C:\>_

DOS system specs

Hardware

My DOS box is built on a board that was very popular in the late 90s, so the manual is available, and I have followed well-worn paths in setting it up. For every issue, the answer is posted somewhere.

This board has a USB controller, so I went to a tech store and picked up a 9-pin USB interface at a $2 closeout price. I also upgraded to the fastest Pentium processor documented for the board, and I finally found a CD-ROM drive that the BIOS will recognize.

I made an interesting discovery when I upgraded my processor - namely, which of my programs are saddled with the infamous Borland runtime error. In my case, none of the affected programs are among my favorites. But for users who want a machine that is plenty fast under DOS, but not quite fast enough to trigger the runtime error, I recommend the Pentium 166 I used prior to the upgrade. It delivered good performance and never revealed this error, even though I had it slightly overclocked.

Board:            Asus TX97-E, 66mhz, reset to 75mhz, 83mhz possible.
Processor:      Pentium 233 (266mhz)
Memory:         64mb (128mb DIMM)
Sound card:   Soundblaster Pro (ISA)
Video card:    Trident S3 4mb
HDD:               Pretec IDE flash drive, 128mb

Default DOS memory configuration mapped by mi.com

                                
        Total bytes owned
Addr.  Low area  High area   Program or device driver
-----  --------  ---------  ---------------------------
0269h    2,528        ..     Device=HIMEM     Attr=8000h  Name=XMSXXXX0
0308h      208        ..     Device=UMBPCI    Attr=E000h  Name=UMBPCIXX
032Eh  641,296        ..     
 ---- Begin High (Upper) Memory ----
C802h      ..         528    Device=XMSDSK    Attr=6002h  Drive D
C829h      ..      24,112    Device=USBASPI   Attr=C000h  Name=SCSIMGR$
CE0Dh      ..       5,520    Device=DI1000DD  Attr=68C2h  Drive E
CF6Ch      ..       5,008    Device=VIDE-CDD  Attr=C800h  Name=SHCD001 
D0A6h      ..       3,248    Device=NANSI     Attr=8013h  Name=CON     
D239h      ..       3,952    COMMAND   
D2F1h      ..       5,792    SHSUCDX  
D473h      ..      11,392    ST               (screen capture program)
D4FEh      ..       6,160    SNS      I       (custom font)
D681h      ..       1,136    ZENO             (text video enhancer)
E940h      ..       3,312    CTMOUSE  

654,336 bytes (639k) total DOS 7.10 conventional memory.  
641,296 bytes (626k) largest executable program.  66,768 bytes if loaded high.

High memory is managed by DOS.
Memory allocation strategy 00h: First fit.  UMBs linked.