Hi, On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 2:23 AM, Andrew Robins <[email protected]> wrote: > > grappling with conventional memory allocation issues along the way.
How much do you need? Most games don't need 600,000 bytes. In fact, I know this is pure hyperbole, but I don't think almost anything needs quite that much (outside of very rare stuff, e.g. some old demo called Submerge or similar). IIRC, on my other machine, even though I didn't really "need" it, I ended up loading SHCDX33F, CTMOUSE, and FDAPM last so that I could (potentially) unload them later to get over 600,000 free. (Note that I'm trying to be careful and not say "600 kb" since that is much higher, i.e. "KiB".) > Booting up with JEMMEX (no EMS) results in practically all the games > borking, but 'EMM386 + Share' gets pretty close to the "sweet spot" for > just about all game requirements, I've found. XMGR? Forgeddaboutit :( Do a lot of the games use EMS? I'm not that surprised, it was used even when not really a good idea. Or perhaps they really were trying to be 8086 compatible, but I doubt it. I've noticed that some rare cases cause problems with EMM386 NOEMS, so I don't personally recommend that. If you can live without UMBs, just don't load EMM386 at all (except when specifically needed, e.g. "JEMM386 LOAD" then "UNLOAD" later). EMS was standardized before XMS, hence why Borland Turbo C uses it by default (if found) while you have to manually use a switch for XMS. So I guess lots of people preferred EMS back then. I know Scream Tracker does for its sound samples (and, IIRC, it's for 386+). > Thanks for the tips on USB drivers for DOS - I did look at Georg > Potthast's offering and I can't justify the 65 euro for it - but good > luck to him, I'm sure it is great value for his expertise. I don't know, I've not tried it, but Georg has done a lot for DOS (see Dillo and others). > But as mentioned in a previous post, FreeDOS had it running with > Bret Johnson's driver - I just had to realise it was there waiting for me :) Good to know, and yes, Bret has done good work as well. > I was incorrect about the package I thought Eric had compiled - he'd > pointed out a brief window I think when Georg's driver might have > been freeware, but Jack Ellis had done the package I was thinking of. > I didn't need to go further with either options however. Yes, older versions were free for non-commercial use, but this was apparently misused. Oh well. > I've incidentally been using DosZip pretty exclusively in this setup - > I'm very happy with it, got a pretty decent editor I use for various > game Read.me 's (though JEMMEX mode gives the best results for most doc > sizes - I don't actually use 'edit' for anything else other than reading > txt), and the click'n'drag of files between panels for USB, CD-ROM and > C-Drive (SD-card) files. The ability to "open" zip files is also very > handy, though the "Decompress" option doesn't seem to work as it might How so? Admittedly, I often miss my shell aliases when in a file manager, hence a lot of times I don't bother firing up the sucker. So I don't use Doszip (or NDN) as much as I should except when copying / renaming lots of files. But IIRC, the unzipping worked fine: copy from inside the .ZIP to an external subdir outside. > the additional command line is there too so I just use mkdir and unzip > commands in FreeDOS, and the DosZip file manager panels are populated > with the extracted files immediately. Seems a bit, erm, redundant to use Unzip with Doszip, but whatever floats your boat. ;-) > From there, I can begin playing > games from the DosZip panels almost immediately by selecting the > appropriate exe or bat file. Haven't bothered with using install or > configuration files in this getup - no soundblaster audio card in this > "modern" box though I note that some games like "Eric the Unready", > "ChessMaster 2100", "Loom" etc do a great job with the PC audio. PC speaker, you mean? Yeah, better than nothing (sometimes). Some made better use of it than others (even using digital samples). I never did understand why Wolfenstein 3D didn't have that optional available by default (only undocumented). Maybe it slowed everything down on old PCs or maybe it was just too loud. Oh well, still vaguely interesting, though I guess other options exist too (at least for new stuff, e.g. Judas, WSS, Allegro, Mpxplay). > The only drawback I've noted with DosZip file management is with moving 2+ > GB of files between drives - naturally it does so within DOS limitations > (took a few hours) so in future I'll just flip out the drive to a card > reader and do larger-scale file management in my Linux box. Dunno. There are other copying programs, but I don't know which is fastest. Depends on many factors. (IIRC, Doszip did have optional patch at one time to support Eric Auer's speed optimization to prevent too many slow FAT seeks, but I don't know if that's default or not these days.) > One of the quirks I found with the IDE/SD-card setup was that it took > numerous formats with Gparted and FreeDOS install disk to get the card > fully recognised in successive attempts - something about an erroneous > FAT, but eventually it settled down. Strangely, I can't get the "Access" > GUI to upload my collection of game icons - simply doesn't appear to > load any icons whatsoever, even though I followed the same steps used > satisfactorily on an ATA drive. I'll see what happens when I move this > card into the old 430CDS laptop with Soundblaster Pro audio etc, and > properly configure the software to the hardware it was otherwise aimed > at. Might be just a peculiarity with the SD-card... Good luck! If you find out why, please tell us. > For the record, I have this configured to boot straight into Access from > where I can run DosZip and hunt around in that file manager testing > games... Games like "The Sentinel", "GrandMaster Chess" and "National > Lampoon's ChessManiac 5001" are problematic* with both Access and DosZip > in the background (TSR as I understand it), but it has been useful to > discard those that won't safely drop back to DOS/Access GUI for the kids > (using ESC, Ctrl-Q or Ctrl-C), and instead need either the > three-fingered salute or the manual reset button to get into something > else. Access has been really easy for the kids to construct their own > menu systems to run their preferred games, so I can leave them to pretty > it up. I'm a little sad but not surprised that some apps don't play well. Yeah, memory management can be complicated. > * These illustrate I guess the "optimum position" memory tightrope I'm > learning to walk - can't tell you how much I appreciate those who > re-package game zips with batch files and DOS4GW functionality - if I > could understand how to do that myself, well... IIRC, a lot of games came with DOS/4G professional built-in. There are better replacements, though, less buggy at least, but they don't support all the "professional" extensions. For vanilla DOS/4GW, you could use Causeway or DOS/32A (latter recommended by DOSBox guys for old games). Not sure if that will solve all (or any) of your problems, but it may be worth a shot. IIRC, DOS/4GW is fairly old and made some IRQ assumptions and that confuses some PIC reassignment (or some gobbledegook, I'm not that savvy honestly, heh, sorry). For sure, DOS/4GW is quite limited in total RAM available, but I don't think that bites any games. > I'm still wrestling with a "freeze-frame" function for long / > instantaneously erased error messages, but am learning how to burn the > gist of them on my retina in repeat attempts, when I can't be bothered > to film it on my smartphone. They happen infrequently now, and generally > I can get around the problem by booting alternative memory > configurations. I'll have to leave further memory tweaks for now, > however - work is catching up with me! A Memmaker clone sounds > interesting - another "tutorial" project for the DOS gurus I'm afraid :) Well, you have to be careful not to have conflicts. In particular, I would avoid any tricky stuff like remapping text memory at B000:0000. Also, be sure to use "X=TEST I=TEST" for JEMM386. Anything else probably depends on the specific app since there are so many competing memory APIs for DOS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
