🚀 go-pugleaf

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 22:56:46 GMT, "Doug Cook" <dcook@concentric.net> wrote:

>Hi,
>I have 2 old Toshiba laptops, and I'd like to dedicate one to running old
>DOS games - mainly Descent 1 and 2.  The first laptop has a P100 and 40 MB
>ram.  The second has a P120 and 32 MB ram.  Which is more important,
>processor or memory?  I'm hoping that one or the other would be more than
>sufficient.  They both currently have Win98 installed.  Is Windows DOS
>workable, or should I install DOS 6?  Also, can someone please post the most
>effective autoexec.bat and config.sys files for running descent.  I've
>forgotten more about DOS than I'll ever remember.  Thanks.
>Doug

No need to install DOS, specifically.  Just disable the automatic GUI
startup, with the line

BootGUI=0

in the [Options] section of your Msdos.sys file (which is, in case you didn't
know, a plain text file).

Also, when it comes to running several DOS games, the [MENU] and
related Config.sys statements come in *very* handy for creating multiple
startup configurations.  Beats the heck out of the "old way", at least,
which was to have numerous boot disks, each one specific to each
game (or whatever).

Briefly, it's like this (using one of my old ones as an example):

[MENU]
MENUITEM=FULL,Full Configuration
MENUITEM=DOSCD,Full Config w/CD for DOS
MENUITEM=NOVBE,Full Config w/o VBE
MENUITEM=BARE_LOW,Minimum Low
MENUITEM=BARE_HI,Minimum High
SUBMENU=GAMES,Game Setups
SUBMENU=PROG,Programming Setups

MENUDEFAULT=FULL,8


The text after the "=" defines a section, and the text after the "," will
appear in a numbered list of selections.  For example, this is what
would be displayed, using the above example in a Config.sys:

Microsoft Windows 98 Startup Menu
==============================

	1. Full Configuration
	2. Full Config w/CD for DOS
	3. Full Config w/o VBE
	4. Minimum Low
	5. Minimum High
	7. Game Setups
	6. Programming Setups

Enter a choice: 1	Time remaining: 08


The "MENUDEFAULT" statement defines the default section that'll
be executed if no keys are pressed (in this case, "FULL"), and the
number after the comma is the number of seconds that'll count down
before MENUDEFAULT takes action.

The "sections" I mentioned, are like this:

[DOSCD]
INCLUDE=FULL
device=c:\systools\aspi8dos.sys
device=c:\systools\plextor.sys /D:PLEX0001

[NOVBE]
INCLUDE=FULL

[FULL]
DEVICE=c:\windows\himem.sys
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=c:\windows\emm386.exe NOEMS FRAME=E000 RAM MIN=0 D=64 I=B000-B7FF
I=E000-EFFF
FILESHIGH=40
BUFFERSHIGH=40


(beware of line wrap in the 2nd "DEVICE=" line)
Note the names enclosed by [ ], that they correspond with the text after
the "=" in the block of [MENU] statements.

Most of this stuff should become fairly self explanatory, as you look over
it.  "INCLUDE", for example, does just what you'd think it would.  There's
also a "COMMON" section that can be defined.  Like:

[COMMON]
SHELL=C:\COMMAND.COM C:\ /E:512 /P


Whatever's contained in it, will be executed regardless of the menu choice.
In fact, your "more aware" installers will look for a COMMON section, to put
their stuff, so... it's not a bad idea to have an empty one at the end of your
config.sys file (you can have more than one COMMON section).

The statments, commands, program names... whatever, inside the sections,
behave as they would in any "normal" Config.sys.

The SUBMENU statement defines another list of menuitems, such as
the GAMES entry, above:

[GAMES]
MENUITEM=LEC,Dark Forces
MENUITEM=DSCNT,Descent
MENUITEM=DSCNT2,DescentII
MENUITEM=DUKE,Duke Nukem
MENUITEM=DOOM2,Doom2
MENUITEM=DOSM,DOS Mouse
MENUITEM=HEXN,Hexen / Citadel
MENUITEM=QUAKE,Quake


And those items work just like the main MENU menuitems (and I think
can contain additinal SUBMENU statements, but... don't remember for
sure, nor do I remember if it can have its own MENUDEFAULT line).

Then, when it comes to Autoexec.bat, there's a special environment
variable, called CONFIG, that the system sets, according to the selected
menuitem.

For example:

IF %CONFIG%==DOOM2 GOTO DOOM2

IF %CONFIG%==HEXN GOTO HEXN

IF %CONFIG%==DOSCD GOTO DOSCD
GOTO SETVARS

And so on, and so forth, with the labels like:

:DOOM2
stuff here for Doom
GOTO WRAPUP

:HEXN
stuff here for Hexen
GOTO WRAPUP

:DOSCD
LH c:\windows\command\mscdex.exe /D:PLEX0001 /M:10

:SETVARS
SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E MODE:0
SET DIRCMD=/O
SET TEMP=C:\SYSTOOLS\TEMP
SET TMP=C:\SYSTOOLS\TEMP
SET WINPMT=[WINDOWS] $P$G

:WRAPUP
PROMPT $P$G
SET PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND;C:\;C:\BMRT2.6\bin

IF NOT %CONFIG%==WHATEVER GOTO END
SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\SOME\OTHER\PATH

:END
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MODE CON: RATE=32 DELAY=2


Etc, etc...

Very handy stuff.  If you do have a copy of DOS 6, or something, it would be
worth pulling the help files off of it and reading up on the various batch file
commands (in other words, the above stuff is just supposed to serve as
an example).

Jeff

http://www.jefftturner.com