Hi!

> 1. Any attempt to run any old game -- if you mean "testing FreeDOS
>  compatibility" -- should be done on "legacy hardware".

Not necessarily. It is exciting to check what can be done on modern PC.

> If anyone is using newer hardware -- e.g. PCI-only -- you'll never 100%
>  know "is it FreeDOS or hardware-related issue".

The only problem with PCI and newer that I am aware of is with sound.

Sometimes, very modern graphics cards lack some classic features, such
as certain fonts or resolutions, or you only have 4:3 modes while your
16:9 screen shows black bars at the sides. But those things usually do
not completely keep you from finding a graphics mode for your game. You
can use PCISLEEP in the list or query modes to know your VGA chipset.

I agree that JEMMEX is part of the problem for some of the games,
so it is good to also test with HIMEM only. This, combined with
the XMS swap of FreeCOM command.com and with DOS=HMA will already
make sure that quite a bit of DOS RAM is free, so many games should
be happy. Games rarely require EMS and having misconfigured UMB or
compatibility issues with EMM386-style drivers is an unnecessary
risk while testing whether a game runs at all. Optimizing memory
and drivers can wait, first get the game to work at all :-)

But I wonder if people here remember for some of the games whether
they work with FreeDOS and whether and which trick that requires.

Some games may also have issues with long file names or directory
names, spaces in file or directory names, read-only files, which
may happen when copying files from CD or DVD and similar. Various
DOS extenders may have issues with new hardware, so it can be an
idea to use DOS32A for games which originally used DOS4GW etc.

Regards, Eric



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