VOGONS


First post, by uncleiroh

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Hey everyone, very new to the forum, great information here.

Wondering if anyone can help me understand how to recover EMS after installing a SATA Controller.

I recently purchased a Dell Dimension XPS R350 which came with the following:
* Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
* Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128

I was using a IDE/SATA adapter for my 128GB SSD, which was working fine, however I noticed some slowdown when making large file transfers (I ensured DMA was checked). I fresh installed Win98SE. All games worked fine, including X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM.

I decided to get a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus controller, and I noticed much smoother operation of WIN98 during heavy I/O on the system, overall the system felt snappy. However, I EMM386.EXE says EMS is not available and games like DOS Games like X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM says not enough memory, as did X-Wing vs Tie Fighter.

I tried to use a custom EMM386.EXE RAM line after reading various tips around the forum, but nothing could get EMS to load while I had that controller installed in the system. I've since taken it out and I'm back to the SATA/IDE Adapter, but at least I have EMS now.

Anyone have experience with a SATA controller card doing this to them and figuring out a fix?

Thanks in advance.

Reply 1 of 8, by Warlord

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I have no such experience with other sata controllers I've used. Maybe someone else can chime in. My money is on there is nothing wrong with the sata controller and it probably works fine in another motherboard. Reason I think that is becasue you have a Dell. I'm not hating on Dell, plenty of other manufactures like HP, compaq, and IBM make all sorts of questionable motherboard design decisions and their bioses are always the worst.

Last edited by Warlord on 2021-03-29, 01:23. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 8, by darry

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uncleiroh wrote on 2021-03-29, 00:53:
Hey everyone, very new to the forum, great information here. […]
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Hey everyone, very new to the forum, great information here.

Wondering if anyone can help me understand how to recover EMS after installing a SATA Controller.

I recently purchased a Dell Dimension XPS R350 which came with the following:
* Voodoo 3 2000 AGP
* Sound Blaster AudioPCI 128

I was using a IDE/SATA adapter for my 128GB SSD, which was working fine, however I noticed some slowdown when making large file transfers (I ensured DMA was checked). I fresh installed Win98SE. All games worked fine, including X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM.

I decided to get a Promise FastTrak S150 TX2plus controller, and I noticed much smoother operation of WIN98 during heavy I/O on the system, overall the system felt snappy. However, I EMM386.EXE says EMS is not available and games like DOS Games like X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM says not enough memory, as did X-Wing vs Tie Fighter.

I tried to use a custom EMM386.EXE RAM line after reading various tips around the forum, but nothing could get EMS to load while I had that controller installed in the system. I've since taken it out and I'm back to the SATA/IDE Adapter, but at least I have EMS now.

Anyone have experience with a SATA controller card doing this to them and figuring out a fix?

Thanks in advance.

If you don't need EMS memory, you could try running with NOEMS instead of RAM

This might help https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/075/Q75592/ .
If you want EMS memory (using the RAM option), you could set the pageframe to be non-contiguous (normally it is 4 x 16K set contiguously, but LIM 4.0 allows non contiguous 16K pages)
You may try adding i=B000-B7FF and/or i=E000-EFFF as usable memory ranges, if they are not otherwise used (B000-B7FF is used by monochrome/Hercules adapters/video modes and E000-EFFF is apparently often available on non IBM brand machines but not used by EMM386 by default) .

Reply 4 of 8, by darry

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Warlord wrote on 2021-03-29, 01:24:

doesn't that only give you like 5k or something though.

If my math is correct, B000-B7FF is 32KB and E000-EFFF is 64KB , so definitely more than 5KB .

Reply 5 of 8, by kjliew

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The addon PCI Promise FastTrak controller must have its own ROM occupying upper memory region that prevents a contiguous 64KB EMS page frame. If you can't free up enough upper memory region, then there is nothing you can do about it.

darry wrote on 2021-03-29, 01:23:

... LIM 4.0 allows non contiguous 16K pages ...

Almost all EMS-aware games/apps expect 64KB EMS page frame, they won't work otherwise. You're right about LIM EMS 4.0 advanced capabilities but almost no one knew how to use them other than DESQview/386 and Microsoft Windows 3.0.

Reply 6 of 8, by darry

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kjliew wrote on 2021-03-29, 02:57:

The addon PCI Promise FastTrak controller must have its own ROM occupying upper memory region that prevents a contiguous 64KB EMS page frame. If you can't free up enough upper memory region, then there is nothing you can do about it.

darry wrote on 2021-03-29, 01:23:

... LIM 4.0 allows non contiguous 16K pages ...

Almost all EMS-aware games/apps expect 64KB EMS page frame, they won't work otherwise. You're right about LIM EMS 4.0 advanced capabilities but almost no one knew how to use them other than DESQview/386 and Microsoft Windows 3.0.

TBH, I have never tried running with a non contiguous EMS pageframe. I would have thought that since the LIM(A) EMS 4.0 spec dated back to 1987 or so, support for its feature's would have been more common by the 1990s, especially by the 386 and later era where most EMS memory was likely EMM386.EXE generated and thus LIM(A) 4.0 compliant . One learns something every day . Thank you.

Let's hope that E000-EFFF is available on the OP's machine and that it can be used as a pageframe .

Reply 7 of 8, by uncleiroh

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Warlord wrote on 2021-03-29, 01:23:

I have no such experience with other sata controllers I've used. Maybe someone else can chime in. My money is on there is nothing wrong with the sata controller and it probably works fine in another motherboard. Reason I think that is becasue you have a Dell. I'm not hating on Dell, plenty of other manufactures like HP, compaq, and IBM make all sorts of questionable motherboard design decisions and their bioses are always the worst.

I guess this means I'll have to build another retro gaming machine. =)

Reply 8 of 8, by uncleiroh

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darry wrote on 2021-03-29, 03:09:
kjliew wrote on 2021-03-29, 02:57:

The addon PCI Promise FastTrak controller must have its own ROM occupying upper memory region that prevents a contiguous 64KB EMS page frame. If you can't free up enough upper memory region, then there is nothing you can do about it.

darry wrote on 2021-03-29, 01:23:

... LIM 4.0 allows non contiguous 16K pages ...

Almost all EMS-aware games/apps expect 64KB EMS page frame, they won't work otherwise. You're right about LIM EMS 4.0 advanced capabilities but almost no one knew how to use them other than DESQview/386 and Microsoft Windows 3.0.

TBH, I have never tried running with a non contiguous EMS pageframe. I would have thought that since the LIM(A) EMS 4.0 spec dated back to 1987 or so, support for its feature's would have been more common by the 1990s, especially by the 386 and later era where most EMS memory was likely EMM386.EXE generated and thus LIM(A) 4.0 compliant . One learns something every day . Thank you.

Let's hope that E000-EFFF is available on the OP's machine and that it can be used as a pageframe .

Sadly this was a no go. The Dell just would just freeze at the Windows 98 loading screen. I guess it's either buttery smooth SATA goodness, or being able to play X-Wing.

Thanks everyone for the help, I definitely learned some things. I suppose I should start spec'ing out a custom retro build now. Oh darn. =)