That the Digital Research that made DR-DOS was the same DRI that made CP/M. I read an article describing the history of CP/M and DR-DOS, and
now I want to run a DR-DOS VM for old time's sake.

I was one of those outliers that didn't run Windows in the early 90s. I didn't have a lot of horsepower at home - when I had a local bus 486/50 with 16 MB of RAM at work, I had a 386SX/16 with 3 mb of RAM at home.

I ran DR-DOS and SuperStor (my co-sysop worked for Addstor and got comp copies of each) and GEOWorks Ensemble. With DR-DOS' task switcher, it
was a pretty cool setup.

Outside of Geoworks, it was all Borland Sidekick, Qedit and Telix.

i recently learned about DR-DOS's Open-DOS variant... i compleatly forgot about dr-dos until i found a disk image of it with the ne2000 setup software on it

i want to try open dos! :Di am using FreeDOS so fuckin much i want to experiment. other news i got an SB16 CT1740 sound card for this machine

--mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

... Error, no Keyboard - Press F1 to Continue.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)

My first PC was a hand-me-down 286-12 in 1992, and then I got it
upgraded to a 386SX-16 in 1993. At the time I didn't know of GeoWorks

:) to :<

386 is too modern though man xD

i actually dont have 386 systems

--mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

... There are three kinds of people: Those who can count, and those who can't

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)

On my DOSBox-X setup, using VIDRAM ON makes DESQview unstable. It runs at first, but if I open and close a couple DOS windows then it crashes. I think the use of VIDRAM (or rather, me not using it) is making the big difference in memory availability. I wonder what is causing the instability on my DOSBox-X setup and if it could be solved with a configuration change. Or is it as simple as changing my DESQview display adaptor settings? (currently VGA, with 'do you want text & graphics displayed at the same time' set to Yes and synchronized access set to No)

I'm not sure what half those options are. I'm not using DV now, and was never able to in the past, the old NETware Lite drivers took to much conventional memory.

VGA is probably whats killing it. If you enable VREMS/VIDRAM you can't use VGA, its using the BIOS caching space for EMS. It's designed for text only, even if you have a VGA card.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

It has been a long time since I used QEMM and DesqView, but I seem to remember DesqView saying I'd need to set up QEMM in order for it to use some features related to multi-tasking, or maybe just for more optimal behavior. I don't remember for sure.

I'm sure you're right for anything pre DOS 5. After that I think you could
get away with EMM386. Locally some reported better results with one or the other. Never found much difference myself. Also aside from exploratory installations I never really used DV.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

I think I have heard that before, though I haven't experienced/verified it myself.

I have no evidence really one way or the other. Annecdotally it seemed to
fix problems at the time, but it could eaasily have been correlation not causation.

File locking is working for files on the network share, if I have a file open and try to also open it in a share-aware program, it is prevented from opening. I'm not sure if there's better, more specific, tests to do, but at least I haven't experienced any data corruption on the BBS, so I think it's OK.

The hardest workout we could give it was RAPUB. A pub chat setup that shared its messages via HD space rather than memory. Each node had to poll a drive
to check for unread messages, somehow they flagged them as read, and when the last node picked it up, it would delete it. This lived on a RAM drive over a network share for us. It tended to be pretty unreliable though. But it
could just as easily have been RAPUB with issues as share/network/multi-tasking.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Re: Re: Today I learned
By: Spectre to Nightfox on Sat Jun 22 2024 05:44 pm

It has been a long time since I used QEMM and DesqView, but I seem to

I'm sure you're right for anything pre DOS 5. After that I think you could get away with EMM386. Locally some reported better results with one or the other. Never found much difference myself. Also aside from exploratory installations I never really used DV.

Yeah, even with MS-DOS 6 and above, I seem to remember getting a bit better results optimizing memory with QEMM compared to EMM386 and MS-DOS's memmaker.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Yeah, even with MS-DOS 6 and above, I seem to remember getting a bit better results optimizing memory with QEMM compared to EMM386 and MS-DOS's memmaker.

WE had some so anally retentive about looking for extra conventional memory that they'd mix and match tools from both in an effort to load more high. I think I played with EMM386 briefly when 5 came out, but stuck with QEMM the rest of the time.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Hi Poindexter Fortran,

On Monday June 17 2024, Poindexter Fortran said to AKAcastor:

DESQview in DOSBOX, eh? Are you running a DOS image inside of it? If
memory serves, DESQView needed QEMM to run.

Actually DESQView dosn't "need" Qemm to run, it will work without it. But to get some of the extra features and more memory it's best to use them
together.


\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking FSXnet with an Amiga 4000 and Zeus BBS.

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
* Origin: -:-- Dragon's Lair --:- dragon.vk3heg.net Prt: 6800 (21:1/196.0)

Hi Akacastor,

On Tuesday June 18 2024, Akacastor said to Spectre:

What options are you loading QEMM with? I'm not running DV, I use a VM
for each node/task, but I've got 593k conventional free. After network

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM R:2 BE:N

Most of the memory usage is the network drivers, with none of the
Microsoft Network Client stuff in autoexec.bat, I can boot with 633K
free. Maybe it can be optimized further, but this is what qemm OPTIMIZE gave me.

You need to run through mft and get the optimization tuned. There is a
analyses section, that lets you list memory to "include" on your qemm386
line..

ie: I:3dd0-3ff0

You go through that and try adding memory ranges that will allow the loading
of drivers in high memory, etc...



\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking FSXnet with an Amiga 4000 and Zeus BBS.

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
* Origin: -:-- Dragon's Lair --:- dragon.vk3heg.net Prt: 6800 (21:1/196.0)

Hi Akacastor,

On Wednesday June 19 2024, Akacastor said to Spectre:

Do you happen to know what the R: parameter for QEMM386.SYS is? I
haven't found a description in the tech nodes included with QEMM yet,
but I have noticed that when I let optimize run it adds an R:1 or R:2 parameter.

I think it was refering to either Region's to include or just to use ram... it's been too long.... #0(

\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking FSXnet with an Amiga 4000 and Zeus BBS.

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
* Origin: -:-- Dragon's Lair --:- dragon.vk3heg.net Prt: 6800 (21:1/196.0)

free. Maybe it can be optimized further, but this is what qemm
OPTIMIZE gave me.

You need to run through mft and get the optimization tuned. There is a analyses section, that lets you list memory to "include" on your qemm386 line..

Aside from having a general look at what was loading where, and seeing what conventional memory was free, I don't recall using Manifest for anything much else. Might not have fully understood it at the time. Back then optimize pretty much got it right, occasional footling around trying to coerce another driver/tsr high.

My current configuration being DOS 6.22 in Virtual Box steadfastly refuses to load anything high. Optimize can optimise until the cows have come home and gone to pasture again. It'll add in all its recommendations and on restart nothing will load high.. Oddly enough the free high memory is available and useable for things like RAMDRIVE and SMARTDRV. I'm back to pretty much just using RAMDRIVE though, if you run a big enough smartdrv it'll start handing
out the wrong files if they happen to have the same filename across
different sources.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)

Hi Spec,

On Wednesday June 26 2024, Spectre said to Vorlon:

You need to run through mft and get the optimization tuned. There is a
analyses section, that lets you list memory to "include" on your
qemm386 line..

Aside from having a general look at what was loading where, and seeing
what conventional memory was free, I don't recall using Manifest for anything much else. Might not have fully understood it at the time.
Back then optimize pretty much got it right, occasional footling around trying to coerce another driver/tsr high.

I used it a lot. Was able to reakout more chungs of ram to include.

My current configuration being DOS 6.22 in Virtual Box steadfastly
refuses to load anything high. Optimize can optimise until the cows have come home and gone to pasture again. It'll add in all its
recommendations and on restart nothing will load high.

Yeap, have spent hours going through the process. My dos machine that I use when needed, went from about 538K to up at 600+K of conventional memory.

\/orlon
aka
Stephen

Rocking FSXnet with an Amiga 4000 and Zeus BBS.

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
* Origin: -:-- Dragon's Lair --:- dragon.vk3heg.net Prt: 6800 (21:1/196.0)