Strange issue with DOS games

[Ryan]

Hi.

I have discovered a strange DOS game problem on my oldest computer.  It's got the same two hard drives it's had for years.  The Western Digital 8GB drive, and a Quantum Fireball 3GB drive.  When I run Doom on the WD drive, sometimes frames get skipped which can mess me up.  Mysteriously when I play it on the Quantum Fireball drive, no frame skipping occurs.  No similar symptoms appear on Windows-based games.

[DaveLembke]

What OS and Version are the 2 drives running? I am guessing that both drives have an OS installed and so you chose at boot to load the OS off of one vs the other?

The original DOOM game for DOS ran mostly in System RAM. If your running in DOS 6.22 or earlier your config.sys files may be set up differently between the 2 drives for the EMS and XMS memory config and so your base memory may also be different between the 2 OS environments which can affect performance. Additionally any differences in drivers installed can also affect game performance.

If one of the drives is strictly DOS such as the 3GB and the other is Windows for the 8GB where your running the game then from command shell of Windows then we need to know that info as well to see what you have going on.

[Ryan]

What OS and Version are the 2 drives running? I am guessing that both drives have an OS installed and so you chose at boot to load the OS off of one vs the other?

The original DOOM game for DOS ran mostly in System RAM. If your running in DOS 6.22 or earlier your config.sys files may be set up differently between the 2 drives for the EMS and XMS memory config and so your base memory may also be different between the 2 OS environments which can affect performance. Additionally any differences in drivers installed can also affect game performance.

If one of the drives is strictly DOS such as the 3GB and the other is Windows for the 8GB where your running the game then from command shell of Windows then we need to know that info as well to see what you have going on.

Thanks.  I will get the config info when I have time.  The OS I am running on that computer is Win98SE and MS-DOS 7.1.  The OS is loaded off the C:\ drive, which is the Western Digital drive.

[patio]

The WD is failing...

[Geek-9pm]

A long time ago in another era there was an OS that could not handle single portion huge hard drives. What was it called?? Oh, now I remember. Windows 98.

If you do not fix the problem, you will trash you data. It is not a hard drive failure. It is a design limit in the way Windows 98 sees the the hard drive.
The operative word is 'truncation' and will cause unexpected things to go bad.

[BC_Programmer]

is one drive running MS-DOS while the other is running Windows? Because it would be likely that the different environment are the cause of different behaviour, not the drives, in that case.

A long time ago in another era there was an OS that could not handle single portion huge hard drives. What was it called?? Oh, now I remember. Windows 98.

If you do not fix the problem, you will trash you data. It is not a hard drive failure. It is a design limit in the way Windows 98 sees the the hard drive.
The operative word is 'truncation' and will cause unexpected things to go bad.

The issue was in FDISK and only applied to drives larger than 64GB.

[Ryan]

The WD is failing...

Good thing I bought another hard drive just in case.  However, I got no problems last time I played Quake II on it...  Perhaps a test with Doom95 might be needed in the future.  I did download a hard drive health program a long time ago and when I checked it, it showed no problems with the drive.

is one drive running MS-DOS while the other is running Windows? Because it would be likely that the different environment are the cause of different behaviour, not the drives, in that case.

The issue was in FDISK and only applied to drives larger than 64GB.

The C:\ drive is running Windows.  The D:\ drive is just a slave drive being correctly detected in both Windows and DOS and has no OS installed on it.  It has been used as a secondary drive for years and hasn't been the primary drive since the days when the computer was new.

[Ryan]

Windows 98 never crashes by itself on that computer, by the way.  No files or folders go missing and I'm able to access them fairly quickly.  I don't hear odd noises often from the drive, but if they pick up I will replace the drive after backing up certain games.

[patio]

The WD tool is called Data Lifeguard Tools...i create a bootable CD and run the DOS version...

[Geek-9pm]

For what it is worth department.
Years ago a friend had 10 GB hard drive. I had to partition the first of thathard drive to avoid an issue with the 8 GB boundary.
With MS-DOS the FDISK was the only utility. 
Some recent posts on other forums do not have the correct history.
I have no idea where this is documented. 

[patio]

Neither do i...

[Ryan]

I have an update regarding the situation.  I installed the Sound Blaster 16 Value CT2840 into the computer and got the proper drivers installed, but it had to be done manually.  I removed the IRQ 10-15 jumper so it does not conflict with anything using those IRQs.  It is fully working in DOS and Windows 98SE.  It has a built-in OPL chip rather than CQM.

I have a report about both Doom and Wolfenstein 3D.  Doom's performance was still suffering a bit with the AWE64, and when I used the 16 Value, Doom ran even more smoothly.  On top of it, Wolfenstein 3D stopped hanging in DOS and has even better sounding music this time.  Also, earlier I defragged the smaller of the two hard drives prior to the Sound Blaster 16 Value going in.

Do you think there might be something up with the Sound Blaster AWE64 if Wolfenstein 3D hanged using it but not when using the Sound Blaster 16 Value?

[Geek-9pm]

Found in a search:
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?25110-Hard-drive-size-limit-in-MSDOS-5
He says the limit was about 9 GB in an old version of MS-DOS.

DOS 5.0 can access up to 9.8GB of the drive, but by limitations of the FAT filesystem; each partition cannot be bigger than 2GB. The 9.8GB limit is there as a ressult of limitations in the BIOS Int 13h disk I/O interface.May 1, 2011

This is also in the CH forum archives.
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000273.htm
The CH article is better. **

Not able to see over 8.4 GB hard drive
...
Computer utilizing MS-DOS 6.22 or lower.
If you are currently running MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 3.x or lower do not support this size of hard drives.

If you are using any old DOS you can not just pretend there is not problem because you don't think so. Been there, done that. 

The  best thing is to use a newer version of DOS and format the drive again.

** Bookmark the CH article.It is good and has information for older Windows.

[BC_Programmer]

Geek-9pm, this has nothing to do with drive geometry limitations; They are running Windows 98SE and their drive(s) are either recognized at the appropriate size or they are using smaller partition sizes.

Those issues do not result in performance quirks between drives, Nor would the behaviour change by changing Audio hardware.

Do you think there might be something up with the Sound Blaster AWE64 if Wolfenstein 3D hanged using it but not when using the Sound Blaster 16 Value?

Is the AWE64 the PCI or ISA version? The PCI AWE64, the "AWE64 Value", as I understand uses some sort of driver 'trickery' to get MS-DOS compatibility, whereas the SB16 PCI is directly compatible. Perhaps that is the difference which is causing different behaviour there.

[Ryan]

Geek-9pm, this has nothing to do with drive geometry limitations; They are running Windows 98SE and their drive(s) are either recognized at the appropriate size or they are using smaller partition sizes.

Those issues do not result in performance quirks between drives, Nor would the behaviour change by changing Audio hardware.


Is the AWE64 the PCI or ISA version? The PCI AWE64, the "AWE64 Value", as I understand uses some sort of driver 'trickery' to get MS-DOS compatibility, whereas the SB16 PCI is directly compatible. Perhaps that is the difference which is causing different behaviour there.

The AWE64 is the ISA version.  All of the cards in that computer are ISA cards except for the Sound Blaster Live! Gold CT4620 and the Diamond Monster 3D II.  The only two other cards I have in there aside from the Sound Blaster AWE64 and the Sound Blaster 16 Value are the Intel Etherexpress 10+ and the Roland SCC-1.  Speaking of the SCC-1, it has problems dropping notes in Doom II Map 05's music.  The Roland SC-55 module is the same as the card, and doesn't drop those notes.  Something doesn't make sense, but I'm not here about the SCC-1.