Replies to post #3901 on Computer Learning (HELP)

[lostcowboy]

Hi Doug, look in your used book stores for this book. Dos 6.2 Instant Reference by Robert M. Thomas published by Sybex. It is the best dos book that I have found. There may have been a 6.22 book also. I have not used Dos in a while, but here goes. First if you put the word REM at the beginning of a line, that line will not be run. As we are just trying to get the install program to run. Here is what I recommend you do.

 
 config.sys 
 =================================== 
 DEVICE=C:\EXE\HIMEM.SYS 
 DEVICE=C:\EXE\EMM386.EXE RAM NOEMS 
 DOS=HIGH,UMB 
 LASTDRIVE=F 
 REM DEVICEHIGH=C:\EXE\RAMDRIVE.SYS 7500 /E 
 FILES=55 
 REM BUFFERS=25 
 STACKS=9,256 
 SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM /e:1024 /p 
 BREAK=ON 
  
 autoexec.bat 
 ============================================= 
 @echo OFF 
  
 mkdir F:\TMP 
 mkdir F:\TEMP 
  
 SET DIRCMD=/ONE 
 SET TMP=F:\TMP 
 SET TEMP=F:\TEMP 
 SET PATH=C:\MACS;C:\DOS;C:\EXE 
  
 REM LOADHIGH C:\DOS\DOSKEY.COM/BUFSIZE=20480 
 REM LOADHIGH C:\EXE\SMARTDRV.EXE 500 500 
  
 PROMPT $p$_$g 
 

You can run the mem command to see if you have enough memory to run the install program.
Once you get it installed you can go back and remove the rem's. I did not see a mouse driver, you will need one. Your mouse software should have a dos driver with it. I have to go to the store now. I will give you some recommendations when I com back, some of your setup seems a bit strange to me.

[lostcowboy]

Hi Doug, back again. Hopefully you were able to get the install program to work. If not, another thought, in your bios, there are options to shadow your system and video bios ROM in ram, turn off all shadowing, that should free up some more ram. Then change your DEVICE=C:\EXE\HIMEM.SYS to DEVICE=C:\EXE\HIMEM.SYS /SHADOWRAM:ON Himem will try to recover that extra memory.
About your config and autoexec files being strange, what we want to do is run everything we want but have as much free ram as possible in the 640K area.Lets start in your config.sys file. You are using BUFFERS=25 , lets change that to BUFFERS=2 . Reason for change is that you are using Smartdrv.exe which is better. The reason we don't just remove it is dos gives you buffers based on how much base ram you have. Most people have 640K of base ram and so get 15 buffers, but as you are using smartdrv.exe we want to force that to be less.

DEVICE=C:\EXE\EMM386.EXE NOEMS change to DEVICE=C:\EXE\EMM386.EXE RAM NOEMS .

About RAMDRIVE.SYS I am surprised that it is so much larger than your Smartdrv.exe cache. But that is up to you. You are not using all the parameters for the command, that may trip you up, in the book it says the defaults are, size 64k,sectors 512 bytes, and directory entries 64, if you are going to have that large a ram disk I would think you would want to be able to put more than 64 files in it. You can have as many as 1024 files. Here is a example from the book. DEVICE=C:\DOS\RAMDRIVE.SYS 2048 512 1024 /E

On to your autoexec.bat file.
LOADHIGH C:\DOS\DOSKEY.COM/BUFSIZE=20480 what I am concerned with here is the size of the buffer. From the book doskey uses about 4K of memory with a default buffer of 512 bytes. Your buffer is 40 times the default, are you sure you need a buffer that large? Try the default and then increase it in increments of 512 until you can live with it.

LOADHIGH C:\EXE\SMARTDRV.EXE 500 500 replace with C:\EXE\SMARTDRV.EXE 500 500 Reason, the book says SMARTDRV.EXE loads into upper memory automatically, this may load faster. Also in the book it says if you are using EMM386.exe or windows in 386 enhanced mode you may need to use the double-buffering feature to set that up use this in you config.sys file.
DEVICE=C:\DOS\SMARTDRV>EXE /DOUBLE_BUFFER
Once you have the config and autoexec files setup and working like you want them. You want to run MEMMAKER from a dos prompt. What MEMMAKER does is look at the available upper memory segments and decides which program should be loaded in which segment. It will make changes to the autoexec.bat config.sys and windows system.ini files, it makes backups of these files as config.umb, autoexec.umb and system.umb. If you do not like what memmaker does to your system just run MEMMAKER /UNDO and it will put the files back to the old ones.
When you run memmaker it will restart your computer twice. If it looks like after 5 min or so that the computer has halted or froze, just turn the computer off and back on, memmaker will complete automatically.
In my next message I will talk about a diffrent dos cache program that you may like better than SMARTDRV.EXE, I got to find it first.