help

[Bethrezen]

Hi all

I'm trying to got an old dos game to work on my comp but when I load dos and start up the program it keeps giving me the error message insufficient dos memory

help

[MikeBCda]

Hi,

Obvious first question is, what's your O/S? I don't imagine it's old enough that you're running Windows under DOS, like in the 3.1 days, rather than the other way around?

If by wild chance you're lucky and do have that kind of older setup, hunt around and see if you can get lucky again and find QEMM or a similar third-party memory manager. I particularly liked QEMM because it would load nearly all of DOS high, and its Manifest would keep track of memory conflicts and recommend setup changes.

If you're under Win 9x or later and that's now your operating system, sorry I can't offer any suggestions. The vast majority of my DOS goodies would run happily under 98SE, but with rare exceptions they're now a total write-off on my XP system.

Best,
Mike

[Bethrezen]

hi

thanks for your reply so basicly what ya are telling me is that i need a mem manger as i'm running win 98se

correct ??

got the urls of any decent progies that could do what i'm after

[MikeBCda]

I doubt if there is such a thing as an "outside" mem manager for 98SE, you'll probably have to settle for what comes with Win. I know that somewhere in one of the numurous MS Read-Me's there's a specific comment that QEMM won't work with it, even in DOS mode, because Win blocks or even deletes the data files that QEMM uses to load DOS high.

Probably your best bet is to go into the "Advanced" part of the program's Properties, make sure it's set to reboot in DOS mode, and play with the memory and other settings there. And when you set the cofiguration, see if there's anything you're missing in its Config or Autoexec, especially something that could load-high but isn't yet set up that way. Essentially, just use the same kinds of tricks you'd follow if you were running into "insufficient memory" problems on a straight-DOS system.

Best of luck,
Mike

[Bethrezen]

-{ Quote: "Probably your best bet is to go into the "Advanced" part of the program's Properties, make sure it's set to reboot in DOS mode, and play with the memory and other settings there. And when you set the configuration, see if there's anything you're missing in its Config or Autoexec, especially something that could load-high but isn't yet set up that way. Essentially, just use the same kinds of tricks you'd follow if you were running into "insufficient memory" problems on a straight-DOS system." }-

Hi the only trouble is that I got no idea how to do this the other problem with this is that the game im trying to get running don't have any such "Advanced" Properties

See iv only every used win 98 and have only the most rudimentary knowledge of dos I know enough to be able to install and run aps but that's about it when it comes to the tech side of things like reconfiguring my memory so that I can run old dos programs I haven't got any idea what I'm doing and would need EXTREMELY detailed Idiot proof instructions

Perhaps what would be better here is to explain what im trying to do in more detail maybe that way you can give me a lil more help

Ok im trying to get an old dos game called Privateer running on my comp I can install it ok but when I shut down and restart in dos mode and try to start privateer I get this error

Insufficient dos memory

So what I need to know is how I can I temporarily shift more memory to dos so that I can run privateer

The instructions mentioned something about making a boot disk for the game but the instructions for making it aren't very good and I my attempt to make this boot disk failed

so i need a lil help

[MikeBCda]

Hi,

I'll try to help as best I can, but it'll be from admittedly faulty memory (mental, that is ;) ) -- my old system was 98SE, this one's XP and there's a world of diff between the two. For all practical purposes, DOS no longer exists for me. So I don't have your system or a similar one in front of me for a reminder, fair enough?

Go into Windows Explorer, wherever your game is, and right-click on the (presumably) EXE file, then left-click on Properties. You'll see that for a DOS program it looks considerably different from and more extensive than the properties of a Win application. There should be a tick-box on the first "page" of that for "Program - Advanced", which will give you access to more setup functions.

You''ll find a section there for configuration, which in effect sets up a new Config.sys and Autoexec.bat for just that program. I think you can tick off specific features you want, which it then puts into one or the other file in proper syntax -- make sure both extended and expanded memory are included, and that you have device drivers included for mouse, DC drive, spund card, etc. Note that if you start in DOS mode rather than using a DOS window, you have to start from scratch with those because none of the Windows drivers we take more or less for granted will be active.

Hopefully the above will at least give you an idea of where to look and what to look for, and things will make more sense when you actually see what you'rer working with. Sorry I can't give you any better details than that.

Best,
Mike