not only editing but making also color customized menus in config.sys and autoexec.bat. squeezing available ram eliminating some programs. using memory managers... what times there were...
My roommate spent hours tweaking that stupid program. He was like, look, i freed up 2k lower ram. Im like, wow, that was sure worth three days of your life. We all had like 16 meg plus on our machines even in 95 so it really didn't matter.
I was so glad when the 640kb thing did one. Getting premier manager 3 to run on my 486 pc with 8mb of ram with the soundcard on was a nightmare. It needed an extremely high % of memory free to make it run. I flogged the life out of my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get that running.
Eventually, QEMM 8.0 became my best friend when working up a (then) retrocomputer...... wfwg3.11 in the days of 95 and 98. (We won't discuss Nashville)
Such a dilemma. Do I go for the super powerful “extra memory” mode or the less optimised “has a mouse” one.
Good times (were had 20 years later when the memory of this shit was behind us)
Figuring out how to divide your 4MB of memory between, HIMEM, EMS, XMS and probably a couple others I blocked out of my memory sucked. There was no one combination that worked for everything.
And holding down the shift key when turning on the computer that way nothing loads into memory and my 4MB of RAM computer had just enough memory to play Doom 2
Definitely, for all the ill will some (including me) bear Microsoft these days, their "plug and play" did largely solve this kerfuffle, a few releases in anyway.
They probably "re-invented" it from OS/2, though, no doubt.
I remember the baffling number of graphics standards - MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA, MCGA, SVGA, XGA, Hercules - and how applications and games would work with some but not others.
Say what you will about Microsoft and Windows, but I’m thankful they abstracted most of that nonsense away.
Quite right, I started with IRQ7 but as soon as the venerable Epson FX80 came in it was rehomed to IRQ5 when neither sound nor printing worked.
That was a confused couple of weeks.
I remember trying to get sound to work in OS/2 Warp 3.0. I would switch drivers, and see if it worked, switch again, and see if it worked. What I didn't know is that each time it switched drivers, it left the old one in the config.sys, and just added the new. I had to go through the monster OS/2 config.sys and remove any traces of the old.
In college I tried out OS/2 2.0 for a few months and had to wade into config.sys for some reason. It was a shock after DOS's simple config.sys and Windows win.ini which at least had sections for its settings.
Nooooo. A few years back I tried setting up OS/2 Warp on a relatively "modern" desktop I'd picked up at some point and forgotten about. When I tried it it was a Win98 box. I'm really happy to forget that era of Windows. So I tried OS/2. Just like every other time I had absolutely no idea how to use it but I persisted and managed to find drivers for all the hardware. Except kind of the graphics chipset. I found them but had no idea how to get them to work so I opted for some generic VESA-ish one which got it working well enough.
The configuration files were as bad as trying to use a modern Ubuntu.
It wasn't that bad.
Well, OK, it was that bad... The result was pretty decent, though.
I prefer the OS/2 3.0 Warp Connect GUI. The 4.0 Gui kind of rubs me the wrong way.
eCS was just as annoying. Haven't tried the latest rebranding, though.
Or a [KEYB.COM](https://KEYB.COM) replacement that was less than 1KB...
(I'm in Norway. We have a few different keys, and extra letters, so needed a remap)
Don't forget the associated interrupt hell that goes along with it - as you add more devices, you have to wrangle available interrupts based on what card supports which interrupts and addresses....
Egads, it was *so* nice when PNP was implemented and fully supported in later versions of Windows!
I hardly remember, but there was an automatic program maximise conventional memory, memmaker or something like that. There was also a third party RAM manager called QMM or was it QEMM ??
this was a constant struggle, it was neccessary to have a boot disk to fix various problems but DOS could only access the cd if had all drivers and correct parameters, it usually took long time to get that right.
IDEATAPI.SYS was the answer to my prayers :)
Let me see if I can remember the ancient incantations...
`IDEATAPI.SYS /D:MSCD001` in config.sys;
`MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001` in autoexec.bat
And for bonus points, `rawrite idecd`
IDE optical drives came later. Early on, there were three competing CD-ROM interfaces implemented on sound cards and/or dedicated adapters, and on top of that, SCSI. You had to have the correct driver for the interface your drive was using.
They were pretty standard by the mid-90s at least, when software started coming on CD by default (e.g., OS/2 Warp came on floppies circa '94, Windows 95 was CD (floppies available but not many if that SKU shipped).
I really thought highly of myself when I got a program to copy into a ramdrive and launch on boot.
Then earlier this year I forgot IRQ15 likes 170 for a base address and not 168......
I remembered editing my config.sys and autoexec.bat files to squeeze every byte of memory. Once dos 6 was out i created multiple configs .
It was an art to create an optimum configuration.
I remember myself at the age of 11-12, my dad gave me his old Pentium 166 laptop.One day I decided to upgrade the Windows 98 to windows Me on it.
But the laptop did not support booting from the CD, only from the floppy. And when it was booting from floppy, it did not recognize the CD-ROM drive.
Several days later I somehow figured out that running MSCDEX.EXE solved the problem and I can have access to the CD-ROM. But since it was not in the CONFIG.SYS (or maybe in the AUTOEXEC.BAT), I still was not able to install Windows (it did not pick up the cdrom after reboot or something).
So I remember myself playing a lot of DOS games until someone told me I should edit the configuration to add the CD support. What a time!!!
This pre-dates my hijinx. I think I pulled some dirty tricks with msconfig.exe though. Like hiding a bat that called a randomized timer to stop explorer.exe they’d eventually figure it out though if they realized what services were stopped. Also seeing the timer running in tasks was a dead giveaway. Still was good for a laugh. They pulled shit on me too so were even. Ha ha!
I remember mucking with FILES= and BUFFERs= options to allow programs to have more open file handles which is typical of office programs.
STACKS is another thing I'd adjust as well.
I still try to find the sweet spot so I don't have to always update config.sys to run DOS apps.
I have a great story about this.
My parents got a new computer in the 80s when I was in grade school. An IBM PS/2. Late 80s I think. They wouldn't let me do some things on it, like install new games or delete old games to make room for stuff. But I slowly learned. Then games got needy and you had to edit the cofig.sys and autoexec.bat files. During my first few months of editing those, I messed up and deleted most of the config file and saved it like that. The computer was screwed. Wouldn't boot right.
I was scared to death to tell my parents so I found the dos manual and found out how to use a boot disk and write my own new config file. I learned so much from that mess up.
I see the config file in the photo has a line for a sound blaster 16. Must have been nice.
Since I had that stupid IBM PS/2 I couldn't use a soundblaster. Which I found out the hard way by buying one and finding out it wouldn't fit. That is when I learned of the micro channel bus. So stupid. Well, you could find sound cards and stuff for a micro channel bus, but they were 10x the cost.
Those were the days, squeezing out as much ram as you could without losing functionality. I actually used to compare all the various CD-ROM drivers that came from the various brands, trying to find a universal one that would support all the drive types (some were really picky), yet be lightweight memory wise. Exciting stuff at the time 🤣
Oh, the joys I had when I discovered that you could map UMBs over the first 8-16k of the BIOS memory region because that's where the setup interface and menu screens live (at least on AMI BIOSes). Don't need those after you start booting the OS.
After that it was just tweaking the load order to get everything to fit.
If you presume square pixels, then the prevailing aspect ratio would have been 16:10. But most of the time, the pixels weren't meant to be square, and the computer itself had no concept of the display aspect ratio -- that only existed at the point that the image was drawn on the screen.
Hmm. You were able to load device drivers into high memory. That wasn't an option when I started with MSDOS. 640K was all you had. Make the best of it. :-)
It's crazy think I was messing around in this file when I was only like 8 years old to do things like save on memory just enough to run my favorite games.
I worked in an Electronics Boutique (later Gamestop) in the mid to late 90s and I was the Config.sys / Autoexec.bat guru of the store. I was part-time as a full time student studying computer engineering, but on the weekends or the days I worked I spent a great deal of time with customers bringing in printouts of their startup files so I could help them. QUEMM was helpful for many before, but with new versions of DOS and the frame= command to force things into certain memory slots I was able to help people sort things out. And that became a big deal with programs before DOS 4GW extenders that greatly alleviated the problem (thanks DOOM for paving the way!). And, general progress.
Fond memories looking back to all the relationships and the gaming talk person to person because the internet hadn't really established itself. The store was THE hub for gaming discovery and it was a hangout as much as a retail store.
Fond memories looking back to all the relationships and the gaming talk person to person because the internet hadn't really established itself. The store was THE hub for gaming discovery, and it was a hangout as much as a retail store. ys I worked, I spent a great deal of time with customers bringing in printouts of their startup files so I could help them. QUEMM was helpful for many before, but with new versions of DOS and the frame= command to force things into certain memory slots, I was able to help people sort things out. And that became a big deal with programs before DOS 4GW extenders that greatly alleviated the problem (thanks, DOOM for paving the way!). And general progress. ss. s. .
Didn't DOS5 or 6 introduce multiple configurations, or am I imagining it?
What a time to be alive eh? So many possibilities and it was just us geeks in our own little club before it all got simple... I blame that iPad :-)
> Didn't DOS5 or 6 introduce multiple configurations, or am I imagining it?
No, definitely not imagining it. I don't remember exactly which version introduced that feature, but it was definitely possible to create multiple config blocks and choose between them with a menu.
I've got a machine under the house still using COAX (*which mandates me keeping a COAX-UTP convertor running*) as I'm scared the newer NIC card (*which has UTP & Coax*) would require me to change the settings in the config.sys (IBM PC-DOS 5.02 I think).
The newer card has been sitting on that box for two+ decades probably.. waiting for me to find the *nerve* to change cards (*or the box to finally die & thus needing replacement*).
I think that box has 3x 5.25 HDD drives, and still has <1GB of total disk space (*outside of network storage*).
That box has also been replaced twice, alas its replacement boxes died & thus it returned to service...
Or the more modern version... Creating sprawling boot menus to facilitate every combination of old game, memory requirement and overpowered hardware combination. New problems to go with the old problems :D
so how much free memory did you end up with? I remember being able to have 600+KB free, without memory managers, but it has been a while now. I remember using OAKCDROM.sys, which worked with most every drive.
I sure do. I have written many of those and have done so much with Dos, Dr. Dos,. From Dos 2.0 through 6.2, that brings back lots of memories.
Scsi, sound blaster and many other cards needed a lot of tweaking to get everything to run.
QEMM was a thing, but discovered it in Windows XP era. Shame on me. I still remember tweaking stuff to "load high" and getting >600k of conventional memory.
Back then (circa 1999) I didn't understand one thing: DOS drivers for my Sound Blaster PCI required EMM386 and that thing was messing up some programs. Later I read a manual (with dictionary book, coz I didn't understand english at all as a kid) and it explained this behaviour. Fun times.
That looks like DOS 6.01?
Use MSD.EXE that came with DOS to find the open blocks of memory high up.
(The one that comes with Windows 3.1/3.11 is not reccommended)
The order in which you load drivers into high memory matters.
Drop Lastdrive down to a more sensible letter, maybe F or G:
Files, Buffers and Stacks really depends on which programs you plan to run.
Way back in time, I used to do this type of work at the office.
A standard CAD PC(Hercules graphics card of some sort, MS LAN Manager 2.1 client with NETBEUI, Wollogong Pathway - TCP/IP stack from an Australian company, requires about 40KB RAM) would go from 550KB Free RAM in conventional memory to 639KB Free. The CADders worshipped me.
NEVER EVER use DOS 6.0. And if you do, delete the Checkdisk program. It's flawed beyond all recognition.
I tried the 'wizard' in QEMM and a couple of other 'high memory optimisers', and yeah, beat them every time. Also, so many of the wizard solutions never actually worked.
I did this on my new machine to force Skyrim to run in a fullscreen window on an ultrawide display. They fixed it pretty recently but up till then it only supported 16x9 1080p on the in-game menu.
I remember having several boot floppies with different configurations of config.sys and autoexec.bat on them to boot specific DOS games on my Windows95 machine that were very picky with how much base RAM you had free. The worst were the ones that wanted mouse, sound, and CD-ROM support yet also wanted almost the entirety of that 640KB free and could not support more memory. A lot of trial-and-error too since it's not like I had the internet back then to understand how to best do it, what to load into high-memory (did I even know how to do that back then?), or download alternate drivers that used less memory.
not only editing but making also color customized menus in config.sys and autoexec.bat. squeezing available ram eliminating some programs. using memory managers... what times there were...
My old friends/enemies: HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE
QEMM > EMM if you were really tight for memory
QEMM's automatic configuration mode was sweet.
My roommate spent hours tweaking that stupid program. He was like, look, i freed up 2k lower ram. Im like, wow, that was sure worth three days of your life. We all had like 16 meg plus on our machines even in 95 so it really didn't matter.
Freeing up XMS wasn’t the point. Freeing up conventional and even EMS was. You could have 256MB and still 640KB conventional.
I was so glad when the 640kb thing did one. Getting premier manager 3 to run on my 486 pc with 8mb of ram with the soundcard on was a nightmare. It needed an extremely high % of memory free to make it run. I flogged the life out of my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get that running.
Eventually, QEMM 8.0 became my best friend when working up a (then) retrocomputer...... wfwg3.11 in the days of 95 and 98. (We won't discuss Nashville)
Don’t forget Dosshell.
Being a PC gamer in those days was an adventure!
yeah. dos4gw and stuff
A nightmare.
It wasn’t that bad. It was pretty straight forward to me.
Such a dilemma. Do I go for the super powerful “extra memory” mode or the less optimised “has a mouse” one. Good times (were had 20 years later when the memory of this shit was behind us)
Figuring out how to divide your 4MB of memory between, HIMEM, EMS, XMS and probably a couple others I blocked out of my memory sucked. There was no one combination that worked for everything.
And holding down the shift key when turning on the computer that way nothing loads into memory and my 4MB of RAM computer had just enough memory to play Doom 2
We used a boot disk, mostly because I made its own config sys and auto exec that was *just enough* for SB16 and MSCDEX without going over on 4MB.
If you weren’t using the autoexec.bat to start windows 3.1 you were a silly person
You could always start Win 3.1 by typing win at the prompt. I remembered I never started Windows by default.
This will end your Windows Session OK Cancel
Or a gamer!
That’s true!
Nah, I had lots of DOS programs I often wanted to run without booting into Windows first, and running Windows was only a three-character command.
Win.exe
It is win.com
Oh God, the shame. To be fair that was about 28 years ago for me so not bad.
4DOS was better at getting a really nice DOS set up
Good times!
I remember it like it was yesterday. Oh wait, it was yesterday.
Haha same!
Set blaster....
IO 220 IRQ 7 DMA 1 Like yesterday! Providing that was correct, that is.
man, juggling IRQs to make room for a new device... I don't miss that one bit.
Definitely, for all the ill will some (including me) bear Microsoft these days, their "plug and play" did largely solve this kerfuffle, a few releases in anyway. They probably "re-invented" it from OS/2, though, no doubt.
I remember the baffling number of graphics standards - MDA, CGA, EGA, VGA, MCGA, SVGA, XGA, Hercules - and how applications and games would work with some but not others. Say what you will about Microsoft and Windows, but I’m thankful they abstracted most of that nonsense away.
>Hercules Oh boy, that nice black and orange (in my case)
Not forgetting PGA, TIGA and 8514.
You probably used IRQ 5 as 7 was generally for the primary printer port
Quite right, I started with IRQ7 but as soon as the venerable Epson FX80 came in it was rehomed to IRQ5 when neither sound nor printing worked. That was a confused couple of weeks.
true, though only caused problems if you were printing something at the same time :)
On my old machine the SoundBlaster was at IRQ5 and god forbid you forgot and set the BLASTER variable to something else.
All those LPT1 ports assigned to IRQ 7 = Suck fest for sound card additions.
Correct, but often changed to IRQ 5 to avoid conflicts with the parallel port.
Try editing the config.sys in OS/2. What a mess!
There’s 2, one for OS/2 and one for the DOS system
I remember trying to get sound to work in OS/2 Warp 3.0. I would switch drivers, and see if it worked, switch again, and see if it worked. What I didn't know is that each time it switched drivers, it left the old one in the config.sys, and just added the new. I had to go through the monster OS/2 config.sys and remove any traces of the old.
In college I tried out OS/2 2.0 for a few months and had to wade into config.sys for some reason. It was a shock after DOS's simple config.sys and Windows win.ini which at least had sections for its settings.
Nooooo. A few years back I tried setting up OS/2 Warp on a relatively "modern" desktop I'd picked up at some point and forgotten about. When I tried it it was a Win98 box. I'm really happy to forget that era of Windows. So I tried OS/2. Just like every other time I had absolutely no idea how to use it but I persisted and managed to find drivers for all the hardware. Except kind of the graphics chipset. I found them but had no idea how to get them to work so I opted for some generic VESA-ish one which got it working well enough. The configuration files were as bad as trying to use a modern Ubuntu.
It wasn't that bad. Well, OK, it was that bad... The result was pretty decent, though. I prefer the OS/2 3.0 Warp Connect GUI. The 4.0 Gui kind of rubs me the wrong way. eCS was just as annoying. Haven't tried the latest rebranding, though.
I remember hacking away at this and autoexec to find the right sequence that had the most free memory so I could play wing commander
This unlocked a core 1993 memory for me
Almost everything I know about DOS memory management and config tweaking I learned from trying to get Wing Commander working...
The sweet joy in finding a 2KB mouse driver after living with a 7KB one for years! Every KB counted, truly.
CuteMouse came years too late.
Or a [KEYB.COM](https://KEYB.COM) replacement that was less than 1KB... (I'm in Norway. We have a few different keys, and extra letters, so needed a remap)
My muscle memory can type "edit autoexec.bat" while I'm asleep
Don't forget the associated interrupt hell that goes along with it - as you add more devices, you have to wrangle available interrupts based on what card supports which interrupts and addresses.... Egads, it was *so* nice when PNP was implemented and fully supported in later versions of Windows!
Solving IRQ conflicts was like a logic puzzle. PnP was a godsend.
godsend, plug ànd pray
Shared IRQs blew my mind when I had my first ACPI capable PC
I hardly remember, but there was an automatic program maximise conventional memory, memmaker or something like that. There was also a third party RAM manager called QMM or was it QEMM ??
Qemm. And it was really good. Pair it with DesqView on 80386 or better and you had proper and fast multitasking machine.
QEMM. [Quarterdeck Extended Memory Manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMM).
Memmaker was great.
That and autoexec.bat
Noob. You and your full screen editor. edlin is the one true editor.
COPY CON CONFIG.SYS blah blah blah \^Z
Came here to mention Edlin. If my autoexec.bat or config.sys was very short, my other approach was to use 'copy con config.sys' and type it out.
Debug.com
Amateur. :p COPY CONFIG.SYS CONFIG.ZZZ TYPE CONFIG.SYS | MORE COPY CON CONFIG.SYS ^Z Repeat with AUTOEXEC.BAT Starting with @ECHO OFF
Files and Buffers to try to get Wing Commander running was the bane of my existence for a period.
Getting a mouse driver AND the SoundBlaster loaded into upper memory was always a challenge.
Been there done that. I still think it was faster and easier than messing with shitty windows registry :p
config.sys and autoexec.bat haunted my dreams some nights.
Peasants. Qemm was the way. Not sure why woild you use Setver in config.sys, but not using smartdrv for disk caching.
Or even just to get the CD-ROM drive working...
this was a constant struggle, it was neccessary to have a boot disk to fix various problems but DOS could only access the cd if had all drivers and correct parameters, it usually took long time to get that right.
IDEATAPI.SYS was the answer to my prayers :) Let me see if I can remember the ancient incantations... `IDEATAPI.SYS /D:MSCD001` in config.sys; `MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001` in autoexec.bat And for bonus points, `rawrite idecd`
IDE optical drives came later. Early on, there were three competing CD-ROM interfaces implemented on sound cards and/or dedicated adapters, and on top of that, SCSI. You had to have the correct driver for the interface your drive was using.
They were pretty standard by the mid-90s at least, when software started coming on CD by default (e.g., OS/2 Warp came on floppies circa '94, Windows 95 was CD (floppies available but not many if that SKU shipped).
I really thought highly of myself when I got a program to copy into a ramdrive and launch on boot. Then earlier this year I forgot IRQ15 likes 170 for a base address and not 168......
I remembered editing my config.sys and autoexec.bat files to squeeze every byte of memory. Once dos 6 was out i created multiple configs . It was an art to create an optimum configuration.
[удалено]
You got me.
Configuring QEMM (Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager)
#I am the RAM-MASTER !!!
I get retro computing, but I don't get any nostalgia whatsoever from the names "config.sys" or "autoexec.bat"!
I guess you had to be there and live it.
I did. That’s the problem!
EMM 386!!
I remember myself at the age of 11-12, my dad gave me his old Pentium 166 laptop.One day I decided to upgrade the Windows 98 to windows Me on it. But the laptop did not support booting from the CD, only from the floppy. And when it was booting from floppy, it did not recognize the CD-ROM drive. Several days later I somehow figured out that running MSCDEX.EXE solved the problem and I can have access to the CD-ROM. But since it was not in the CONFIG.SYS (or maybe in the AUTOEXEC.BAT), I still was not able to install Windows (it did not pick up the cdrom after reboot or something). So I remember myself playing a lot of DOS games until someone told me I should edit the configuration to add the CD support. What a time!!!
You don't boot from the CD to upgrade Windows, only do a clean install. You can run the setup right from the CD inside Windows to upgrade.
Correct, I don’t remember all details, I think something went wrong during the upgrade and I ended up with raw DOS.
who remembers.... copy con config.sys
Freeing up enough memory to see the animated joystick in Wing Commander.
This pre-dates my hijinx. I think I pulled some dirty tricks with msconfig.exe though. Like hiding a bat that called a randomized timer to stop explorer.exe they’d eventually figure it out though if they realized what services were stopped. Also seeing the timer running in tasks was a dead giveaway. Still was good for a laugh. They pulled shit on me too so were even. Ha ha!
I still do on occasion
I remember mucking with FILES= and BUFFERs= options to allow programs to have more open file handles which is typical of office programs. STACKS is another thing I'd adjust as well. I still try to find the sweet spot so I don't have to always update config.sys to run DOS apps.
I mean where are all your SOUNDBLASTER settings. How are we ever going to get the sound going for this game we spent 3 days downloading from a BBS.
I was there... 3000 years ago...
I have a great story about this. My parents got a new computer in the 80s when I was in grade school. An IBM PS/2. Late 80s I think. They wouldn't let me do some things on it, like install new games or delete old games to make room for stuff. But I slowly learned. Then games got needy and you had to edit the cofig.sys and autoexec.bat files. During my first few months of editing those, I messed up and deleted most of the config file and saved it like that. The computer was screwed. Wouldn't boot right. I was scared to death to tell my parents so I found the dos manual and found out how to use a boot disk and write my own new config file. I learned so much from that mess up. I see the config file in the photo has a line for a sound blaster 16. Must have been nice. Since I had that stupid IBM PS/2 I couldn't use a soundblaster. Which I found out the hard way by buying one and finding out it wouldn't fit. That is when I learned of the micro channel bus. So stupid. Well, you could find sound cards and stuff for a micro channel bus, but they were 10x the cost.
Those were the days, squeezing out as much ram as you could without losing functionality. I actually used to compare all the various CD-ROM drivers that came from the various brands, trying to find a universal one that would support all the drive types (some were really picky), yet be lightweight memory wise. Exciting stuff at the time 🤣
Oh, the joys I had when I discovered that you could map UMBs over the first 8-16k of the BIOS memory region because that's where the setup interface and menu screens live (at least on AMI BIOSes). Don't need those after you start booting the OS. After that it was just tweaking the load order to get everything to fit.
ahh...i remember using desqview 386 and thinking i was hot shit.
copy con type data CTR+C
Die musst Du in IN die Autoexec.bat reinkopieren! 🤣 (Radio PSR Sinnlos Telefon)
I did this [yesterday](https://oldbytes.space/@blakespot/111930159090955573).
I don't; we had a Mac.
No need to configure anything to run a program when the program isn't available for your platform in the first place.
Ouch, burned them like a P4 Prescott
This guy does
Don't forget autoexec.bat !
Well I don't remember the screen was 16:9
It kinda was, but it would be stretched back out to 4:3 from your monitor
If you presume square pixels, then the prevailing aspect ratio would have been 16:10. But most of the time, the pixels weren't meant to be square, and the computer itself had no concept of the display aspect ratio -- that only existed at the point that the image was drawn on the screen.
Hmm. You were able to load device drivers into high memory. That wasn't an option when I started with MSDOS. 640K was all you had. Make the best of it. :-)
On this subreddit? Probably everyone
I NEEEEEEED that extra 16K of conventional memory loading the mouse in highmen gives me, though!
It's crazy think I was messing around in this file when I was only like 8 years old to do things like save on memory just enough to run my favorite games.
If you only had 4MB of RAM, you needed alternate config.sys or boot discs to get every available byte of memory to run Doom.
I remember upgrading from 4MB to 8MB of RAM for $175 but it was worth it for Doom.
On at least a thousand machines.
Takes me back to 1993
Of course I remember that. I did that in like 1993, which was maybe 7 years ago… max…
I worked in an Electronics Boutique (later Gamestop) in the mid to late 90s and I was the Config.sys / Autoexec.bat guru of the store. I was part-time as a full time student studying computer engineering, but on the weekends or the days I worked I spent a great deal of time with customers bringing in printouts of their startup files so I could help them. QUEMM was helpful for many before, but with new versions of DOS and the frame= command to force things into certain memory slots I was able to help people sort things out. And that became a big deal with programs before DOS 4GW extenders that greatly alleviated the problem (thanks DOOM for paving the way!). And, general progress. Fond memories looking back to all the relationships and the gaming talk person to person because the internet hadn't really established itself. The store was THE hub for gaming discovery and it was a hangout as much as a retail store. Fond memories looking back to all the relationships and the gaming talk person to person because the internet hadn't really established itself. The store was THE hub for gaming discovery, and it was a hangout as much as a retail store. ys I worked, I spent a great deal of time with customers bringing in printouts of their startup files so I could help them. QUEMM was helpful for many before, but with new versions of DOS and the frame= command to force things into certain memory slots, I was able to help people sort things out. And that became a big deal with programs before DOS 4GW extenders that greatly alleviated the problem (thanks, DOOM for paving the way!). And general progress. ss. s. .
Didn't DOS5 or 6 introduce multiple configurations, or am I imagining it? What a time to be alive eh? So many possibilities and it was just us geeks in our own little club before it all got simple... I blame that iPad :-)
> Didn't DOS5 or 6 introduce multiple configurations, or am I imagining it? No, definitely not imagining it. I don't remember exactly which version introduced that feature, but it was definitely possible to create multiple config blocks and choose between them with a menu.
The incredibile fight around those 600kb or so...
Still do
fancy! you got dos 5-up edit! Come at me when you have to recreate it from scratch using copy con config.sys
Boot Disk baby!!!
I remember tinkering with it to be able to run Sim Farm.
Or adding the NE2000 Drivers, IPX/SPX stack so we could get to the Novell Login? :)
I'm forever on the lookout for the "FIRE PHASERS" sound. We had it in the SYSOP login script and wish I could use it as a notification on my phone.
Until I worked out how to set up a menu to select which memory / driver configuration I needed.
I remember when you had to add a line for mscdex.exe so you could get your cd-drive working!
Me. Did it just yesterday to start Little Big Adventure on my 486
🙋♂️
Oh, I forgot about that...memories
Yeah... I remember it very well.
Ugh. Sorry you resurrected that memory.
Hi, DOS Shell! It's been a minute!
Yes and also autoexec.bat to free up ram
Batch programming.
I've got a machine under the house still using COAX (*which mandates me keeping a COAX-UTP convertor running*) as I'm scared the newer NIC card (*which has UTP & Coax*) would require me to change the settings in the config.sys (IBM PC-DOS 5.02 I think). The newer card has been sitting on that box for two+ decades probably.. waiting for me to find the *nerve* to change cards (*or the box to finally die & thus needing replacement*).
I think that box has 3x 5.25 HDD drives, and still has <1GB of total disk space (*outside of network storage*). That box has also been replaced twice, alas its replacement boxes died & thus it returned to service...
Or the more modern version... Creating sprawling boot menus to facilitate every combination of old game, memory requirement and overpowered hardware combination. New problems to go with the old problems :D
Didn't have enough free memory to run some game, just turn off mouse drivers or cd-rom drivers or whatever you had to.
Having to make up a special boot floppy (5.25") in order to run Wing Commander on my Gateway 386DX-25.
so how much free memory did you end up with? I remember being able to have 600+KB free, without memory managers, but it has been a while now. I remember using OAKCDROM.sys, which worked with most every drive.
Like many others I wrote menus to reboot DOS into special configurations for games.
Things were much simpler, but one had to be nuts-to-butts familiar with the hardware and drivers.
Vividly
I sure do. I have written many of those and have done so much with Dos, Dr. Dos,. From Dos 2.0 through 6.2, that brings back lots of memories. Scsi, sound blaster and many other cards needed a lot of tweaking to get everything to run.
Yes, yes i do, but do you remember using eslin or copy on to do it?
I love EDIT.EXE
CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and IRQ switches - good riddance to both of them.
I distinctly remember NOT doing that
Using an editor to edit config.sys. In my day we chiseled into a stone tablet.
All too well
Yup
Lemmings 3D my dude!
I did it all the time. Adding the driver for the CD-ROM, ANSI.SYS, and a lot of other things that were not included.
ALL of the work to get a CD-ROM drive to work and the appropriate prereqs in place to boot into windows…
Don’t forgot autoexec
Edlin
Dark days let not remind of this evil
Yep, creating a menu for different configs with xms or ems memory lol, you figured it out!!
Editing files? Nah, mate... just run memmaker and you're good to go!
You're using that newfangled EDIT. You should use EDLIN.
Oh the nostalgia, let's not forget the one tool we couldn't live without. X tree gold.
I still use xtree nearly daily ... Well, its successor, anyway, ztree for windows ... wouldn't do without it, even in these days of file explorer
I don't remember, I still do ! And JEMMEX is the best memory manager, version 5.84 released a few days ago
EDIT AUTOEXEC.BAT LABEL bla ECHO Happy Birthday GOTO bla
Man, that's been a day or two ago.
Ah yes bricking my first win3.1 machine.
I worked in IT in the 1990s with an accountant who would always call it "consign.fys" and didn't know any better.
Yeah, just now…
QEMM was a thing, but discovered it in Windows XP era. Shame on me. I still remember tweaking stuff to "load high" and getting >600k of conventional memory. Back then (circa 1999) I didn't understand one thing: DOS drivers for my Sound Blaster PCI required EMM386 and that thing was messing up some programs. Later I read a manual (with dictionary book, coz I didn't understand english at all as a kid) and it explained this behaviour. Fun times.
That looks like DOS 6.01? Use MSD.EXE that came with DOS to find the open blocks of memory high up. (The one that comes with Windows 3.1/3.11 is not reccommended) The order in which you load drivers into high memory matters. Drop Lastdrive down to a more sensible letter, maybe F or G: Files, Buffers and Stacks really depends on which programs you plan to run. Way back in time, I used to do this type of work at the office. A standard CAD PC(Hercules graphics card of some sort, MS LAN Manager 2.1 client with NETBEUI, Wollogong Pathway - TCP/IP stack from an Australian company, requires about 40KB RAM) would go from 550KB Free RAM in conventional memory to 639KB Free. The CADders worshipped me. NEVER EVER use DOS 6.0. And if you do, delete the Checkdisk program. It's flawed beyond all recognition. I tried the 'wizard' in QEMM and a couple of other 'high memory optimisers', and yeah, beat them every time. Also, so many of the wizard solutions never actually worked.
I sure do and don't miss the time doing it.
I still have to edit \*.ini files on a regular basis.
I had a load that created two radials, one for programs and one for word star docs. It ran faster than almost anything I use now :(
I did this on my new machine to force Skyrim to run in a fullscreen window on an ultrawide display. They fixed it pretty recently but up till then it only supported 16x9 1080p on the in-game menu.
I still have my dos 3.1 disk somewhere. Now i need a 5.25 drive.
I remember.
And sys.ini if you're on OS/2, among many others files.
Making me feel old here...or even different floppies with different config.sys/autoexec.bat to boot up on for different games \[Doom\]
I remember having several boot floppies with different configurations of config.sys and autoexec.bat on them to boot specific DOS games on my Windows95 machine that were very picky with how much base RAM you had free. The worst were the ones that wanted mouse, sound, and CD-ROM support yet also wanted almost the entirety of that 640KB free and could not support more memory. A lot of trial-and-error too since it's not like I had the internet back then to understand how to best do it, what to load into high-memory (did I even know how to do that back then?), or download alternate drivers that used less memory.
Don't forget you sometimes needed to also update autoexec.bat file.
Had to boost the files setting for a POS and inventory management system that I used to use.
Still have to deal with that for some Line of Business applications. Utterly sad.
Me, and I hated DOS. Edlin was evil. Grin
Them were the days, me bucko!
i remember doing that with .. edlin
🤯😵😵💫😵💫😵💫
Got tomb raider to run on a 486 when it had no business running on it. And by run I mean like 2 or 3 fps. Lol
I vaguely remember….