Hi Rugxulo, many thanks for your detailed reply. As it turns out, I have been plugging along sporadically with the SD-card FreeDOS OS integrating with USB flash drive (games repository). I've slowly been weeding out various games that I've downloaded holus-bolus from various "abandonware" sites, grappling with conventional memory allocation issues along the way. Booting up with JEMMEX (no EMS) results in practically all the games borking, but 'EMM386 + Share' gets pretty close to the "sweet spot" for just about all game requirements, I've found. XMGR? Forgeddaboutit :(
Thanks for the tips on USB drivers for DOS - I did look at Georg Potthast's offering and I can't justify the 65 euro for it - but good luck to him, I'm sure it is great value for his expertise. But as mentioned in a previous post, FreeDOS had it running with Bret Johnson's driver - I just had to realise it was there waiting for me :) I was incorrect about the package I thought Eric had compiled - he'd pointed out a brief window I think when Georg's driver might have been freeware, but Jack Ellis had done the package I was thinking of. I didn't need to go further with either options however. I've incidentally been using DosZip pretty exclusively in this setup - I'm very happy with it, got a pretty decent editor I use for various game Read.me 's (though JEMMEX mode gives the best results for most doc sizes - I don't actually use 'edit' for anything else other than reading txt), and the click'n'drag of files between panels for USB, CD-ROM and C-Drive (SD-card) files. The ability to "open" zip files is also very handy, though the "Decompress" option doesn't seem to work as it might the additional command line is there too so I just use mkdir and unzip commands in FreeDOS, and the DosZip file manager panels are populated with the extracted files immediately. From there, I can begin playing games from the DosZip panels almost immediately by selecting the appropriate exe or bat file. Haven't bothered with using install or configuration files in this getup - no soundblaster audio card in this "modern" box though I note that some games like "Eric the Unready", "ChessMaster 2100", "Loom" etc do a great job with the PC audio. The only drawback I've noted with DosZip file management is with moving >2 GB of files between drives - naturally it does so within DOS limitations (took a few hours) so in future I'll just flip out the drive to a card reader and do larger-scale file management in my Linux box. One of the quirks I found with the IDE/SD-card setup was that it took numerous formats with Gparted and FreeDOS install disk to get the card fully recognised in successive attempts - something about an erroneous FAT, but eventually it settled down. Strangely, I can't get the "Access" GUI to upload my collection of game icons - simply doesn't appear to load any icons whatsoever, even though I followed the same steps used satisfactorily on an ATA drive. I'll see what happens when I move this card into the old 430CDS laptop with Soundblaster Pro audio etc, and properly configure the software to the hardware it was otherwise aimed at. Might be just a peculiarity with the SD-card... For the record, I have this configured to boot straight into Access from where I can run DosZip and hunt around in that file manager testing games... Games like "The Sentinel", "GrandMaster Chess" and "National Lampoon's ChessManiac 5001" are problematic* with both Access and DosZip in the background (TSR as I understand it), but it has been useful to discard those that won't safely drop back to DOS/Access GUI for the kids (using ESC, Ctrl-Q or Ctrl-C), and instead need either the three-fingered salute or the manual reset button to get into something else. Access has been really easy for the kids to construct their own menu systems to run their preferred games, so I can leave them to pretty it up. * These illustrate I guess the "optimum position" memory tightrope I'm learning to walk - can't tell you how much I appreciate those who re-package game zips with batch files and DOS4GW functionality - if I could understand how to do that myself, well... I'm still wrestling with a "freeze-frame" function for long / instantaneously erased error messages, but am learning how to burn the gist of them on my retina in repeat attempts, when I can't be bothered to film it on my smartphone. They happen infrequently now, and generally I can get around the problem by booting alternative memory configurations. I'll have to leave further memory tweaks for now, however - work is catching up with me! A Memmaker clone sounds interesting - another "tutorial" project for the DOS gurus I'm afraid :) Cheers! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Free Next-Gen Firewall Hardware Offer Buy your Sophos next-gen firewall before the end March 2013 and get the hardware for free! Learn more. http://p.sf.net/sfu/sophos-d2d-feb _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
