Interesting. From the 7 years or so that I used DOS I never once learned anything about those things. I did learn about DOS however.

Lord, what would this forum be without me? In the caves still.

Hahaha! I didn't know mircosoft was in bussines of making exploits

Now this discussion is really getting silly. Nobody claims "MS-DOS" will get more important. Learning how to use it can never hurt, however, because it will teach you how computers work. It'll teach you about the structure of file systems, it'll teach you about hardware access via specialized drivers, it'll teach you about memory and so on and so on. You won't get any of that knowledge using Microsoft's later exploits.

Yes, but of course, you don't need to know about config.sys and autoexec.bat

It does, windows 2003 server as extende support for batch file processing. If you're ntfs partition is buggered up, the command shell (a dos like environment) is your only hope.

While these are not true dos environment the commands and the general way the work will help you a lot. Not forgetting nix command lines.

Ahem... To be purposefully ignorant is to ignore how DOS works and not be able to make it work either... So easy...

Pure Folly.



To be purposefully ignorant is to pretend that DOS will somehow matter more as time goes on.

He's not asking what games to play, he wants to get the ones he wants to to work.

And it can't hurt to learn DOS. No sense in being purposfully ignorant

Actually, I got Civ to work with DosBox (thought I mentioned that before). It also works with VDMsound, but there's a performance hit in windows that's not tolerable (due not to VDMsound but how Civ was programmed originally for DOS).

But he should still follow my advice. I would never recommend someone to get into DOS learning
at this point, especially if they've never used it much before.

Play new(er) games.

Don't follow A.E.I advice. He's only frustrated because he can't manage to make the sound work on Civilization

Most of the older games are way more worth playing than newer games... I just made the experience with Fantasy Star Online on the Xbox.

Exactly.

All the advice offered here is futile. Save yourself a lot of trouble: play new games.

It was a keychain drive, USB connection. The files and folders were identical. To make it more "real-life", file sizes were slightly different, ranging from 20kB to 50kB.

Both computers still had factory-installs. The Win98SE machine is 3 years old, the WinXP 7 months. Both were recently defragmented. Out of the two computers, the Win98 computer takes the most beating - lots of small installs, lots of files. HDD 80% full (as opposed to 30% on the WinXP computer. The Win98 computer is much weaker (P3-600MHz, 128MB RAM -vs- Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB RAM).

This difference in speed is baffling. There are other file management problems as well (for example, files created or modified in WinXP always show up with all-caps filenames under Win98), but those are only a nuisance.

Hmmm, intriguing stuff. What do you mean by external drive? What kind of connectivity was it? Also, how big where the folders you tested it with?

How long was it since a clean install on the 98 machine compared to the XP? and how much of a bashing had each OS had? were they similar?

Ive never noticed such a significant differance in speeds, I have 3 FAT32 partitions across 2 physical drives and I dont experience such difficulties. Maybe its worse when mixing partitions??

My complaint was about a very poor (slow) file management on an external drive that's FAT-formated. When I connect it to a Win98 machine, the file management is blazing fast.

Just recently, I did a small test. I loaded up 30 files into two identical folders on the disk. I deleted one folder when I connected the drive to a Win98 computer, and the other on a WinXP computer. The whole process took less than 3 seconds when using Win98, and a full minute when I used WinXP. I concluded that WinXP is unable to efficiently handle FAT partitions.

(On a separate note, ever since I created a FAT partition on my WinXP computer, starting up WinXP always launches a scandisk for that partition for some reason.)

Maybe you should defragment your hard disk once in a while

My XP computer came set to NTFS. Can RAM-Disk do something about that, or am I not remembering the limitations of that?

The reason why they are all NTFS though NetDanzr is because when they had the OS installed whoever it is thats responsible for your new systems specified NTFS in the installation process. The default setting(which is nothing more than an question during installation) is FAT32. Or at least it is the version i have - 2002.



I find XP gets more sluggish with time, i.e. when youve done a clean install it starts up like Ben Johnson on steroids, after youve installed a few programs, deleted them, installed some more, deleted them, its more like starting a 50 year old car. Its never crossed my mind that it could be the file system's fault but thinkikng about it it probably is. Ive never had the sluggish problem on PC's at work - and they have all been NT4/2000 running NTFS.

Edited by fretz at 20:00 on July, 01st 2003

Just a note on "DOSBox": it won't help you with any newer games (starting approximately with '94), because it doesn't work with DOS-extenders.

Not entirely so. My computer (and every computer in the office) that came with WinXP (both Home and Pro editions) came at NTFS disks. In fact, I have noticed that WinXP is incredibly sluggish with FAT32. For example, I have an external USB flash drive, which is formated as FAT32, and file management takes impossibly long (deleting a single file averages 2 seconds, renaming a file a second, etc.)

As for playing DOS-only games at WinXP systems, your best option is to create a dual-boot, and put MS-DOS on the C: drive (one of the very few advantages of WinXP is that it can boot from other than the C: drive). Your second best option is to try DOSBox and/or VDMSound. Your third best option is to go to VOGONS and ask around.

No, When installing you have the option to use NTFS, but as standard its FAT32, at least it is on Pro, i imagine the home version is the same.