4 ms·

Would it have been worse? I don’t recall dos games running any slower under windows 95 than under dos.

by ido 3y ago

toyg 3y ago
I guess it depends on the hardware you had. On lower-spec machines, some games needed pretty much the entirety of one's RAM; Windows 95 obviously took some itself, so launching a game from it rather than booting to raw DOS would result in degraded performance.
rickdeckard 3y ago
On the Hardware I had it was definitely worse to run a game from within Win95. Oh, the flashbacks of tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to cram as close to 640KB RAM as possible just to execute a game... The "and here comes the HIMEM.SYS, here EMM386.EXE, then I need MSCDEX to get my CD-ROM...damn...okay, I don't really need the keyboard driver for this..."
- Propelloni 3y ago
  Thank the gods for 4DOS https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4DOS_Introduction_and_Installation_Guide https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4DOS_Introduction_and_Installat...
- chungy 3y ago
  Windows 95's DOS virtual machines provided pretty close to a full 640KB of free conventional memory to each VM launched. You could even control how much they get through PIF settings (right click the shortcut, go to Properties). There was also no need to fiddle with, eg, mouse and CD-ROM drivers; the DOS VM outsourced the support of those devices to Windows, and did not occupy conventional memory in the way it would under MS-DOS itself. Unless you're booting into MS-DOS Mode, in which case, you're back to all the old awfulness.
- sumtechguy 3y ago
  With that particular game it was a matter of memory. If you had 8MB or less free you were in for a BAD time. Ideally the thing really wants 16. So loading it inside of windows would be an interesting time as it uses its own chunk of memory off the top. Learned that years after I had finished the game. I had an 8MB machine and updated it to 16. Wing Commander 3 went from taking minutes to load each level to doing it in seconds.

Would it have been worse? I don’t recall dos games running any slower under windows 95 than under dos.

by ido 3y ago

Would it have been worse? I don’t recall dos games running any slower under windows 95 than under dos.

toyg 3y ago

I guess it depends on the hardware you had. On lower-spec machines, some games needed pretty much the entirety of one's RAM; Windows 95 obviously took some itself, so launching a game from it rather than booting to raw DOS would result in degraded performance.

rickdeckard 3y ago

On the Hardware I had it was definitely worse to run a game from within Win95. Oh, the flashbacks of tweaking config.sys and autoexec.bat to cram as close to 640KB RAM as possible just to execute a game... The "and here comes the HIMEM.SYS, here EMM386.EXE, then I need MSCDEX to get my CD-ROM...damn...okay, I don't really need the keyboard driver for this..."

Propelloni 3y ago
Thank the gods for 4DOS https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4DOS_Introduction_and_Installation_Guide https://wiki.preterhuman.net/4DOS_Introduction_and_Installat...
chungy 3y ago
Windows 95's DOS virtual machines provided pretty close to a full 640KB of free conventional memory to each VM launched. You could even control how much they get through PIF settings (right click the shortcut, go to Properties). There was also no need to fiddle with, eg, mouse and CD-ROM drivers; the DOS VM outsourced the support of those devices to Windows, and did not occupy conventional memory in the way it would under MS-DOS itself. Unless you're booting into MS-DOS Mode, in which case, you're back to all the old awfulness.
sumtechguy 3y ago
With that particular game it was a matter of memory. If you had 8MB or less free you were in for a BAD time. Ideally the thing really wants 16. So loading it inside of windows would be an interesting time as it uses its own chunk of memory off the top. Learned that years after I had finished the game. I had an 8MB machine and updated it to 16. Wing Commander 3 went from taking minutes to load each level to doing it in seconds.