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Install w98 on Large Drives (Above the 137Gb Barrier)


Fredledingue

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There are no limitations in the first 1GiB range with my Patch. The System Arena issue does not affect Physical RAM. Windows ME has the same System Arena limitation.

I was referring to the same ME Patch.

My RAMDisks are not intended for pre-Pentium class CPUs.

A pre-Pentium Class RAMDisk would require a new HIMEMEX Driver. It still could handle any 32-Bit Memory available and still would be non-XMS. The same 32-Bit RAMDisk Program could still be used.

So far your desire to deallocate or reallocate RAMDisks dynamically is strictly for testing purposes. You still have not proven a need, even for yourself, much less regular Customers.
Developing a new design for a single Customer would raise the price to far more than the equivalent of 7 McRib Sandwiches. Try adding a couple of zeroes.

2K is the smallest FAT12 Partition. The smallest FAT16 Partition is just over 2MiB. My RAMDisks use FAT16 or FAT32. You can reformat the RAMDisk as a smaller FAT12 Drive using RFORMAT.
It is not a true Floppy Emulation as it is not Emulating a Physical Drive, only a Drive Letter. It would be of no help with AHCI.

You said you were a Customer so I want to know which one. Sending me a masked directory list doesn't provide enough information to verify that you are a Customer not a pirate. Since you have the Files, E-Mail them back to me.

Unpatched MS-DOS 7 can handle 2TiB without any problem. There are other issues, but they are not dependent upon the size of the Partition or Drive.

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11 hours ago, rloew said:

Developing a new design for a single Customer would raise the price to far more than the equivalent of 7 McRib Sandwiches. Try adding a couple of zeroes.

That would make 007 McRib Sandwiches (with license to kill) ;)

jaclaz
 

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3 hours ago, jaclaz said:

That would make 007 McRib Sandwiches (with license to kill) ;)

jaclaz
 

Jaclaz they only show up like once a year but last few years no show.

Try 40 McRib Fest... License to Gorge. :puke:

Any McRib in your country?

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15 hours ago, rloew said:

There are no limitations in the first 1GiB range with my Patch. The System Arena issue does not affect Physical RAM. Windows ME has the same System Arena limitation.

I was referring to the same ME Patch.

So the 1st GB are we talking 1byte to 1024MB?  or 1GB to 2GB?

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My RAMDisks are not intended for pre-Pentium class CPUs.

A pre-Pentium Class RAMDisk would require a new HIMEMEX Driver. It still could handle any 32-Bit Memory available and still would be non-XMS. The same 32-Bit RAMDisk Program could still be used.

That seems to be an inherent limitation.  Did you mention this on your website?  What is the reason you chose not to support Pre Pentium when plenty of other 32-bit Ramdisks will function on 386 all the way to Z170 in pure DOS.  Some even used conventional memory or possibly the 384KB HMA for 286 and 8088.  Also you didn't mention which AMD CPUs worked and where the cut off point is.  There might be some AMD users who would be upset if their AMD 386 and 486 CPU didn't work with your 32-bit Non-XMS Ramdisk.  Even the Uberto Ramdisk seems to access 2GB max.  I suppose if this is true and you mentioned 98SE uses 1.1GB and ME 1.9GB then the Uberto Ramdisk would have a similar performance to your 32-bit Non-XMS Ramdisk except it could also operate on non PSE CPUs down to 386 according to the website.  Have you tested overlapping compatibility between other DOS Ramdisks since yours doesn't seem to have conventional memory Ramdisk or HMA Ramdisk support.

http://www.geocities.ws/politalk/rmdrv/index.html

640KB conventional

384KB HMA

up to 1.1 GB 98SE but optimal is 512MB

2.0 GB Uberto Ramdisk

1.0 GB max MMIO space, 256MB for 256MB graphics card

.

On a 4GB system:

1024MB DOS and some 9X/ME usage, 512MB forced 98SE compatibility limit, 2048MB for Ramdrive, 256MB MMIO space

3840MB total for a 256MB Video card system this would just leave a waste of 256MB at most but compatibility should be nearly the same.

.

That's why I'm recommending if your 32-bit Non XMS Ramdisk is nearly identical except less CPU support due to PSE restriction then it should be updated to compete on all fronts.  Add the option to uninstall the Ramdrive at the command line you already make your Ramdrive appear more versatile once those two areas are fixed.  Tweak the additional drive letter conventional memory consumption by daisy chaining off the first drive letter or refine the code so you only use 3KB and subsequent drive letters would use a fraction of that amount or is using HMA or > 3.2GB to store some of those original conventional memory usage.  This is more your area of expertise and maybe it is possible to accomplish.  If you or someone else did this it would probably be the best DOS based Ramdisk or even 9X/ME at the 32-bit level.

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So far your desire to deallocate or reallocate RAMDisks dynamically is strictly for testing purposes.
Developing a new design for a single Customer would raise the price to far more than the equivalent of 7 McRib Sandwiches. Try adding a couple of zeroes.

Even most standard DOS programs aside from TSRs tend to allow the ability to uninstall from memory.  In your case any drive letters created would still persist but even refreshing the memory tables would not require a huge payload to rewrite or add.  Nor would it require 700 McRib sandwiches worth of coding.  The last thing I want is for you to die from obesity eating all those.  You gotta stay on a lean and healthy diet if you want to remain the last few dozen to keep these old school utilities working on modern computers.  The best way for you to sell more is to lower the price of your hot sellers.  The Memory Limitation Patch would probably sell better at $5 even or $4+$1 handling fee.  This would at least get your patch onto as many 9X/ME systems as possible giving your other patches more interest.  No one will buy the other patches which only would be required for really modern systems.  9X/ME is dying and we both know it.  Z170 already has proven some major hardware compatibility issues and you also know the xHCI ports are now standardized to kill of eHCI which only 9X/ME can understand.  As more and more systems are unable to make use of 9X/ME for gaming purposes it is just a slow death for your products which you don't want to happen.  To stay relevant the xHCI driver is going to be a priority assuming it can be done.  The lowering of the price of your own Limitation Patch would encourage an influx of more users even with those restrictions and that would actually be the cost of a decent burger.  The idea of creating a virtual video card emulator would extend support to your product line.  The user would have to at least own the physical card and dump the ROMs.  Since PCI slots are being phased out a sound card emulator for EAX Advanced would be next but I think DOSBOX code might be able to simplify that portion rather than starting from scratch.

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2K is the smallest FAT12 Partition. The smallest FAT16 Partition is just over 2MiB. My RAMDisks use FAT16 or FAT32. You can reformat the RAMDisk as a smaller FAT12 Drive using RFORMAT.
It is not a true Floppy Emulation as it is not Emulating a Physical Drive, only a Drive Letter. It would be of no help with AHCI.

I still think you should look into a LS-120 / LS-240 emulation driver for 9X/ME.  Maybe your Ramdrive could emulate a LS-120/240 so 9X/ME could install onto it increasing its usefulness.  Even though the physical drives are harder to come by but I had grabbed a few of these before they were discontinued thinking this standard would replace 1.44MB/2.88MB.  I did recall doing one test of installing Windows 95 onto it and I think it worked but it's so long ago I could be wrong.  If you modified this driver maybe there is possibility to use it as part of a USB bootable work around to install 9X/ME into your Dual Mode RamDrive.  Given the current situation of Z170 and later with AHCI this might be a better option.

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Unpatched MS-DOS 7 can handle 2TiB without any problem. There are other issues, but they are not dependent upon the size of the Partition or Drive.

MS-DOS 7 can see a 2TB drive (recognize) but doing Pure DOS file copy/moving operations is another problem.  What other issues?  Such as?  I already told you to try doing a simple DIR /S test on even anything 500GB or larger under 98SE DOS and you will see garbage characters eventually pop up before reaching the end of the drive.  Make sure you fill the drive to near capacity with tens of thousands of long file names, directories, and subdirectories.  Even one of my 2TB FAT32 external hard drives full of videos already demonstrates this bug so anything even at 4TB using patching tricks would cause the same issue.  In Win9X/ME maybe it will read your 4TB drive correctly with VFAT but I'm talking specifically about 98SE DOS and one large FAT32 partition.  What happens when you hook the 4TB to another standard 98SE computer at a friend's house?  2TB is the safest compatible FAT32 limit.  Even if you tried tricking it and made 1 Partition at 2.19999XTB and the remaining space the extended partition you might be able to get away with it.  Then you have to deal with what if Windows Disk Management or some 3rd Party Partition Manager was used afterwards and you didn't back up your data before using it and accidentally deleted the partition.  I'm not sure how you could recover the data safely since it's using abnormal partitions since most recovery programs might not understand your tweaked 4TB partition or worst case only see the first 2.2TB.

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You said you were a Customer so I want to know which one. Sending me a masked directory list doesn't provide enough information to verify that you are a Customer not a pirate. Since you have the Files, E-Mail them back to me.

I don't see why any customer would have to prove anything like that and the file directory is a clear visual offered that only a person who received an authentic program would have the exact bytes and filenames match up with your copy and I'm not even sure why you even care which customer I am of the hundreds or maybe thousands of others using your programs.  I haven't seen any messages to other users on MSFN requesting this before or a MSFN requirement when I joined.  Perhaps you didn't consider you have other customers who just buy something and prefer to remain anonymous afterwards.  It's like going through a drive through and you pay for your item and you drive out.  There's no real follow up or a store manager coming outside and asking for your identity cause you are eating one of their burgers parked outside.  Most pirates wouldn't even talk to you if you think about it nor would they go about advertising and promoting your product on other forums.  That's like some car thief that stole your car and then the next morning driving back to your home to ringing your door bell to say hello and handing you and your neighbors fliers of your stolen car for sale.  No thief would do that and it would be illogical and they'd probably stay away and never return.

You already got my most expensive burger donation or I should say at least 3 very good burger donations or 7 McRibs when available is a more realistic cost.  All I know is I fed you and that's all I need to care about and my conscience is clear.  If you think every person on MSFN who you don't know their name is a thief that would not be a good way to go about treating their users.  I think if you made your own forums on your website you would get more users and know their exact names if that was your original goal when selling your products and I don't see why you didn't start forums on your own website as it would encourage more user interest in your products instead of having to go onto another website forum.  It may also backfire.

I'm sure most people on the internet prefer anonymity in general otherwise they would be on Facebook and Twitter and you would be selling there instead.  Do you have these social media accounts?  MSFN is an independent website from your own so I don't see why you expected any MSFN user would openly want their identity revealed whether they used your program or not.  And like I said before unless I got to know you on a more personal level or met you physically or was helping you maintain your source code or something of that nature so it didn't end up in digital obsolescence would you even know that kind of personal information.

It's like if you were a leather jacket seller and we were on some clothing forum and you found out I bought one of your jackets and wanted to my name out of the blue.  Now if you were Oprah and I thought maybe you were going to surprise me with a car I think most people would probably not volunteer that information.  They paid for the jacket and they wore it and that's all they would care about and at most maybe a thank you for making a wonderful jacket and feedback to improve it.  Perhaps you could convince them to send a picture of their jacket if they wanted to show proof they owned it but they would just post that pic on the clothing forum but not send you a direct email attachment unless they knew you pretty well I would think.

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You made the claim that my Patch has a limit in the first 1GB. There is no such limit.

People who buy my RAMDisks want to be able to use large RAMDisks. Otherwise they could use a free one.
Pre-Pentium Computers don't have enough RAM to justify my RAMDisks, so there is no point to support them.
A Conventional Memory RAMDisk is even smaller and a HMA RAMDisk is absurdly small.

You clearly do not understand how MMIO is allocated. You will not see 3840MB with a 256MB Card. You would be lucky to see 3584MB. Read the PCI Spec.

The RAMDisks are TSRs so they cannot be deallocated.
Most people use only one or two RAMDisks so your redesign ideas are of little value.
Making it the "best" all-around RAMDisk was never my purpose and gains me nothing. There is no point in competing with free stuff.

You still have not come up with a productive use for uninstalling RAMDisks.

Reducing the price of my Patch is not going to increase sales by a factor of four.

An AHCI Driver is possible. I have created Source Code for the Disk Driver.

I said it is easy to extract a Video Card ROM. That doesn't make it any easier to Emulate.

Emulating Boot devices requires a DDO style RAMDisk such as the GRUB4DOS RAMDisk. Thattype of RAMDisk is an entirely different project.

Copying Windows 9x into a RAMDisk is a way of minimizing the impact of AHCI. Using a PCI-E SATA Card is a better one.

MS-DOS 7 may have a problem listing a very large number of Files but it is not dependent upon the size of the Partition.

I don't require my Customers to identify their MSFN Handles. Some volunteer this information or it may be obvious from the interactions. It has come in handy when I need to E-Mail them and their E-Mail has changed.

You claimed publicly that you were a Customer and hoped to curry favor for being one. That nullified your claim to privacy. I never said that you have to reveal your name or E-Mail publicly.
You gave me your name and E-Mail when you purchased the Patch. If you bought a jacket with a Credit Card, the retailer gets your name and card number.

In any case, I was able to determine your name and E-Mail from the information you already provided.

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13 hours ago, rloew said:

 If you bought a jacket with a Credit Card, the retailer gets your name and card number.

The jacket vendor has however the advantage of seeing the physical credit card of the customer, which, in some cases, may contribute to better understand the customer's character, and be prepared to being questioned about (say):

1) the colour of the jacket he sold
2) how the jacket was manufactured, including, but not limited to, the quality of the leather, the choice of the sewing patterns, the specific brand of thread used (and its colour), the way it was folded and stored, the chemical composition of the plastic bag it was in, the temperature (min, max and average) and percentage of humidity of the storage warehouse for the last 10 years
3) how the jacket was advertised, the choice of furniture of the shop and the design of its lighting
4) the size and position of each and every pocket of the jacket
5) the choice of zips instead of buttons (or of buttons instead of zips)

and being suggested how to better each one of these items.

SCOOP! :w00t::ph34r:

We have an image of the centurion on 98SE's Amex card:

https://tinyurl.com/yc6p7a9q

jaclaz
 

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There's no nullifying complete privacy for being a customer.  One can walk into McDonald's and use cash to purchase anything and leave.  They could choose to use a credit card, bitcoin, or whatever method was available but it doesn't mean the cashier has to question your identity or keep follow up tabs on you after you bought something and left.  It's just a payment choice.  Although the credit card is less secure so cash usually is a better way to deal with simple transactions especially at the drive through where they could swipe your card through a skimmer out of your sight.  As for paying for a jacket I actually would pay cash but that's because today there's too much of a digital trail for everything and I prefer not getting advertisement and spam.  The idea of buying a jacket at a store and then bumping into the jacket's creator doesn't mean you would be willing to give him/her your personal information.  And even purchasing your product on its own site was questionable and not on Amazon or eBay or some other trustworthy established site then but I went ahead and trusted it.  It doesn't mean I have to redivulge my information again when asked.

You were the one that had questioned if I had bought anything from you.  I didn't bring up my status as a customer prior to that.  How was I currying favor for being a customer when I never once mentioned I was until you questioned it?  In fact if you dig back you were the one that initiated the message to me about your Ramdrive.  If currying favors from you means giving you ideas on how to improve a product then that would be backwards.  If I was asking for a free product from you without having purchased anything from you that would be different.  I only listed the program files for the Patch even though I didn't have to for your benefit and any other person would realize when they compared their files to the list that I owned the original program and I don't need to divulge any more private information to prove otherwise.  On top of that I went as far as protecting the filenames in case those could be used to track down the program somehow to help protect your software.  I helped test out the compatibility for Z170 with your programs with my own time to help you out since you don't own anything newer than the Z87 on Intel and have referred your product on a number of times on other sites in the past on various sites so if anything you could say I paid my 3 big burgers worth for the patch and more from those who potentially or have already bought it as a result of my positive reference to your product.

22 hours ago, rloew said:

You made the claim that my Patch has a limit in the first 1GB. There is no such limit.

I said the first 640KB conventional memory was for DOS, the 384KB for HMA, you stated 1.1GB for 98SE would be allocated, 1.9GB for WinME.  So if that's true that means above the 1GB would be the start of 98SE memory usage.

Quote

640KB conventional

384KB HMA

up to 1.1 GB 98SE (According to a post by you) but optimal I am choosing is 512MB

2.0 GB Uberto Ramdisk (MAX TEST SIZE)

1.0 GB max MMIO max space, 256MB used for 256MB graphics card

.

On a 4 GB test system:

1024 MB DOS/HMA and some 9X/ME usage, 512 MB forced 98 SE compatibility limit, 2048 MB for Uberto Ramdrive, 256 MB MMIO space used by video card.

3840 MB total memory used.

.

I never said 3840 MB for the graphics card I was tallying up the total memory I could potentially use of the 4GB installed in a test system.  This is all theoretical as I haven't performed my tests yet.  I will start with DOS tests before going into 9X/ME official tests to see how it reacts to every DOS Ramdrive I will use.

A Ramdisk does exactly what it should do make RAM into a virtual disk and it's usually not dependent on the CPU and the first time I heard that a DOS Ramdrive only worked on specific CPUs that supported PSE-36.  Not all Pentium 1 class CPUs had GBs of memory but some in the lower MBs.  You said you wanted to make a Ramdrive to make use all or as much memory that isn't utilized by the OS.  Or in cases where there is only conventional memory even a small amount of it could still be used for a Ramdisk. If each Ramdisk uses some conventional memory footprint why would I prefer having more than one Ramdisk if I wanted to conserve my conventional memory when I can use just yours to do it all?  The limitation of your Ramdisk to Pentium and higher is by design which I'm pointing out and wondering why had you not written it to fully support 386 to modern CPUs from the start so it would support more CPUs and most people using DOS aren't going to be using machines with GBs of RAM typically so it seemed odd.  I don't see why you would blame the free ones for not doing it.

Being able to remove the DOS Ramdrive and recreate without rebooting will save between 1-3 minutes of reboot time in some cases.  For 24/7 operation not needing to reboot this would be an advantage.  That's why I questioned if you could create a 9X/ME with GUI version which might make it easier to change Ramdisks without rebooting where this is common behavior.

Reducing the price of the patch to 1/4 isn't supposed to automatically increase your sales to a factor of four.  You could easily raise your price to $100 and not get 1/5 the sales you are getting but probably 1/10.  The idea is to allow more people to purchase it so your other utilities would be usable bringing in follow up purchases but you failed to see the long game.  If someone can't even install 9X/ME or is new and doesn't know the easier freeware tricks to accomplish it they would prefer to use your patch and willing to try it at $5 total or a burger.  Then they might be so overjoyed about their purchase that they may want to buy other programs you have which is the payoff (repeat customers).  By lowering the initial cost for the patch price it should increase more buyers but not necessarily 4 times but it could increase the amount of buyers to double or triple at a lower initial cost.  The additional sales for your other utilities may be the added benefit you're not seeing.  But if you're happy with the current sales then you could raise the price to $100 and see if you bring in 1/5 of your current sales at $20.

At this moment only you know how many copies are sold of each program and how many are being sold per month.  I'm willing to guess it has been going on a noticeable downhill trend starting at least from 2017 thanks to Z170.  2018-2020 will be a definite predictor if the number drops each year.  I'm only trying to find ways to possibly help increase your sales given the newer hardware incompatibilities.  If you feel my ideas won't help boost your total users of your products over time then stick with your method.

I never said it would be an easy job to emulate the video cards but the end is near for 9X/ME and this project would be necessary but it would require a team and maybe with someone like yourself involved would help expedite it.  I only proposed that if the Roms were able to be extracted then it will take a team to create an equivalent 98BOX of DOSBOX to make use of the extracted Roms.  Then there's the sound card issue for EAX Advanced HD which only was supported on PCI sound cards so even a sound card emulator will be needed in conjunction for the 98BOX emulator to be truly compatible on modern hardware.  Z170 has begun sealing the coffin for 9X/ME gaming and if your only concern is standard non gaming applications support then I have to wonder if your sales will drop accordingly as most non gaming 9X/ME software is already working on XP or available for XP so I can only see gamers being your target audience.

Edited by 98SE
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8 hours ago, jaclaz said:

The jacket vendor has however the advantage of seeing the physical credit card of the customer, which, in some cases, may contribute to better understand the customer's character, and be prepared to being questioned about (say):

1) the colour of the jacket he sold
2) how the jacket was manufactured, including, but not limited to, the quality of the leather, the choice of the sewing patterns, the specific brand of thread used (and its colour), the way it was folded and stored, the chemical composition of the plastic bag it was in, the temperature (min, max and average) and percentage of humidity of the storage warehouse for the last 10 years
3) how the jacket was advertised, the choice of furniture of the shop and the design of its lighting
4) the size and position of each and every pocket of the jacket
5) the choice of zips instead of buttons (or of buttons instead of zips)

and being suggested how to better each one of these items.

SCOOP! :w00t::ph34r:

We have an image of the centurion on 98SE's Amex card:

https://tinyurl.com/yc6p7a9q

jaclaz
 

One big problem jaclaz.  I would not use a credit card to buy a jacket. :ph34r::realmad:

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I initially did not ask you about your prior purchases. I asked you why I should provide so much support when I was not aware of any purchases and you showed no interest in buying the RAMDisk.

Once you claimed to have purchased my RAM Limitation Patch, you have the obligation to verify your License.

What positive reference. You seem to think it is inadequate.

I didn't ask you to test compatibility with the Z170. You asked me.

Having the Files does not prove you bought them. A pirate copy would have the same files. Identifying yourself in a PM or E-Mail does not disclose any private information about you that I don't already have.

I said that unpatched Windows 98SE had a limit of ~1152MB and Windows ME had a limit ~1.9GiB. My Patch eliminates these limits.

Who would buy my RAMDisk for a 386 Computer when the free RAMDisks are adequate for the amount of RAM available?

Basic Economics would not recommend $5 or $100. Neither would maximize profit. There isn't a lot of crossover from one product to another so follow-on purchases would not make up the difference.
The shrinkage of the Customer base for these products would tend to skew the optimum price upward not downward. It would only motivate me to move my efforts to other OSes.

Deleting and reallocating RAMDisks may save boot time as you said many times, but you still haven't explained why someone would need to do so at all. It is not "common" activity. Other RAMDisks do not.

Your ideas are of no help as they don't solve any problems customers would have. I already am aware of the AHCI issue. I saw it on a Laptop over a year ago.

Emulating a Video Card ROM would only give you the modes supported under DOS. This is hardly useful for Windows much less gaming.

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3 hours ago, rloew said:

I initially did not ask you about your prior purchases. I asked you why I should provide so much support when I was not aware of any purchases and you showed no interest in buying the RAMDisk.

Once you claimed to have purchased my RAM Limitation Patch, you have the obligation to verify your License.

What positive reference. You seem to think it is inadequate.

I didn't ask you to test compatibility with the Z170. You asked me.

The only reason I even volunteered such information was because I felt you were upset about something when you made that statement.  I was only suggesting how to improve the Ramdrive when you mentioned some characteristics which were lacking.  Perhaps you didn't consider I was seeing if the Ramdrive was worth purchasing regarding those questions and if the author was interested in improving something it lacked before buying it.  In what way should I need to claim anything regarding any License?  Then if any person who asks a question about your product you would need to get their info?  I'm not even using the program myself since I found a hardware method solution and I'm not asking for a backup or replacement copy or upgrade if mine was missing or destroyed which then would incur the need to share such license information to prove ownership which I would agree to do so.  But if I'm not in need of such then I don't see any need to verify my license nor do I see if I were the owner of a program to force request that from anyone.

No I didn't ask you to test Z170 because you had no such machine.  I said that I doubted it would work on Z170 since the Himem.Sys program failed to load which previously had no issues on prior chipsets at least for Z77.  That's when you came up with your utils and sent me messages to download it which didn't show up till a week or so later and I said I downloaded for now and would test when I had the time but to me it didn't appear you cared about the result or it was urgent and I was still working on another project at the time.  Later you insisted that I test it for you to get the result.  I did it even though I was busy as a favor to you since you had answered questions.  I already mentioned multiple reasons which make Z170 and later and unlikely chipset for 9X/ME if it is intended for gaming which I assume is the primary reason most people would buy your patch.  Unless you can tell me another reason?  Is there some unique 9X/ME non gaming based programs that don't exist on XP or later?

I cannot confirm Z87 nor Z97 himem.sys compatibility at the moment but you didn't even bother to test the Z87 Intel even though I gave you instructions on how you could verify.

Quote

Having the Files does not prove you bought them. A pirate copy would have the same files. Identifying yourself in a PM or E-Mail does not disclose any private information about you that I don't already have.

Yes that is a possibility.  I could also have had someone else buy it for me.  I could also have bought two copies.  Having the files could prove I bought them as well so there is no clear right answer but also have you thought to consider that I don't wish to reidentify myself in that regard even if the information is already in your possession?  I think this is really about the need to fulfill your own curiosity than anything else as I haven't seen any other users questioned here or on other sites whether they bought anything or not.  As for pirates having such a copy perhaps you could link such proof that it can be obtained in that manner.  I doubt you would have allowed it to take place nor one such place to get it exists so you're just making it up being easily available.  This program only has a niche market so it would be even less likely and much harder to find if it were to occur.  So I think that is a moot point to think everyone can get it in that manner.  They would have an intense need to get 9X working or just buy a legacy computer.

Given my expertise there are other methods besides your patch to accomplish the same task.  I have an assortment of computers dating back that any number of them would run 9X/ME software without needing any form of patching.  You got your three big burgers banked for the program that in my opinion I'm good.  I'm only trying to help you out but that doesn't mean I have to release my personal information or reconfirm it if I don't wish.  Now I might not be the only one to have found my own hardware solution but it doesn't mean others won't have a use for needing your patch.  I might even decide to finally use it later on just to give a performance evaluation comparison to my alternative methods to see if stability or compatibility differences will result.  But my goal is to make it as easy as possible to run 9X/ME on modern hardware without patching if possible.

Positive reference as in having posted that people should purchase your Patch on other sites under other nicknames when people wanted to use 98.  I might have suggested this on this site as well.

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I said that unpatched Windows 98SE had a limit of ~1152MB and Windows ME had a limit ~1.9GiB. My Patch eliminates these limits.

Maybe it was unclear because I had asked before what was the maximum limit for the patch on 98SE vs Win ME and I had asked maybe using the WinME kernel could provider better memory support.  When I thought of the limit for 98SE unpatched I assumed it would be 512MB-1GB range without some major tweaking.

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Who would buy my RAMDisk for a 386 Computer when the free RAMDisks are adequate for the amount of RAM available?

The same person who would use it on a 486, Pentium to Z170+.  All in one Ramdisk to do one job of making Ram into a Disk.  Why would you use two separate Ramdisk programs and Memory Managers which would cause a bigger conventional footprint?  If yours did it all then I'd only keep a copy of just your Memory Manager and Ramdisk.

Quote

Basic Economics would not recommend $5 or $100. Neither would maximize profit. There isn't a lot of crossover from one product to another so follow-on purchases would not make up the difference.
The shrinkage of the Customer base for these products would tend to skew the optimum price upward not downward. It would only motivate me to move my efforts to other OSes.

Well maximum profit depends on the total number of purchases over time.  That's why I said $100 would not be as profitable.  I only suggested $5 because it seems more likely you would get more purchases and if there is such pirating going on I think they could afford to pay that price then to find it through another method.  But that's just how I would think if I were the author with a dying product.  But since I don't have a database to evaluate each product and sales over the entire time frame I couldn't suggest the best price for it.  But seeing that the 9X/ME compatibility is broken most likely and you know this yourself I don't see any negative outcome at reducing the price.  Even a price reduction to $15 or $10 could be done over time.  You don't have to do the $5 from the start.  You could evaluate each reduced price point if the sales match the $20 or exceed it.  If it's doing well or better at $15 than it was at $20 then I'd stick to it.  Had your patch product exceeded $20 before like $25 or $30 to do a historical sales over time comparison?

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Deleting and reallocating RAMDisks may save boot time as you said many times, but you still haven't explained why someone would need to do so at all. It is not "common" activity. Other RAMDisks do not.

I already did explain it one major use on a 24/7 system.  Not needing reboot after restarting to MSDOS mode from 98SE and changing the Ramdisk size.  Well you might be right if no other DOS Ramdisk has done this as I'm trying to check what I can find.  There were many DOS programs that could remove themselves from memory completely and since you mentioned total removal is impossible the next best thing was just resetting the Ramdrive so you could recreate the sizes.  If it isn't considered common activity then it would be unique as many Windows Ramdisks do this all the time and if yours is the first that would make it special that no other DOS Ramdisk has done.  I had thought this would be a simple thing to accomplish.  If this will take you a year to do something like this then forget it.  How long did it take you to write the entire non XMS Ramdisk program from scratch?

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Emulating a Video Card ROM would only give you the modes supported under DOS. This is hardly useful for Windows much less gaming.

I'm not talking about emulating any video card under DOS and that would be pointless as even the standard graphics card or iGPU would work with most DOS programs and I'm going to be doing some tests to confirm it.  The huge amount of RAM that video emulator would need in DOS would be another issue.  It has to be either a video card emulator that would run inside 9X/ME assuming you want to keep your 9X/ME products relevant and still needing your memory patch or it should run in XP and W7 if it's about guaranteeing the longevity of your product beyond 9X/ME on newer systems.

Edited by 98SE
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In addition to all of the "improvements" you wanted, you asked an awful lot of questions about extreme cases. That is a lot of support questions from an apparent non-customer who wasn't even planning to buy anything.

If you possess a Copyrighted Program you have a legal obligation to prove it if your ownership is questioned. Many businesses have been fined for failing to do so.
I would also have a case against the person I sold that copy to for illegally distributing Copyrighted Software.
If it wasn't so obvious that I had found the right Customer, I would have challenged him to explain how you got it.
If a friend bought it for you, he is supposed to inform me to properly register the Software. Multiple copies would not be relevant here.

You didn't ask me to do the Z170 test. You asked me for a limited RAMDisk to do the test. I sent you a test program instead.
I asked for the test results because you did not report any results from either of the Test Programs I sent you.

I didn't need your Instructions to test my Z87. I have been using the Z87 with Windows 98SE for years.

Any past Customer could distribute my Patch so piracy is far from impossible. I can only put a stop to it when I find a copy. Anyone who links a pirate site here is immediately banned and the posts sanitzed or erased.

It would be hard to verify your "positive" references if they were posted under different names.
Your remarks about the RAMDisk do not sound like "positive" references.

Since you need a separate License for each Computer, who is going to buy multiple copies of an All-In-One RAMDisk when they can just buy one for the Z170 and use two free ones for the 386 and 486?
One copy of my RAM Limitation Patch can only be used in one Computer also. In this case that is enough because a 386 or 486 wouldn't need it.

From the comments I have seen, people fall into two groups. Ones that don't have a problem with the current price and ones that wouldn't pay a penny for anything.

Even on a 24/7 system, you still haven't explained why you would need to reallocate a RAMDisk with any Frequency in normal use. If you have to reboot even once a day, a couple of minutes doesn't matter much.

If it took a year to implement your changes, I would have added two more zeroes to the estimated price. Sorry Jaclaz, 00007 isn't as funny.
I don't work for minimum wage and I don't live in India.

Of course emulating a Video Card under DOS is pointless. My point was that is all you can do with an extracted Video Card BIOS. You kept insisting that extracting the ROM was important to an Emulator.

A Windows Driver or Emulator is a far bigger project and the ROM provides very little information.

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