Starting-point DOS configuration for ao486 and all features (instructional)

[held]

I could not deal with the German language in UMBINFO. So I did a quick and dirty translation to English. If you spot any words to be translated like 'Frei' in this picture. Just comment

UMBINFO211.PNG (7.55 KiB) Viewed 3816 times

[held]

Interesting I managed to find a workaround with the invalid parameter error by using the line from Flynn's top 300 pack (https://github.com/flynnsbit/Top300_upd ... NFIG16.EMM) and this works but throws another perplexing error.

Code: Select all

DEVICEHIGH=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE AUTO 32768 RAM FRAME=D000 D=64 X=C000-CFFF I=B000-B7FF I=D000-EFFF

Results in expanded memory working a bit better without the error from before but now it appears it can only see 15mb instead of the specified 32mb.

Yeah something is wrong, DOS 6 should allocate up to 4GB. I cant get it past 16MB either. And I set the hardware to 256MB, did you?

[Shogun]

Yea the ram size is set to 256mb in the menu.

[held]

Yea the ram size is set to 256mb in the menu.

Just confirmed that the NT4 installer sees 248MB of memory. So it should be available, but its not under 6.22

[Shogun]

Thanks for this. You got me going on the right path. It looks like the version of himem.sys in Dos 6.22 has a memory limitation and can't see greater than 16mb. This effects all versions prior to Win95 see https://www.ardent-tool.com/utils/himem.html

The solution was to grab a Win98 bootdisk and copy over the version of himem.sys there (v3.95) since I was running the version from Dos 6.22. Once I did this I can now see around 68mb which is plenty.

xiKbH2T.png (16.86 KiB) Viewed 3463 times

[held]

No thank you for this . Swapping out himem.sys ASAP

[flynnsbit]

My windows 98 dos boot vhd is here if you want to grab crap out of it. https://ia903201.us.archive.org/view_ar ... -DOS98.zip I wouldn't use DOS 6.22 as it doesn't have FAT32 support so you will be limited on VHD size.

[held]

Now he tells me

Right, after some experimenting with the WIN98 ISO. I extracted the files and had 256MB allocated and free.
I have some keyboard freezing, so I have to work that out.

Now I will dive into flynnsbit HDD and see that he probably has already figured out what I just stumbled upon.

[flynnsbit]

Now he tells me

Right, after some experimenting with the WIN98 ISO. I extracted the files and had 256MB allocated and free.
I have some keyboard freezing, so I have to work that out.

Now I will dive into flynnsbit HDD and see that he probably has already figured out what I just stumbled upon.

Keyboard freezing in the core is the BUFFERS= setting. Set it high, like 45 or 50 and see if it still happens. I think in my image it is set to 35 and it isn't enough so I always bump it up to fix the problem. I need to push that down to everyone in my update script.

[Shogun]

Just to circle back if anyone wants to see the final autoexec.bat and config.sys I am using they are attached. These are modified from Phil's MS-DOS starter pack at https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ms-dos ... -pack.html.

mem/c output using (XMC) Extended memory option with NOEMS flag :

Code: Select all

Modules using memory below 1 MB:

  Name           Total       =   Conventional   +   Upper Memory
  --------  ----------------   ----------------   ----------------
  MSDOS       15,261   (15K)     15,261   (15K)          0    (0K)
  HIMEM        1,120    (1K)      1,120    (1K)          0    (0K)
  EMM386       5,344    (5K)      5,344    (5K)          0    (0K)
  COMMAND      2,976    (3K)      2,976    (3K)          0    (0K)
  CTMOUSE      3,552    (3K)          0    (0K)      3,552    (3K)
  MISTERFS     7,232    (7K)          0    (0K)      7,232    (7K)
  VIDECDD      5,056    (5K)          0    (0K)      5,056    (5K)
  MSCDEX      27,952   (27K)          0    (0K)     27,952   (27K)
  Free       736,784  (720K)    630,528  (616K)    106,256  (104K)

Memory Summary:

  Type of Memory       Total   =    Used    +    Free
  ----------------  ----------   ----------   ----------
  Conventional         655,360       24,832      630,528
  Upper                150,048       43,792      106,256
  Reserved                   0            0            0
  Extended (XMS)    67,609,056      501,216   67,107,840
  ----------------  ----------   ----------   ----------
  Total memory      68,414,464      569,840   67,844,624

  Total under 1 MB     805,408       68,624      736,784

  Largest executable program size        630,432   (616K)
  Largest free upper memory block         94,352    (92K)
  MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

[Schyz]

Hi,

I suspect that the floppy image linked in the first post doesn't contain the latest version of misterfs.exe, so I've created a floppy image that contains the last version of misterfs.exe (and other MiSTer FPGA tools created for AO486).

Source: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... leases/drv

About the topic at hand, I would seriously recommend using the IDE 0-0 Boot VHD drive from "eXo/Flynn Top 300 DOS Pack" as a starting point, it will include examples of using CD-ROM drivers, MPU 401, etc. and it has been thoroughly polished to run hundreds of games. It also matches some of my personal experience, for example, CuteMouse 1.9 is more stable for me than 2.1. I'd say this starting point is going to save people from a lot of headaches:

My windows 98 dos boot vhd is here if you want to grab crap out of it. https://ia903201.us.archive.org/view_ar ... -DOS98.zip I wouldn't use DOS 6.22 as it doesn't have FAT32 support so you will be limited on VHD size.

The only issue I have with that drive is that it's too small, I've personally created a 2GB VHD drive formatted to FAT16 and transferred everything to it so I can add those edge case games that only run on C: or only support FAT16.

[Caldor]

Hi,

I suspect that the floppy image linked in the first post doesn't contain the latest version of misterfs.exe, so I've created a floppy image that contains the last version of misterfs.exe (and other MiSTer FPGA tools created for AO486).

Source: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... leases/drv

About the topic at hand, I would seriously recommend using the IDE 0-0 Boot VHD drive from "eXo/Flynn Top 300 DOS Pack" as a starting point, it will include examples of using CD-ROM drivers, MPU 401, etc. and it has been thoroughly polished to run hundreds of games. It also matches some of my personal experience, for example, CuteMouse 1.9 is more stable for me than 2.1. I'd say this starting point is going to save people from a lot of headaches:

My windows 98 dos boot vhd is here if you want to grab crap out of it. https://ia903201.us.archive.org/view_ar ... -DOS98.zip I wouldn't use DOS 6.22 as it doesn't have FAT32 support so you will be limited on VHD size.

The only issue I have with that drive is that it's too small, I've personally created a 2GB VHD drive formatted to FAT16 and transferred everything to it so I can add those edge case games that only run on C: or only support FAT16.

Could the new version of MiSTerFS maybe solve the problem with running those special DOS 6.22 specific games? I personally made a whole bunch of 2gb VHDs to have them compatible with 6.22 but if its now possible to run the games from the shared folder... that sure would help save space quite a bit.

[flynnsbit]

Hi,

I suspect that the floppy image linked in the first post doesn't contain the latest version of misterfs.exe, so I've created a floppy image that contains the last version of misterfs.exe (and other MiSTer FPGA tools created for AO486).

Source: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_M ... leases/drv

About the topic at hand, I would seriously recommend using the IDE 0-0 Boot VHD drive from "eXo/Flynn Top 300 DOS Pack" as a starting point, it will include examples of using CD-ROM drivers, MPU 401, etc. and it has been thoroughly polished to run hundreds of games. It also matches some of my personal experience, for example, CuteMouse 1.9 is more stable for me than 2.1. I'd say this starting point is going to save people from a lot of headaches:

My windows 98 dos boot vhd is here if you want to grab crap out of it. https://ia903201.us.archive.org/view_ar ... -DOS98.zip I wouldn't use DOS 6.22 as it doesn't have FAT32 support so you will be limited on VHD size.

The only issue I have with that drive is that it's too small, I've personally created a 2GB VHD drive formatted to FAT16 and transferred everything to it so I can add those edge case games that only run on C: or only support FAT16.

Could the new version of MiSTerFS maybe solve the problem with running those special DOS 6.22 specific games? I personally made a whole bunch of 2gb VHDs to have them compatible with 6.22 but if its now possible to run the games from the shared folder... that sure would help save space quite a bit.

Running stuff and editing stuff from shared does actually function now, with the new misterfs changes. It still isn't perfect. I was having an issue copying .BAT and .ANS files "TO" Z: (shared) "FROM" C: . Copy, xcopy, and xxcopy would all fail. It would create a zero byte file. If I literally flipped it and ran the copy command from Z: instead of from C: it worked fine. Super weird result. I ran maybe 4 games + MyMenu directly from Z: and they all worked. You used to not even be able to use EDIT Z:\anyfile.txt and now that works fine as well. The main limitation for me personally with misterfs is it does not know anything about Long file names, they don't even show up with a ~1 so I personally wont be going that path for any real game/app execution.

[Caldor]

Running stuff and editing stuff from shared does actually function now, with the new misterfs changes. It still isn't perfect. I was having an issue copying .BAT and .ANS files "TO" Z: (shared) "FROM" C: . Copy, xcopy, and xxcopy would all fail. It would create a zero byte file. If I literally flipped it and ran the copy command from Z: instead of from C: it worked fine. Super weird result. I ran maybe 4 games + MyMenu directly from Z: and they all worked. You used to not even be able to use EDIT Z:\anyfile.txt and now that works fine as well. The main limitation for me personally with misterfs is it does not know anything about Long file names, they don't even show up with a ~1 so I personally wont be going that path for any real game/app execution.

Yeah, generally its still not a great solution, but seems pretty much perfect for DOS 6.22 stuff, since it probably wont support LFN anyway and this way you could get around the 2gb VHD limitation I am thinking that DOS 6.22 has.

[Schyz]

Yeah, generally its still not a great solution, but seems pretty much perfect for DOS 6.22 stuff, since it probably wont support LFN anyway and this way you could get around the 2gb VHD limitation I am thinking that DOS 6.22 has.

With MS-DOS 7.1/8.0 you can overcome that 2GB limitation, by using FAT32.

If you need to stick to FAT16 and DOS 6.22, you can use an 8GB VHD with 4x primary FAT16 partitions, 2GB each.
The 2GB limit is per partition, not per drive.

[Caldor]

Yeah, generally its still not a great solution, but seems pretty much perfect for DOS 6.22 stuff, since it probably wont support LFN anyway and this way you could get around the 2gb VHD limitation I am thinking that DOS 6.22 has.

With MS-DOS 7.1/8.0 you can overcome that 2GB limitation, by using FAT32.

If you need to stick to FAT16 and DOS 6.22, you can use an 8GB VHD with 4x primary FAT16 partitions, 2GB each.
The 2GB limit is per partition, not per drive.

Yes, I was trying to be clear that it was for the special cases where some games are somehow only compatible with 6.22. I am not sure what games that would be, but it does happen.

Having one VHD split into several partitions, seems impractical when it is possible to mount 4 different VHDs. Besides, its not that many games that needs this.

My point though, is that its not needed anymore since its actually now possible to use the shared folder to run games from. No more need to have several 2gb VHDs, or partitions, that are probably not even using the full space on it anyway, because now you can have all those same games in the shared folder instead and easily run them from DOS 6.22 or later versions of DOS.

[held]

Now he tells me

Right, after some experimenting with the WIN98 ISO. I extracted the files and had 256MB allocated and free.
I have some keyboard freezing, so I have to work that out.

Now I will dive into flynnsbit HDD and see that he probably has already figured out what I just stumbled upon.

Keyboard freezing in the core is the BUFFERS= setting. Set it high, like 45 or 50 and see if it still happens. I think in my image it is set to 35 and it isn't enough so I always bump it up to fix the problem. I need to push that down to everyone in my update script.

I think its the CEC-problem causing this issue and I have no cec-less cable yet

I do sitll have issues with CWSDPMI. Just can;'t get unzip or p7zip to work (even under qemm),