DOS ain't dead

FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! (Users)

posted by mceric, Germany, 23.11.2021, 01:07

Hi Rugxulo,

your act of editing Jack's messages clearly was not 100% technical in nature either, so if anybody, then not you should have "moderated" him, but at most somebody else.

What do we know? The original poster uses "FreeDOS 1.2 and 1.3 RC4" and it has issues with some games. He cannot post his config and autoexec here, due to spam filtering, so we are waiting that he posts it on PASTEBIN and gives us the link, or emails one of us or the freedos-user mailing list about this.

We also know that FreeDOS 1.2 is old and that 1.3rc4 came with a relatively old UIDE and a relatively hidden UHDD version:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/.../distributions/1.3/previews/1.3-rc4/report.html

In the "base" install, even only LBACACHE would be installed. So it is quite possible that no cache at all was in use. If a cache was in use, then I can recommend to manually update to newer versions, including:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/repositories/1.3/drivers/uhdd/2021_10_30.zip

I also suggest trying XMGR instead of HIMEM. And please avoid EMM386 style drivers until you get the rest working. EMM386, including JEMMEX, gives too much room for bad config choices. Better start with a simple config without it.

I remember that FreeDOS sometimes shows symptoms such as failing to find command.com as soon as you start using HMA, UMB or XMS. Those are usually not something a disk cache can solve by being more foolproof, because the lost disk access is only a consequence of memory driver problems which become visible as soon as you try to use XMS swap, try to put the kernel into HMA, try to store cached disk data in XMS, try to access the disk while using UMB in areas which are also used by some BIOS disk functionality which failed to announce needing the area, or find out the hard way that XMS contents get corrupted due to XMS driver problems with the specific hardware as soon as you start using any XMS - for example for caching, and so on.

Still it makes sense that Tom mentioned the POSSIBILITY of disk troubles, given the error messages about not found files. Even if maybe the user just failed to go to the game directory first, or accidentally had the files write protected.

Unsurprisingly, Jack complained about Tom's comment, assuming Tom would have specifically tried to blame the quality of Jack's disk drivers. The tone of that complaint was harder than needed. Yet Rugxulo, who is known to have a history of getting into fights with Jack, clearly still is the wrong person to censor Jack's thoughts and declare himself to be Jack's spokesperson. Maybe some OTHER moderator could undo Rugxulo's change and do a more sensible edit instead, if any? Thanks

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FreeDOS / DOSEMU2 / ...

Complete thread:

• FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - liljames2k, 13.11.2021, 20:50
  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Laaca, 13.11.2021, 22:51
  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - rr, 13.11.2021, 23:35
  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Rugxulo, 14.11.2021, 06:37
  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - liljames2k, 20.11.2021, 05:48
    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Zyzzle, 20.11.2021, 09:03
    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - mceric, 20.11.2021, 11:25
      • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Rugxulo, 21.11.2021, 14:35
    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Japheth, 20.11.2021, 11:27
    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 20.11.2021, 12:09
    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - jhall, 20.11.2021, 18:30
      • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - jhall, 20.11.2021, 18:34
        • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 20.11.2021, 19:04
          • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 20.11.2021, 19:14
            • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 20.11.2021, 19:28
            • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Khusraw, 21.11.2021, 16:54
              • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 21.11.2021, 17:17
              • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - mceric, 21.11.2021, 18:35
                • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Zyzzle, 22.11.2021, 06:18
              • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Rugxulo, 21.11.2021, 19:03
                • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Japheth, 22.11.2021, 14:36
                  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - tom, 22.11.2021, 22:00
                    • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - rr, 23.11.2021, 21:15
                      • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - glennmcc, 24.11.2021, 04:16
                • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - mceric, 23.11.2021, 01:07
                  • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - rr, 23.11.2021, 21:07
        • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - rr, 21.11.2021, 12:38
          • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - rr, 21.11.2021, 13:24
          • FDOS works fine, but Old Games not! - Rugxulo, 21.11.2021, 14:44
    • Don't panic! (FreeDOS works!) - Rugxulo, 20.11.2021, 19:34
      • Don't panic! (FreeDOS works!) - tom, 20.11.2021, 19:46
        • Don't panic! (FreeDOS works!) - mceric, 20.11.2021, 20:12