Need Help on Autoexec.bat/Config.sys please

Mon Mar 24, 2003 11:26 am by Lord Haart

Can anyone help me out here please.....

I'm attempting to run good old Elite 2 on my current system. The problem is I'm not very advanced when it comes to the booting up of a PC into DOS. What I mean by that is I need the following :

580K Base Memory Free.
EMS Manager Installed.
CD-Rom Drive Detected.
Hard Drive Detected and working fine, even when booting off a 3.5" disk.
Mouse dos drivers loaded.
Sound Card dos drivers loaded.

Ok, now I understand that I need to load the mouse drivers, and possible the others into the 'high' memory area to keep the base memory free, (is that correct?), if so how ? I believe it is a use of the 'lh' command.

Now I have managed to get Elite 2 running with well over 580K Base Memory free, and mouse drivers BUT my problem is this...

I can't get the cd-rom drive workign in dos WITHOUT eating up too much base memory.

Also I can't get any sound as I am unsure how to get sound in dos whilst leaving the base memory.

Finally, the PC does not recognise the hard drive when I use the bootdisk to achieve this. What is the command to make the PC recognise the hard drive when you boot off a floppy ?

I realise that this post is loads of questions in one. I would really appreciate it if someone could show me an example autoexec.bat and config.sys to use whereby I can achieve the following, as mentioned before :

580K Base Memory Free.
EMS Manager Installed.
CD-Rom Drive Detected.
Hard Drive Detected and working fine, even when booting off a 3.5" disk.
Mouse dos drivers loaded.
Sound Card dos drivers loaded.

I have dos 6.22 and all its relevant files archived (things like emm386.exe, himem.sys etc) so thats no problem, I would just like to know how to implement them.

Alternatively, can anyone give me the address of a website that might teach me these things.

May I take this opportunity to thank you for reading this text, and I look forward to any answers that may help myself and others.

System Specs :
Amd Athlon 1.3 Ghz
Gigabyte 72x motherboard
512Mb RAM
Geforce 4 MX 420
SB Live!
Windows XP Pro
2 Hard Drives ( C and D Drives )
CD-ROM Drive as E:, CD-RW ad F:, A: is floppy drive, B: is second flopppy drive

Lord Haart
[email protected]
Ranked Elite Since 1985

Edited by - Lord Haart on 24-03-2003 16:44:47

Mon Mar 24, 2003 12:33 pm by Nephilim

Man... never thought I'd say this, but I miss the old days of messing with obscure configuration files to free up that one critical extra kilobyte of base memory... but why you'd bother with the whole mess just to run Elite II is beyond me

Anyway, let's see here. config.sys should look something like this:
device=c:\dos\himem.sys
devicehigh=c:\dos\emm386.exe RAM
dos=high,umb
stacks=9.256
devicehigh=<path to cdrom driver>\driver.sys <parameters>
devicehigh=<path to audio drivers>\driver.sys <parameters>
devicehigh=<path to mouse driver>\driver.sys <parameters>

Any other device lines are irrelevant and only suck up memory, so REM them out.

now on to autoexec.bat:

path=c:\dos;<whatever>
LH c:\dos\mscdex.exe <parameters>
LH <path to mouse driver>\mouse.com*
<soundcard parameters>**

*if required
** eg. set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330 t6 (for a typical SoundBlaster)

Keep it clean, stay faaaaaaar away from smartdrive, use memmaker to squeeze out every last byte of conventional memory, and marvel at the brilliance that is Elite *cough*

Edited by - Nephilim on 24-03-2003 12:40:04

Mon Mar 24, 2003 4:49 pm by .CHaSE.

There is win32-version of the engine for Elite 3. Perhaps there is one for Elite 2 somewhere.

Edited by - .CHaSE. on 24-03-2003 16:51:38

Mon Mar 24, 2003 5:39 pm by Lemlestarn

There is a shareware version of Frontier available. In that archive there is a settings file that starts the game on my Windows XP Pro.

Start the game with the "FRONTIER" file instead of "Frontier.bat".

Look into VDMSound if you want sound.

Mon Mar 24, 2003 6:56 pm by Lord Haart

That's great, I got both working in the end, but have decided to go with the win 32 reverse engineered version of FFE (Elite 3). Everything is working great and is fully functional.

However I have another question for you learned people

Is there any way of improving the resolution and/or decreasing the 'blockiness' ? I know many of you will say 'Well that's how it was, it is 7 years old after all !'. This I understand, but I seem to remember it was slightly smoother than it is atm. If I run it in a window instead of full-screen it seems to become a little less rugged and somewhat more polished. Please tell me, do the anti-alias settings etc apply to games such as this that are run in windows ? I wish FFE had a 1024x768 option. Can anyone help me out here in any way ?

Thanx In Advance.

Lord Haart
[email protected]
Ranked Elite Since 1985

Tue Mar 25, 2003 6:15 pm by Argonus

Comment....As a person that has worked with DOS...since 1986....

STACKS=0,0 works much better then 9,256 It keeps more free upper memory.

Best thing to do if HIMEM.SYS is loaded in Config.sys...is to use LH (for Load High)

I actually am lazy....and use MEMMAKER....then go in and change the stacks to 0,0.

Have gotted about 624k free out of 640 with CDROM, Sound Card, Mouse drivers loaded...

-Arg

-If you want to flame me...Don't post it in here...email me at [email protected]

Or call 1-800-RYP-OFF1

Tue Mar 25, 2003 8:05 pm by Lord Haart

Wow Argonus, thats impressive. Thanx for your input friend

Lord Haart
[email protected]
Ranked Elite Since 1985

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