MiSTer FPGA Forum

I have an update ready for the Play It By Year collection for this core (based on the latest Total Dos Collection files) but would like to improve - if possible - the MS DOS boot config on it as well.

At the moment it's piggybacking on an image and config I got from flynnsbit some months ago. It works ok, but at the time it was his WIP (so maybe not 100% efficient) and also optimized for use with MyMenu, I think, seeing as it uses ramdrive?

Overall I'd like to speed up the boot as much as possible, because at the moment it's a bit slow (one minute), by tweaking the auotexec/config.sys, and maybe some other settings? I have some very rudimentary knowledge regarding this but nothing really on the more advanced level so I thought I'd ask here.

I mainly target Norton Commander as a frontend, so maybe the ramdrive stuff is unnecessary? I wouldn't mind including MyMenu too, as an option for people who want to see LFN, so ideal config would have both of them working and booting as fast as possible, but NC is the priority.

I attached the current config files if you'd like to have a look.

Would useful to document what some of those do as a starting point, and the time they take to load.

• FREESP accelerates the calculation of free space, which is useful to have: https://github.com/ChartreuseK/FREESP/blob/main/README
• LFN seems to be commented out?
• The RAMDrive, if I understand these files correctly, is used to copy Norton Utilities to it, and also store swap files.

I'd expect these will make running NC faster.
But you can try commenting them out and see how NC performs without them.

I found some description of using a RAMDrive here:
https://dfarq.homeip.net/optimizing-dos ... new-imacs/

Newsdee wrote: ↑Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:03 pm I'd expect these will make running NC faster.
But you can try commenting them out and see how NC performs without them.

Actually, NC seems to be snappier after I commented out most stuff.

Any suggestions for a template autoexec/config.sys for this core?

Maybe this page is helpful. They are talking about more than 600kb free...

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=49196

Thanks mate, problem is these are all for 486 and up machines. And the XT will mostly refuse refuse to work with emm.386 and its ilk which form the basis of these configs.

@flynnsbit was kind enough to share his WIP vhd and included power-user config with me and I might try to cannibalise some of it for my vhd. Although, I must admit that so far my basic autoexec/config work fine with most of the games I've tried.