatever one you wanted to. Are you experiencing some kind of difficulty with a particular version of QEMM?

There must be some differences between the versions. I just wanted to know which one to look out for.

Whatever the differences are, they are unlikely to affect the program's functionality on a 486 DX4. I do not understand what would lead you to believe otherwise.

(Admittedly UMBPCI has no chance of working on a 486, but UMBPCI is not QEMM.)

Jorpho wrote:

Whatever the differences are, they are unlikely to affect the program's functionality on a 486 DX4. I do not understand what would lead you to believe otherwise.

(Admittedly UMBPCI has no chance of working on a 486, but UMBPCI is not QEMM.)

OK, no problem. That makes me wonder why they bothered bringing out newer versions if they didn't significantly add or change anything worth mentioning. Anyway, I have a choice of QEMM 8.0 or QEMM 97. I seem to remember using 97 back then, I'll try that one.

Do you even need programs like QEMM if you know how to set up your .bat and .sys files correctly?

sliderider wrote:

Do you even need programs like QEMM if you know how to set up your .bat and .sys files correctly?

You do if you can't remember all of the tricks you used to know 15+ years ago. Like me 😁

rick12373 wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Whatever the differences are, they are unlikely to affect the program's functionality on a 486 DX4. I do not understand what would lead you to believe otherwise.

(Admittedly UMBPCI has no chance of working on a 486, but UMBPCI is not QEMM.)

OK, no problem. That makes me wonder why they bothered bringing out newer versions if they didn't significantly add or change anything worth mentioning.

Of course they changed things. But what do you think they would change to break compatibility with a 486 DX4?

Jorpho wrote:

rick12373 wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Whatever the differences are, they are unlikely to affect the program's functionality on a 486 DX4. I do not understand what would lead you to believe otherwise.

(Admittedly UMBPCI has no chance of working on a 486, but UMBPCI is not QEMM.)

OK, no problem. That makes me wonder why they bothered bringing out newer versions if they didn't significantly add or change anything worth mentioning.

Of course they changed things. But what do you think they would change to break compatibility with a 486 DX4?

It really doesn't matter anymore. I am going to use 97.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Fair call...

Personally I love DOSKEY but do not use SMARTDRV

Do you prefer DosKey over 4Dos? If yes, why?

From the The Windows 98 Config.txt File, and some internet articles.
This information goes for MS-DOS 7.10.

1BUFFERS: 1...99, default 30, Disk buffers, 528-bytes memory each!.
2FILES:   8..255, default  8, File access entries, 40-bytes memory each.
3FCBS     1..255, default  4, file control blocks (FCBs) for DOS network file sharing. 
4STACKS:  [n,s] n=0 of 8..64, s(size)=32..512. Data stacks to handle hardware interrupts?

In a configuration without EMM386 you might want to keep buffers low to save base memory. But a value between 10 and 20 is generally recommended.
so:
BUFFERS=10
FILES=40
FCBS=1
STACKS=0,0

be careful with the stacks settings, disabling them will cause a lot of games to crash

I don't have any crashes. Can you give an example, and how big a stack is the minimum requirement?