A few months ago i started up a little project that aimed to create the perfect DOS gaming bootdisk. It was posted at the Extreme Overclocking forums and it received a bit of feedback, then it died. I understand that there is DOSBox, however it is not able to emulate some games at full speed due to hardware limitations, and i can give you a few titles that simply don't work with it.

Features (Updated):

* Quickstart guide in AUTOEXEC.BAT
* Made readme.txt easier to read in EDIT
* Reverted to HIMEM.SYS instead of XMGR
* Added EMSMAGIC
* Now i can dare to say it's got 100% compatibility, of course you're free to mention games which run into trouble...

* Stripped 98SE files (MS-DOS 7.10)
* Advanced memory driver (UMBPCI optimizing HIMEM.SYS) - i ditched XMGR as
some games didn't like it.
* EMSMagic EMS memory emulator
* CuteMouse 2.1 beta 4 - mouse driver with 3k memory footprint, auto detection
and full wheel support
* DOSKey alternative with auto-completion
* XXCopy versatile file copy program
* MS-DOS editor for basic text editing needs
* UIDE, HDD and CD/DVD drivers with low memory footprint and DMA support
* USB Flash and USB HDD support using Panasonic USBASPI drivers
* Sound drivers will be included on request. The Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster
Pro and Sound Blaster 16 are supported by default. For more info check out
the Configuration section.
* Uses as low as 11KB conventional memory

The deal with the sound drivers was that people would link me to a DOS driver for their soundcard then i would integrate it in the bootdisk and configure it accordingly. I planned to make a bootable CD which would save configuration files to the HDD when i reached enough knowledge of DOS and got enough drivers to justify that.

I think this forum would be a much better place for this project. What's your opinion on it?

Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=607aab9...4c8e6c66d4fa4e9 (Updated)

xxcopy woks great !....i use it more than and it works better than xcopy or xcopy32!!!

I made myself a boot CD along these same lines, though I only supported my SB16 & SB Audigy along with a few other options. It was more intended as a generic thing, where I could throw onto a machine anything I wanted, including games.

I found to truly get all the features packed onto the CD, I had to pull an extended boot thing, and keep all CONFIG.SYS drivers on the boot floppy and then point to a directory on the CD to get my autoexec.bat things.

Some points to ponder (that you didn't really mention but may or may not have addressed):
1) I never figured out how to rig it to get access to the *real* floppy drive (the boot image becomes A:\ on a boot CD) so I might as well ask that for whoever happens across this.
2) Most of us are running Windows 2000/XP/Vista systems which will have NTFS drives - I'm not sure too many have a FAT16 partition waiting and ready to go. So consider putting up a RAM disk - the one I used (name escapes me) will put up an olden days HD size chunk of memory for you to be able to install games on (especially if they want to write saved games, etc.)
3) For that matter, copy COMMAND.COM to the RAM disk and COMSPEC to there - that'll make it so the disk will be readily removable.
4) Be sure to have options for EMS memory as well, since many things (and I believe the Audigy drivers as well) from the DOS era want EMS memory and refuse to run if it's not found.
5) Don't forget all the nice TSR command-line toys that are default on the XP/Vista command-line boxes like DOSKEY.
6) You may want to try to get some drivers for USB drives going as well...

All the thoughts I have for now - if you have any questions or wonder what I did with mine, I can pull it out sometime and describe a few more things (it's been about 2-3 years since I did it).

2) Being based on 98SE files it supports FAT32. I had in mind to use a NTFS driver but ditched the idea for the time being, as the development machine had no reason to use NTFS (Pentium-MMX 200 @ 292MHz, 96MB RAM, ATi Rage II+DVD 2MB, SB16, 13GB Seagate), and this bootdisk is not intended for use with new machines (read: any higher than PIII) since fast CPUs bring more trouble. RAMDisk? Sure, doable. But if the machine hangs you lose all data. I would prefer a different approach... Bingo! 6)

4) I didn't need EMS, the SB16 is supported natively by DOS and the AWE64 drivers worked just fine, same did the drivers for my crappy Avance Logic ALS4000 PCI (hey, at least it has MIDI ).

5) I need something else than DOSKey because it takes up a lot of conventional RAM and fussy games won't run. I would like to go by without a memory manager, running QEMM and the like is just asking for trouble. I had QEMM on an early version of the bootdisk and most games worked with it, but there were some i like that didn't, so i removed it. This bootdisk was designed to have as much conventional RAM free as possible.

Edit: I found an enhanced DOSKey with auto-completion, which is only 5KB compared to 15KB of the standard one. I'll test tomorrow on my laptop to see if it's light enough (i'm out of floppies ).

6) USB driver, storing data on a FAT32-formatted flash drive instead of the HDD. Sounds like a good idea to me, but i need it to load high.

If bootable CD is A:\ then floppy moves to B:\

Use config menus to create profiles with/without EMS, doskey, sound, etc. If you don't know how, read HELP.COM from DOS v6 or ask me.

If you think there's enough memory but not enough space on a floppy disk, use DriveSpace. Tip: you can put COMMAND.COM inside the volume to gain a little more space. Another option is to use a ramdrive and a self-extracting archive.

I think i know how to use config menus, however it would be just complicating things. If i get to making the CD i'll make menus for the sound drivers and such.

DriveSpace? That's trouble itself. For now space isn't a concern, i have more than enough left. I'll use a ramdrive if i need more.

Yes. But if you do want to get rid of the emulated floppy try the attached freeware fdemuoff (by reanimatolog, the author of the great freeware BCDW v. 1.50z and v. 2.01).

Good news people. I found the old version of my bootdisk and downloaded it, also i integrated the enhanced DOSKey in it. And it does load high.

Sound drivers will be included on request. The SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro and SoundBlaster 16 are supported by default.
Full CD-ROM support with DMA
No USB support yet
Mouse driver with wheel support
XXCopy, renamed to XCopy for easier use
DOSKey with auto-completion

And what is surely the most amazing feat of this bootdisk: Only 9KB conventional memory used!!! That's right, with no memory managers. And there is still 709KB available on the disk! PS. Fdisk, Format and Deltree are removed so you don't accidentally screw up your HDD.

For USB mass storage device support, you may want to use (panasonic)USBASPI.sys v2.2.4 + ASPIDISK.sys, and may want to include UDMA2S.sys (Now outdated) or similar UDMA driver for fast HDD access.

And you may want to consider formatting the bootdisks as DMF diskettes (1.68MB) so you would have more space.

Thanks for the info, actually the Panasonic drivers are what i intended to use. For DMA i use UIDE, it's not only for CD-ROMs, it also works with the HDD.

Right now i really don't need any extra space, but i remember i played with fdformat (the DOS util not the linux one) a long while ago and was able to get up to 1.72MB perfectly usable space.

Edit: Update!

Sound drivers will be included on request. The SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro and SoundBlaster 16 are supported by default.
Full CD-ROM support with DMA
New! USB Flash and USB HDD support
Mouse driver with wheel support
XXCopy, renamed to XCopy for easier use
DOSKey with auto-completion
STILL uses ONLY 9KB conventional memory
654KB available on disk

Coool project! Though it looks like i'm s*** out of luck due to the sound..... nforce 2 soundcard... Though i could always add a soundblaster pci card right?

Actually, the newer Soundblasters aren't SB16 compatible... What an irony. You could use a C-Media CMI8738, it's dirt cheap and has got pretty good DOS drivers with full SB16 compatibility, including a real MIDI synth.

The Audigy DOS driver is essentially a SB16 emulation layer, so it works out (and should for anything based on that). But odds are if there isn't any Windows 98 support for a card, it won't be SB16 compatible (and won't have DOS drivers besides). Edit: There isn't any 98 support for the X-Fis (I don't see a driver for it), so I don't think a DOS/SB16 compatible driver is going to be found either.

My PIII 800 brought trouble with many of the older DOS games I've tried on it. Besides, that's what slowdown drivers are for.



A preference thing, indeed. But still wise to put a RAMDisk out and set COMMAND.COM there so you don't have to have to provide the disk all the time when the "insert disk with COMMAND.COM" message appears. XMSDSK seems to work very well for me in that purpose.



UMBPCI pretty much handles that for you, and better than any of the times I've run QEMM, so you should be fine there. In fact, all of the DOS drivers I've encountered recently are so much better on memory than the actual days of DOS it's almost a joke.

Since I just pulled out my old boot CD-ROM, and looked at your disk as well. Here's some initial observations:



Definitely would pay for memory to go with SHCDX33A (same functionality). I'm not seeing an official link though to it, so I'll attach it and whatever else later, if necessary.

How stable is UIDE? I've never seen that driver before (and I have a ton of others). Usually all the UDMA drivers I've seen have been unstable.



Not much difference between the version you have and the DOS-98 one, might switch to the one you have though.

On the issue of RAMDisk memory size (if there's a question on it from anyone in here reading):


On other ideas:


Datalight's SHARE.EXE for file sharing - don't know how relevant that would be with DOS, but something to think about. (again can include on request if necessary).

Also if you want a "press here to boot on disk, wait or press ESC to boot to hard disk" driver (no memory used), JO.SYS will do that for you.

The last thing I noticed that jumped out to me:



I'd have to compare CONFIG.SYS lines to see what's going on, but it definitely looks like there's some improvement that could be made there.

I can definitely tweak around the driver disk I downloaded and see if any improvements could be made (I'll have to work on mine as well, I saw a couple of things I want to look at on it when I was booting it).

Edit: One thing I never found that I dislike seeing is an alternative disk cache driver that doesn't chew up gobs of conventional memory. Has anyone cooked up one?

... which works only under EMM386, which many games have trouble with.



Maybe.



UMBPCI does not like my development machine (hangs when loading after himem.sys as it's intended to), so i just use it to activate the UMB for XMGR to use.



Since it all loads high, i pretty much don't care. However, MSCDEX is slow in loading, so if SHCDX33A loads faster, i'll include that instead.



I never had any problems with it, and the dev machine's PCI bus is running at 41.5MHz (83MHz FSB).



I don't know how that could be of any use.



No. I don't remember where i pulled this version of IO.SYS off, might be 95, but this is the only version that doesn't cause any sound troubles - with any other version some games will simply fail to detect the SoundBlaster. I'll leave that alone for now.



I don't get what "SYSTEM" means there. There is some stuff in my CONFIG.SYS file to load as much of DOS high as possible. This is how i could reach the awesome 9KB conventional memory usage.



Dunno, i'll have to check on NWCACHE from DR-DOS. I don't remember how much did that use.

If I recall correctly, UIDE has its own cacheing solution.

Answer: Very unstable. Locked my machine hard when I tried to access the CD-ROM on one machine. Very slow on the other. XMGR is flaky as well. UIDE locked on my preferred memory manager (QHIMEM) so looks like that's not an option for me. (BTW, best option I've found has been just loading the AOpen UDMA CD-ROM driver and calling it done)



And many other games require it. Your point? With the 98 drivers it's not that much of an issue anyway, since EMM386 shares XMS memory.



Not for most part. As you can see in what I posted, 27K of MSCDEX went low on the machine I tested this on, when the other driver did not.



Not IO.SYS, JO.SYS. Different animal entirely.



This is the sum total of all the OS resources that you devote to the system. It's influenced by your CONFIG.SYS lines that relate to the system resources like "STACKS=9,256". On most of these you can add the word "HIGH" and put them in upper memory. But perhaps the best thing is to look at them and see if you really need the resources that you are asking for. (FWIW, I'm playing with settings on your disk to see what I can come up with.)

Some files and links below for whoever might want them (more info if someone wants it on how I load them):
http://www.nu2.nu/jo/ (JO.SYS)

SHARE.ZIP is the SHARE.EXE driver I mentioned.
SHCDX33A.ZIP is the CD-ROM driver I mentioned. (it loads like the MSCDEX in terms of parms)
XMSDSK.ZIP is the RAMDISK driver I mentioned.

Too bad, it always worked for me. Does the AOpen driver work on anything else besides AOpen drives?



Tell me a game which absolutely requires EMM386...



Hmm 27K? How come... Does the other driver load 100% high on your machine?



Okay, got it. However, i sometimes leave my disk unattended, aka just put it in the drive and let it boot, and it's no fun getting back and seeing Windoze loaded.



Aha, got it. Well, i don't remember where i got those settings but they never caused trouble.

It seems to work very well with my Lite-On drives, and I've used that driver on my standard OS boot disks for Win98/ME since those days. To be fair to the author, I did find newer drivers than the ones that were on your disk, so I'll try those out.



Googling DOS EMS games reveals several forum posts of people asking how to get EMS memory for game X (fill in the blank), so I'll just let you browse.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%...es%22+%22EMS%22



That's how much MSCDEX always has used for me. And yes the other driver loads 100% high (as does MSCDEX), but it's easier to get 6K loaded high than 27K.

Could you link me to it? I use Lite-On drives too. Btw, you said UIDE locked up with QHIMEM, well, my disk does not need any sort of HIMEM. And why did you say XMGR is flaky? I've never had it crash, while i had plenty of those with QEMM.



Bah... Problem is that it causes issues with just about every non-EMS game. I'll see what i can do about it.



Ah, i get it now. I thought it used 27K low memory... Anyway, i'll be using SHCDX33A from now on, thanks.

u mean "LiteOn IT Corporation"- http://www.liteonit.com ;as i have 4 "active-products"from them=3cdrw/2cdrw-cdroms,1cdrw-burner and a newer cdrw/dvd burner too Usually forget site address and use Yahoo/MS-Search for Drivers for their products...Always reliable unless ya put 2 cdr's in one as did before ( by accident-though it still works great ***There'an old Dos/Bootdisk site found at MDGx's site-that explains a lot of info about the "EMS"issue Without all the unwanted advertising poppin' up while searching

File is attached. XMGR is the HIMEM equivalent and UIDE requires its use.

UIDE has never crashed for me, but you could include an option (like an startup menu) to load some other driver.

Well, let's start:
The amount of free UMBs is HIGHLY dependant on the machine. One machine may have 100kb+, and the other might have much less, so just because something is able of loading high in your machine, doesn't mean it will do the same on someone else's.
EMS and UMBs are a b***. By default, EMM386 will eat 64kb of UMBs for its pageframe, and, although it can be disabled, many EMS games do not work without it. If you want something more dynamic, search for JEMMEX or even EMSMAGIC.
You are using BUFFERS=30. Since you are using UIDE and its internal cacheing, set this to 10. Also, there is no need to use BUFFERSHIGH, because since DOS=AUTO is set, it will try to load this stuff high anyway. FCBS=1,0 could also save you some memory.
Have you ever heard of 4DOS? It is a ommand.com replacement that uses less conventional memory and has TONS of options, so you could ditch DOSKEY altogether. One thing I love about it is that you can configure the DIR command so it will show different file types in diferent colors (my directories are yellow, hidden files are light gray, and so on)
You could use a RAMDisk, put command.com (or 4DOS.com or whatever) in there, together with all the utilities in the floppy, and make the PATH variable to point to the ram disk, and also set the TMP and TEMP variables to point there.
I'd also set DIRCMD to /4 /ogn and COPYCMD to /-y
Also, perhaps you should find yorself something like the DIAGNOSE software that comes with SB16. You can't assume everyone's sound blaster will sit at the same IRQ/DMA channels

@ Glenn9999: I know XMGR is the equivalent of HIMEM.SYS, but it's not based in any way on it. I think QHIMEM is, or am i wrong?

@ alexanrs: Startup menu will be made once i have enough knowledge to build a multiboot CD, with more sound drivers and such.

Thanks for the tip on EMM386 alternatives, i'll look into it. About the Buffers, okay, i'll decrease them. I know i have no need to specify BuffersHigh. Also what does FCBS=1,0 do? I've seen it every now and then but have no idea what it does.

Yes, i've heard of 4DOS. However i will not use it. Some games use it with their own settings, and you may get used to its extensions and compile batch files using them, then wonder why they don't work on other machines.

RAMDisk? Not yet. I don't want to.

I got what the COPYCMD switch means, but i'm using XXCopy. Does it need the switch too? Also, what do those DIRCMD options mean?

DIAGNOSE... Hmm, that eats A LOT of conventional memory. Besides, they can be configured via jumpers anyway. I'll set it to IRQ 7 as most SB16 cards are factory set for that, but that'll be about it for now.

Edit: I'm working more on CD drivers, my laptop does not have an optical drive therefore the 9KB conventional memory usage. I tried the bootdisk on a P4 with a LG CDROM drive and MSCDEX gobbles up loads of conventional memory (29K), but same does SHCDX33A, albeit not that much (6K) but it still doesn't load high entirely. UIDE alone doesn't take up any conventional memory.

The Panasonic USB drivers grabs a bit of a chunk of base mem too when there are many USB controllers in the system but it isn't too bad, i need to look into the CDROM drivers first. I absolutely need to keep over 590K conventional memory free, and that keeping in mind that some will need sound drivers too.

Also, could someone give me MORE.COM from Win98SE? Please.

Edit 2: Optimized memory usage even more, i guess i won't have to worry about that from now on. Also created a readme.txt file. Download link on first page.

MS-DOS Supplemental Tools for Win95 available here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/win...n-us/olddos.exe
contain HELP.COM. You should read it. It explains a lot about FCBS, DIR and DIRCMD, and all the other DOS commands.

Thanks. All i know is that FCBS didn't help memory usage at all so i just left it alone. Now i got DIRCMD figured - if you believe me i never even thought that DIR had switches other than /p (pause between screens).

Nope, it is an Himem.sys equivalent made by the same guy who made UIDE (former QDMA+QCDROM, look at the Qs


It would make it faster and allow you to remove the floppy once the boot process is finished without losing access to your utilities.


Probably not, but it doesn't hurt setting. Just a safety measure in case anyone copies a single file with command.com's built in copy command.


Plug'n'Play SB16s aren't as happy, they are jumperless and will get whatever IRQ+DMA your bios decides to give away.


You can do better that MORE.COM . It should be pretty easy to find free alternatives that allow you to go back, forth, page by page, line by line and so on.

I know... I just never liked the slow loading of the Win9x setup disks when they used a ramdisk, i always used the custom versions from bootdisk.com since i had my internet first wired up. But i think i can do a lot faster than the M$ disks anyway, so i'll be working on it. Glenn9999 mentioned a ramdisk driver with extremely low memory footprint earlier in this topic, i'll test it out.



Hmm, will check.



You can always set it in the BIOS then... Strange, my SB16 is detected as PnP yet it has jumpers.



Yeah that would be an idea... I'll go check.

If any1 cares:

- DOS tools, memory managers, etc:
http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm
- DOS drivers, USB, CD/DVD, sound, video, etc:
http://www.mdgx.com/drv.htm
- UMBPCI.SYS:
http://www.mdgx.com/umb.htm
- DOS tools: format, fdisk, etc:
http://www.mdgx.com/secrets.htm#FDPT

FreeDOS tools [free GPL] = most of them compatible with MS-DOS + DR-DOS:
http://www.freedos.org/

CD/DVD drivers 4 DOS:
http://www.mdgx.com/newtip1.htm#CDROM4

DOS memory management + tools:
http://www.mdgx.com/newtip20.htm#9SMM

Sound Blaster Live! in DOS:
http://www.mdgx.com/newtip18.htm#DGSBL

HTH

I know about most of them, but thanks for the links MDGx. Do you really think i didn't ever browse your site? PS. I have an AWE64 Gold ISA too, but compared to the good ol' SB16 it requires conventional memory-hungry drivers, and doesn't sound any better under DOS, so it's currently running a pair of bookshelf speakers in my dual-PIII machine.



Another note: Neither the SB16 nor AWE64 require 8-bit IO recovery time increased, not even on a highly overclocked Pentium like my bootdisk development one, nor on PIIs/PIIIs. Passive Release and Delayed Transaction provide PCI 2.1 compatibility and increase the performance of PCI transfers. They have absolutely zero to do with ISA devices. I doubt you didn't know that already....

First advice i've highlighted MAY improve stability on very quirky machines, at the cost of speed. The whole system will wait for the ISA card, which maybe doesn't even need this long to do its work. Second advice is wrong, disabling Passive Release and Delayed Transaction will decrease the performance of the computer and will make newer PCI cards incompatible with the machine.

Do you think when you are done with this project
you can may do a updated version of this
http://www.msfn.org/board/Unofficial-710-D...mg-t120105.html

DOS=AUTO was the big change that I removed, it gained about 16K of memory for the SYSTEM resources as was indicated in an earlier post. Specifying DOS=AUTO didn't make any difference for me for the location of where things loaded either. Actually, specifying it alone caused EVERYTHING to load in conventional memory, despite the explicit commands to load the drivers and system resources high.

DOS=HIGH,UMB,AUTO didn't make any difference compared to DOS=HIGH,UMB, except for the additional documented 16K of total used memory.

If you do have any documentation from Microsoft (since this disk uses their bootstrap files) on DOS=AUTO that indicates a good use for it, I'd love to see it. But as for my testing goes (and experience), I'm not seeing any benefit to specifying it.

If DOS=AUTO is not present, it is added while CONFIG.SYS is loading. You should add DOS=NOAUTO to prevent drivers from being loaded.
You are right! There is no reson to use AUTO. If you decide to add NOAUTO and want to start Windows with that CONFIG.SYS, remember to add IFSHLP.SYS or you will get a very nice BSOD.

Some more tips:
- Usually stacks are not needed. Use STACKS=0,0 to free some more memory.
- If you load drivers from CONFIG.SYS instead of AUTOEXEC.BAT, they will use less memory. Use INSTALLHIGH to load MSCDEX, mouse, SmartDrive, etc.

Marius '95 I tried DOS=NOAUTO before, and it used 1KB extra conventional memory. Therefore i left it on AUTO, every bit of conventional memory matters, while there's plenty of XMS available.

Since stacks are loaded high, i could care less about them. Not every game is "usual". And do you mean that loading drivers from CONFIG.SYS will take less memory than using LOADHIGH in AUTOEXEC.BAT? I find it hard to believe. I don't use MSCDEX anymore, SHCDX33A takes up less memory, CuteMouse loads itself high (it only takes 3K anyway), and i have absolutely no intention of using SmartDrive.

PROBLEMCHYLD, i have no idea what Dosboot.img is. Something on the Win9x setup CD i presume?

That's another thing that I never found very clear documentation on. What the exact function of the IFSHLP.SYS is to determine whether it was absolutely needed or not. I always noticed when I was running 98 that it was being loaded, so I never questioned much what it did. I know the acronym IFS was generally meant to be "installable file system", but I didn't know the exact function of the driver. Edit: I did find better documentation after google searching it this time. I never had a problem with either running it or not running it, so I don't know for sure.

Quote from WIN98_53.CAB/CONFIG.TXT:

It means you forgot something...


Quote from HELP.COM:



That's because you didn't use DOS=NOAUTO and IFSHLP.SYS was automatically loaded.

I suppose here are some other trivia ye might consider.

http://www.phatcode.com/ emsmagic

This is an ems driver that can be loaded from the command prompt, and unloaded.

http://www.nu2.nu/ eltorito.sys

This follows the emulation chain for a cdrom driver: ie it uses the boot emulator path to load the cdrom.

Not addressing this poster specifically, but I'll go ahead and say I didn't see a difference in memory in trying it both ways. But thanks for relating this, since I really didn't know it beforehand. It'll be very useful in CONFIG.SYS for my CD-ROM boot disk (and my utility stuff) since I can fire off my RAM disk driver earlier and archive/repath most of the files I loaded in CONFIG.SYS.



Thanks. This is one of the drivers that I have on my disk here that I didn't know what it did. I'm not sure I understand exactly when you would want to use this driver though.

On the topic of that, I might post a few other questions about my other unknown files too (or driver/app ideas as well) if I get the time. Usually my method of obtaining DOS files as of late has been downloading boot disk compilations like this one, so I don't always get a full idea of what everything I come across does.

Speaking of which, since the nick reminds me of OS/2 and my days running that, is there any functional use for having a time slicing driver running?



I think he's asking about a boot image file for booting from CD. A lot depends on the software that he is using to burn this CD and how it works. I know Nero allows a boot image to be created from floppy, but others require a pre-prepared image file (which I do not know how to generate, why since Nero handles it? But I need to learn though.). The thing of this one is since it seems this disk is being used to load Windows 98, you want drivers to be as standard as you can possibly get. I know I tried a custom boot disk myself to load a 9X (can't remember if it was 98 or ME?) and had all sorts of havoc let loose. So stay as standard as you can get on this one.



Need examples of how to do multiple boot options? Also, attached is the MORE.COM file that I have designated as "for 98". Hopefully it will work.



I see that now that I was able to get an upgrade of the UIDE drivers that are on Th3_uN1Qu3's disk. In fact, I've been rather limited in many circumstances when it comes to getting some of the drivers I've run across either identified, or working correctly. As for the MORE.COM replacements, I can't think I ran across anything specific like that, but I've run across mouse clipboard drivers, and text buffer drivers, which would make a DOS session more like the command boxes in Windows. But nothing seemingly that fancy, unless you're referencing stuff like what I mentioned. Otherwise, a good suggestion might be worthwhile.

Edit: If you want SHCDX33A (or C) to load high, don't try to explicitly load it high.

Another edit: Upgrades for those that want to try them
UMBPCI.SYS: 10/2007 ---> 04/2008
XMGR/UIDE: 10-18-2007 ---> 1-15-2008
USBASPI.SYS: 2.20 ---> 2.28
SHCDX: 33A ---> 33C
CTMOUSE: 2.0a4 ---> 2.1b4

http://www.nu2.nu/ eltorito.sys

This follows the emulation chain for a cdrom driver: ie it uses the boot emulator path to load the cdrom.


What this means, that if you include it on your emulated Boot-floppy, then ye don't have to guess what kind of cdrom that the user has. Eltorito.sys uses the same channel that the El Torito cd-boot chain uses to find the cdrom.

Likewise, for jo.sys, you can have a time-out to boot to the hard disk, rather than to the floppy. JO.SYS loads automatically, without any need for an entry in config.sys.

Thanks for the assistance Glenn9999.

Now i'm not at home, i'm at my grandparents' place. Currently having some trouble with my modded dual-PIII 700 @ 933, **** 9800 Pro keeps shutting down while everything goes on (system does not hang, just display turns off after a few minutes if i try to play a game), but found it's the power supply.
Due to extremely high consumption on the 5v rail (believe me, 1.65v PIIIs @ 2.3v require some juice) the 12v one, basically unused, goes up to 12.76v (measured with multimeter), and that's way beyond ATX standards, so it's probably tripping the 9800 Pro's overvoltage protection. See, that's what happens when you try to run a cheap new ATX 2.0 PSU (came with the case i got last year) on an older ATX 1.1 board. I'll be getting a new PSU, hopefully today.

But on the DOS side of things, good newze. Some relatives just gave me their old computer, it's a Cel 433, Via-based board, 192 SDRAM, Riva TNT2 32MB, CMI8330 sound card, 10GB HDD. And as you know, C-Media cards have excellent DOS drivers. I took out the Cel and slapped another PIII 700 in there (have 3 of 'em) and clocked it to 783MHz, this baby flies. It currently has XP on it so i'm gonna install 98 and resume work on the bootdisk.

Expect updates.

Ya tryin to copy me MoBo's..... I've got same Older as you state here -only with a celeron467,192mb/Ram....etc.;Now did the cpu fit exactly(*Same or Upgraded Socket or Slot Type ?)when you exchanged PIII for the Cel 433??? "Nice System if it's cleaned a little-Mine flies until dust clogs older ATX-powersupply fan and she overheats *add cooling fan software=Helps a lot.......ATX 350w/2.0,.!0gb/Hdd-fujitsu...<?Is Ram NV ...by chance 64+128=2 sticks/2memoryslots/84dblsided(@168pinn)Intel DesktopCA810e-with Via Apollo Chips and Intel Chips Embedded System Base?.... >Dos Runs Great with all this older MoBo Systems

Yep it fit, the mobo was slot 1 and the Cel 433 was on a slotket (s370 -> slot 1 adapter). I removed the slotket with the Cel and installed the PIII, flipped a couple dip switches and i was good to go.

I found another 128MB SDRAM lying around, now it's got 256MB. Will install 98SE on it tomorrow.

As about my main rig, things aren't looking very good. It's not the PSU, it's the 9800 Pro card itself. I found out it's an OEM'ed Sapphire and not built by ATi as i expected, and Sapphire cards were notorious for blanking out during games. A bump of the AGP voltage would fix it, but the problem is i have no AGP voltage adjustment, as it's a 2x slot, 3.3v, powered directly from the PSU.

Anyway, i swapped the network card and for some reason now the system runs okay at stock settings and "turbo" mode (103MHz FSB, wow, that's what they call turbo...), but drop in that TNT2 and the system works no problem with 133MHz FSB, surprisingly the SATA card has no troubles running at 44MHz PCI. The 9800 Pro on the other hand, seems to be extremely sensitive to AGP frequency. Reading around and measuring on my card i found out that this card is undervolted as opposed to the reference 9800 Pro, although it overclocks nicely. However these voltages must have something to do with its instability at high AGP frequencies.

I'll get some VRs on Monday and voltmod the card to see if i can get it stable. Till then i'll be tweaking at that bootdisk.

Thanks ,as i also have a Micron PCwith a slotI-PIII/500mhz/100mhzbus and an empty 370slot for "whatever may come to me intuitive mind(Upgrade someday i'll.....) ***Do not like Celeron (*older odd cpu's do "over-clock" well though:) )but it's okay if thats all we got to use!Good luck with changes.... Let me know how Dos runs with it all...after you've tested....

CuteMouse is flawless as always.
Thanks for the tip, SHCDX33A loads high now. I'll keep using A, as in the event it doesn't load high it uses 1KB less base memory than C does.
The new UMBPCI works fine.
UIDE reports 1-15-2008 indeed, but XMGR still says 10-18-2007. Maybe the version number wasn't updated, as the modify times are newer for the one you attached.
USBASPI.SYS is actually an older version than the one i have so i'll keep using that one.

I installed 98SE and booted the disk on the PIII and it works perfectly. I was also able to load the C-Media CMI8330 drivers high, so i'm still at the magical 9KB conventional memory usage. I'll post the updated versions later (i need to get some sleep).

Oh, and give me some EMS games to test please.

What a great project, however todays soundcards may be a real pain in the a** when it comes to oldschool-DOS...!?


I remember "Dune2" only had voice output, if EMS was present. Without EMS there was just sound fx & music available...

I can't think of anything that would be legal to distribute, but I did locate 2 games in my rather smallish pile of DOS games that refuse to run on your bootdisk for lack of EMS memory. More or less, if I recall my history, most of the
big games that didn't run with a DPMI layer required EMS memory. Basically from the Wolf3D era onto about the Doom or Quake era...

I found some vids on Youtube of one of them that won't run in that list (Terminator Rampage):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTpLiI3zVY8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5n2jQe0Dwk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEcJmuGNaxU

(I haven't beaten it though - if I remember right, I got lost in one of the mazes at around Level 8 or so and quit)

Well today's soundcards may be a pain in the a** but there still are cards available that are cheap, decent quality and with great DOS compatibility, such as the C-Media CMI8330 and CMI8738. I have both of them and they work great, as a matter of fact their drivers even load high.

I'll look into Dune 2, although i believe it worked without EMS.



I don't see why they wouldn't be legally distributable since they're abandonware. I'll get Terminator Rampage and see what's up with it.

But anyway, could someone tell me a way to ECHO a blank line? Edit: Never mind, found it.

I'll delay this release for a few days as i also want to get EMS going without screwing up the other games.

Update. I fixed my main rig - i ditched the Tyan board and put everything into my old Gigabyte 6BXDS. Wow. Just wow. Rock solid performance, and thanks to the voltmods the 9800 Pro's clocks went up to the skies. This Gigabyte board can only do 100 FSB so i'm stuck with those PIIIs at their stock 700MHz, but that's a small price to pay for superb stability and sky-high clocks on the video card.

But all is not lost, i'll build a TurboPLL and crank up the FSB on that Gigabyte.

Okay, now to the stuff of more interest to you. The bootdisk has been updated and i've been testing with Terminator Rampage and Dune 2.

Rampage works fine with EMSMagic which doesn't hinder any other games, but i had to ditch XMGR and go back to good ol' Himem.sys since with XMGR it always threw a Divide Error when loading the first level.

Same goes for Dune 2, with XMGR it would hang on "writing setup file" after completing setup, with Himem.sys it works perfectly. Btw, digitized samples require XMS not EMS, and are played back fine.

Using Himem.sys i lost 2KB of conventional memory, making mem usage now at 11KB. I know there are tricks to load Himem.sys itself in high memory, i've tried them, but the games don't like them - Rampage and Dune 2 crash with the same errors as they did with XMGR. I've tried HimemX too, that eats 1KB more of conventional RAM so it's out of discussion.

Now there is another problem - the Himem.sys+UMBPCI combo halted my main development machine (the Pentium-MMX @ 292MHz). Maybe the new UMBPCI works, i'll see when i get home. But since the first aim of this bootdisk is compatibility, i have to find something that works properly on just about any machine.

Actually it's UIDE that's halting your machine. It won't work without XMGR.