Old skool DOS gaming problem

[Krymson]

I recently downloaded two old MS-DOS adventure games from www.theunderdogs.org(Great (http://www.theunderdogs.org(Great) site, check it out) : Igor: Objective Uikokahonia , and Veil of Darkness. I tested them in windows(they worked fine), then restarted into dos(for sound compatibility reasons) to play them. Unfortunately, I couldnt run either of them now, since my convential memory dropped to 567K. I ran memmaker, but it said I had the optimal config, which was weird(memmaker usually leaves you with 600k+). I decided something funky was going on, so I did a mem /c , and found out that a program called "SYSTEM" was hogging 61k of my convential. Now, I dont recall ever seeing SYSTEM in mem /c before , and if it ever was actually supposed to be there, it could not have taken more than 24k.

I was wondering if any of you guys could either check your mem /c /p for SYSTEM(just to make sure its a normal dos file), or if you guys know exactly wut the hell SYSTEM is. Is one of my games a trojan or something, or am I just trippin?

[muno]

Nimi Koko (desimaal.) Koko (hex)
------------- ---------------- ----------
MSDOS 11984 ( 11.7K) 2ED0
KBD 3280 ( 3.2K) CD0
HIMEM 1248 ( 1.2K) 4E0
COMMAND 3664 ( 3.6K) E50
VLMSUP 15216 ( 14.9K) 3B70
KB16 6096 ( 6.0K) 17D0
VAPAA 112 ( 0.1K) 70
VAPAA 928 ( 0.9K) 3A0
VAPAA 612608 (598.3K) 95900

Yht. VAPAANA : 613648 (599.3K)

Ylämuisti :

Nimi Koko (desimaal.) Koko (hex)
------------- ---------------- ----------
SYSTEM 180208 (176.0K) 2BFF0
MOUSE 12528 ( 12.2K) 30F0
MSCDEXNT 464 ( 0.5K) 1D0
REDIR 2672 ( 2.6K) A70
DOSX 34848 ( 34.0K) 8820
VAPAA 928 ( 0.9K) 3A0
VAPAA 30352 ( 29.6K) 7690

Yht. VAPAANA : 31280 ( 30.5K)

Tavuja ohjelmien käytössä yhteensä (perus ja ylä) : 644928 (629.8K)

Suurin suoritettavan ohjelman koko : 612608 (598.3K)

Suurin käytettävissä oleva ylämuistilohko : 30352 ( 29.6K)


1048576 tavua yhtenäistä jatkomuistia yhteensä
0 tavua yhtenäistä jatkomuistia käytettävissä
941056 tavua XMS-muistia käytettävissä
MS-DOS pysyvästi ylämuistialueella

//
This is from my w2k machine cmd. Seems the system is placed in upper memory instead of conventional memory.
In win98 machine the free memory is at 576k, no system anywhere. That is from command, not restarted in dos.

You might have not set dos=high,umb or something like that in your config.dos etc.
-M
//edit
Oh, 'vapaa' or 'vapaana' means 'free'.

[This message has been edited by muno (edited 07-30-2001).]

[BFlurie]

Memmaker is notorious for performing badly -- you can do a far better job yerself by following simple rules in Config.sys and Autoexec.bat. Are you saying sound didn't perform in a DOS "Window"? If you posted your two above files here, several of us could help you optimize 'em.

I've found with alittle work you can almost always get a DOS prog to work properly in a DOS "Window", sound and all.

[This message has been edited by BFlurie (edited 07-31-2001).]

[Krymson]

Yes, I checked around and the problem was that somehow, my "dos = high, umb" got changed to "dos = umb". This was strange cuz I distinctly recall making it high, umb because I had some other dos games I was playing a few weeks ago. After changing it back, dos only left a 10K SYSTEM footprint in conventional, and now Im left with 608K conventional, and I'm a happy camper http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif. Muno, thanks for the advice but why was most of your message in like swedish or something? I didn't understand those mem outputs.

Thanks for the help guys ^_^

[NDD]

This config.sys file shall give you about 620k of basic RAM, plus XMS/EMS, and it suitable for most DOS-based games :

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILESHIGH=30
BUFFERSHIGH=20
LASTDRIVEHIGH=Z
STACKS=0,0

And remember to "Load High" all the programs from autoexec.bat, i.e. your mouse driver, by typing "lh" before the command.

P.S. Ahh, nostalgia for old DOS days http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

Best Regards ...

[muno]

That's finnish dude =) Swedish looks something like this:
Uhh.. Actually I can't type anything in swedish except some offensive words.
The output was in finnish since this machine is w2k-fi =)
And I thought that it was only necessary to know that vapaa or vapaana meant since about all the programs etc. had common names.
-M