Dos Config.sys

[Irati Klute]

SoI'm putting together a P3 Win98SE / DOS machine for the first time and I'm trying to wrap my head around config.sys and autoexec.bat before the parts arrive. I did have a 486 MSDOS 6.22 machine and a Win 98 rig back in the 90's but I wasn't exactly a wizard with them, I wasn't yet interested in the inner workings and I was lucky to have a friend who set them up and fixed my oopsies that were numerous I'm sure. I did later get into building PC's by myself but that was early Win XP time so I never had to learn to mess with config.sys and autoexec.bat. So here I am now, staring at ready templates and guides feeling confused and scared, hearing wolves howl in the distance.

I've built my config.sys and autoexec.bat by using jesolo's boot menu guide as template with some changes and I would really appreciate if someone would check them out for me. If there are any errors (which is very likely I expect), I'd rather find out about them early before the PC is up and running, since I really don't have the skills to find and fix them by myself.

I removed all Sound Blaster stuff from jesolo's template and added a extended memory boot menu option. Also I added C:\DOSPACK\ORPHINIT;C:\DOSPACK\THROTTLE to PATH for ORPHINIT driver for Orpheus Sound Card and for Throttle so I can initialize the sound card and use throttle to slow down the CPU without having to write down the whole path to the .bat and .exe file, that is if I understood correctly how that PATH thing works? I also specified TEMP folders, though I don't really know how beneficial that is.

Did I do anything horribly wrong? Anything you would change? Do I need to have SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:G MODE:1 in autoexec.bat with Orpheus Sound Card? Could I set OPRHINIT.bat directly to autoexec so it would initialize automatically? What about throttle.exe to slow down the PC automatically, would that work or is that asking for trouble?

I have no idea would I ever need setver for any game I would play, but is there still a reason to take it off? Would that free up memory to make a difference? Doskey sounds like it's handy, but I don't know would I ever really need it.

SETVER is to make certain DOS programs meant for older DOS versions to be able to run on recent ones. This for examples forces a program to identify the MS-DOS version as 6.22 even if you run the Windows 98 SE MS-DOS mode, it's not perfect though. As for DOSKEY, there are much better alternatives such as 4DOS.

What is really confusing me here is that if I've understood correctly, with BootGUI=0 I get the boot menu then starting the PC. But if I set it to 1 and add BootConfig=WINDOWS, would I still get the boot menu where I would be able to pick and choose between windows and DOS?

True, but the only problem is that this part gets loaded first prior the specific configuration menu. For example loading SETVER in [COMMON] and then EMM386 on a config menu won't put SETVER into upper memory.

I'd be tempted to add a UDMA driver to the set, either Triones or XHDD / XDVD2 for optical, as you can get improved DOS disk performance.

Might also be worth looking at non-EMM386 UMB like UMBPCI if you need to max conventional memory while remaining in real mode.

FASTVID may also be worth a go

In those cases, you may need no config.sys or autoexec.bat at all, and things like SoundBlaster emulation might work automagically. The main purpose for a custom config.sys/autoexec.bat is if you hit F8 and boot to "command prompt only", or choose the "restart in MS-DOS mode" option. They were also needed for the DOS 6.22/Win3.x timeframe where running a DOS game from inside Windows did not work well.

For Win9x, you would build config.sys/autoexec.bat mainly because you want to run an incompatible game as described in the chapter linked above, or because the game needs a huge amount of conventional memory where you need to be very sparing about what is loaded.

Hey thanks for the book recommendation, I intented to ask for recommendations but forgot. And much to my surprise it looks like my local library still has that book for some reason, I'll check it out!

Also while I'm sure many games would work just fine through Windows, I'd still like to maximize compatibility by running them in pure MS-DOS so I wouldn't need to worry about it. Also I would kinda like to keep DOS and Windows "separate", I don't have space for a dedicated DOS PC so I'm trying to get at least some of the experience of having one with that P3 machine.

I greatly prefer having multiple PIF files for this purpose. Phil showcases how to make one in this video around the 3:10 mark. Obviously, Phil uses a multi-select startup menu in his example, but you can put anything you like there.

While using PIF files with specialized CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT or "Restart in MS-DOS mode" is the proper way on Windows 9x, it's much less convenient for me due to having to restart many times. Also Phil's video when doing this with COMMAND.COM will get you less conventional memory (check with MEM /C /P command and you'll see two COMMAND) but not with other executables.

Following on the hdd size thread I'd like to hear your advice regarding the MS-DOS config files for the games from the "XT era". This is of course a vague phrase, but my collection spans years 1981-1989 and the MiSTer core can at the moment run cycle accurate programs for XT at several speeds, 286 AT @ 3.5MHz and also Tandy/PCjr, so this is roughly the target.

My auoexec/config editing skills are a bit rusty and in any case hail from much later era so any suggestions as to what could be the best catch-all config for this era are welcome. The priority is of course max compatibility, followed by snappiness of Norton Commander, which has to navigate some large directories (I did divide them a bit but still some directorises contain between 100-200 sub directories). I'm using 3 hdd volumes: 251, 512 and 1024 MB, though am not sure if that matters.

This is an XT class machine, so it wont have more than 640k. (though it looks like you are using a memory manager to enable hardware UMBs in the adapter region... So we can TRY to maximize what is enabled/used. MSD with nothing loaded, not even the enabler, will let me see what areas are consumed by ROM.)

Normally, there might only be some small benefit from altering the load order, since XTs normally cannot load anything high. In this case though... Yeah, let's see what we have to work with, and what we can get it to do.

If this is a 386 class machine with extended memory, then I need to see what your memory map looks like with nothing loaded. DOS 6.22 comes with a utility called MSD. It will let me see what I need to see. Since this is with a MiSTer, take a screenshot with it running showing the memory map for me, and post it here, then we can discuss what memory managers you want to use, and how to prod it good.

This is indeed not meant for a very particular machine, like "strictly XT", just a bit of a catch-all due to the nature of the collection and target platforms. MiSTer's core is the main one but it's not a pure XT - you can read a bit more about it here: -devel/PCXT_MiSTer

NDOS is a rebranding of 4DOS, which comes with Norton Utilities. I have 4DOS installed, but with disk swap to a CF (so it only takes a small bit of memory, same as command.com would, when not actively running).

DOSMAX would be a good choice here also, since we have ample ram-backed area to work with. It can load files, buffers, fcbs, and the command interpreter into UMB. You can realistically have over 600k free.

The 8086 doesn't address extended memory which is why expanded memory was created. The Msd results above isn't showing the 64k ems page frame set by ltemm. Are there any games that run on an 8086/88 that use ems? Any that don't run in the 590kB currently available?

Tbh, dealing with more advanced stuff is above my pay grade, so unless somebody could provide complete command lines for me to try, I will just leave the expanded memory as-is and concentrate on having a functional basic configs.

Sorry, yeah, this is a bit silly perhaps, seeing as these are from PCem with Pentium (look at the top bar in the scr$). Which I'm using to test things coz it's much faster, though in this case it;s not the best idea. I can try again tomorrow and take scr$ with the MiSTer's core itself (but in principle I think it should be generally similar to the PC/XT core since I don't need XMS, being only concerned with base memory. )

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