In addition to several new full-screen utilities, like
DEFRAGto defragment your hard disk (licensed from Symantec),MSBACKUPto efficiently backup your hard disk (also licensed from Symantec), andMSAVto check for viruses (licensed from Central Point Software), there were a number of new command-line programs, such asCHOICE,DELTREE,MOVE,MSCDEX, andSMARTDRV.But the biggest addition to MS-DOS 6.00 was a new feature called DoubleSpace (dubbed “MagicDrive” internally) that automatically compressed everything on your hard disk, providing up to “double” the amount of effective disk space – or more, or less, depending on how compressible your files were overall.
Despite growing up with MS-DOS since our first computer was a 286 PC in 1990 or so, I never used any of these advanced features. I was 6-7, and just wanted to play games, basically. It’s only now that I’m much older that I actually admire the crazy things people have managed to squeeze out of – or into – DOS.
Pour one out for every kid who thought that using Stacker AND Doublespace on the same drive would give you four times the storage.
LOL, I remember talking EXACTLY about this while in high school, denying it would ever work.
I used DOS a lot and I never used any of those either.
Well, you had to use some ATAPI/APSI driver and MSCDEX to make any use of that shiny new CD-ROM drive.
Also, sparing some precious RAM for disk caching with SmartDrive was really worth it.
Well, you had to use some ATAPI/ASPI driver and MSCDEX to make any use of that shiny new CD-ROM drive.
Also, sparing some precious RAM for disk caching with SmartDrive was really worth it.
This WordPress thing is all f*cked up.
Remembering the people who loss data with the first versions of DoubleSpace that wasn’t able to uncompress its own format. A quick update solved the problem, but alas, damage was done.
I remember spending much more time than I should have in perfecting the config.sys and autoexec.bat so that I would save that precious few kbs on my 2MB 386.
Since then, I should have learned not to invest a lot of time into perfecting tools. Still, writing this on a win7, because it’s setup just the way I like, with around 50 kb of registry changes applied over time.
Conventional memory was a really scarce resource, so it’s not like you had a choice.
Also, defaults settings were horrible, and documentation was confusing. Oh well, now I realize not much has changed in the wonderful the MS/PC world.
You only had a single config.sys/autoexec.bat setup for everything? 🙂 I remember learning the rudiments of batch file programming in order to create a menu that would let me select from a handful of different configurations (EMM386 loaded, HIMEM loaded, CD-ROM driver, joystick driver, etc). Prior to that, I had a series of floppy disks with different config.sys/autoexec.bat files for different setups (wordprocessing, gaming without joystick, gaming with joystick, etc).
I think my best setup had just over 600 KB of conventional memory available for programs to use. 🙂
i was there 3000 years ago…. All joking aside I never used double space because I didn’t trust it to be reliable enough. In addition, the loss of performance could be significant on a computer that was already slow in itself like my 386dx. I remember that when my parents bought it it had a 120 megabyte disk and it was enormous.
I don’t remember “MultiConfig” being named that way.
Also, you quickly learned that trying to make a new config.sys option for every use case, and maintaining the whole mess of menus and chained autoexec.bat sections, was totally futile.
It was not that hard to come up with a good enough for all uses configuration, then edit/comment/reboot whenever you HAD to adjust.
Nic057,
I found that I generally needed two configurations to cover most use cases. One with expanded memory, and the other with just extended memory, as confusing as this was.
https://dfarq.homeip.net/expanded-vs-extended-memory-ems-vs-xms/
The problem usually wasn’t that expanded memory or drivers that were inherently incompatible, but that every driver loaded would decrease the amount of real mode memory available and real memory was precious. This is what motivated different configurations. Obviously editing config.sys/autoexec.bat every time could accomplish the same thing even if that got tedious.
Once more programs were using 32bit DOS extenders, real mode memory limits mattered much less.