768MB generally works without any Patching.

Newer Video Card Drivers generally have no effect.
The issue I saw was with old ATI Drivers that tied up System Arena space. I added the /A Option to my RAM Patch to handle this.

8 DOS boxes available but when i put 128MB AGP graphic card 15 DOS boxes available. And it doesn't crash it just show the MessageBox with this message

"There is not enough memory available to run this program.

Quit one or more programs, and then try again."

 

Thanks for performing the experiment I suggested!
The BSoD only happens after 64 DOS Boxes, before that tnr more comported error you got is the normal result.
If you install the free unofficial Xeno86's VCache, you'll be able to access more DOS Boxes, but maybe still not all the 64 teoretically possible. However, in any case, a possible source of sudden crashes from lack of memory will have been removed. Of course, you should only install it if you finde the idea interesting, even if it's easy to rremove it fully afterwards, in case you so decide.

Interesting that ABCDEFG's system appears to be 98FE, not 98SE. I wonder if 98FE somehow better handles more ram?  Doesn't make sense, but...

Sorry for off-topic, but how ABCDEFG made the Device Manager window resizeable?

As for RAM, just stick to 1GB limited with HIMEMX.EXE, and apply the Xeno's Vcache patch, nothing else. No SYSTEM.INI modifications at all.

That's what I've used, and worked flawlessly, especially with newer motherboards. I like simple solutions.

@dencorso Thanks, i know about Xeno's VCache patch, but i have no problems with this configuration, if some problem shows up i will try it.

@LoneCrusader i use both 98FE and 98SE but i like 98FE more, It's my old habit, Maybe it's my subjective feeling but I think it works smoother then 98SE.

However it's not better with more ram then SE, SE was able to use 1.5GB on my old dead machine (Athlon 2000, MSI KT4AV, 2GB Ram, Geforce4Mx440) but FE

was able to use 1152MB.

 

37 minutes ago, MrMateczko said:

Sorry for off-topic, but how ABCDEFG made the Device Manager window resizeable?

it's easy with this tool:  http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/winexp.html

8 DOS Boxes is not a lot, so there is a relatively small margin. I never measured DOS Box usage of System Arena RAM so I can't say how much.
I don't know what other Programs need a significant amount of System Arena space. I guess you will find out.

During original testing, I was able to run my old test system with 1GiB of RAM without File Cache Modification with my /A Option to eliminate the large ATI Video Driver footprint.
It also didn't leave much margin.

SE is limited to approx 1152MiB of working RAM without my Patch. ME can handle around 1.9GiB.

6 hours ago, ABCDEFG said:

@LoneCrusader i use both 98FE and 98SE but i like 98FE more, It's my old habit, Maybe it's my subjective feeling but I think it works smoother then 98SE.

However it's not better with more ram then SE, SE was able to use 1.5GB on my old dead machine (Athlon 2000, MSI KT4AV, 2GB Ram, Geforce4Mx440) but FE

was able to use 1152MB.

I understand completely. I'll always prefer Windows 95 OSR2 over any later version. I didn't have good experiences with 98FE so for a long time I resisted using even 98SE; but once I was forced to use it for something I wanted to do I found that 98SE works well for the few things that 95 won't do.

You're lucky that you've been able to get these systems to run with so much RAM. I have never been able to get a 9x system to boot with more than 512MB no matter how many tweaks I tried. The only time I saw 98SE boot with more than 512MB was when I experimented with an older version of the Unofficial Service Pack. It booted with 1GB but it was really unstable and crashed after a few minutes. This issue seems to vary widely across different hardware configurations.

I can't say without running some experiments, but I think he is running with about 99% of his System Arena filled.

I ran an experiment to see how much space a DOS Box uses. At 4100KiB each, your System Arena was approx 96.5% full. I underestimated the memory usage of a DOS Box before.

You mean 64 DOS Boxes use about 256 MiB?

256MiB of precious System Arena space. I didn't measure the amount of total space used.

File Cache permanently reserves System Arena space, even if it is flushed from Physical RAM.

The 64 DOS Box limit is hard coded. The 65th DOS Box crashes due to a Table overrun

It means calculation is incorrect. 8 DOS terminals * 4100KB = 32MB which is 12.5% of 256MB - It is 87.5% used, not 96.5%

Like I said earlier, i don't use DOS applications  and all 9x compatible windows software i have works fine, so it's not a problem.

Sorry, but I have to ask.

What is the actual *need* to ever open more than one, two, maybe three, at the very most four DOS Boxes on a 9x system?

I mean, if the hardcoded limit was - instead of 64 - 10 or 16, would anyone (outside of intentionally testing the limits of the OS) ever had noticed it in real life use of the OS?

jaclaz

 

Edited August 29, 20178 yr by jaclaz

1 hour ago, jaclaz said:

What is the actual *need* to ever open more than one, two, maybe three, at the very most four DOS Boxes on a 9x system?

No need at all. But since the space each DOS Box uses is only allocated when the DOS Box is created, finding how many one can open works like a canary to indicate how much precious free System Arena space still remains for the OS...