Uncreative Labs

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

So I decided that it would be a good idea to install an EMS card into my XT before the supply dries up. I mostly want it to play around in Windows 3.0. But, I was wonder if there is much else out there that can make use of EMS. I think perhaps some old Sierra games, Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3 and a few device drivers. Do any of you guys have experience with these cards. I wonder if you can make a recommendation on a model number.

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

I can't really say from an XT standpoint, but the 12MB card I have in my GEM AT clone 286/12 does a great job using himem.sys. By performance it's hardly recognizable as a 286, it could almost pass for a really slow 386, and Windows 3.1 runs great on it.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I'm thinking of going with a 32MB EMS board for my XT. I heard there are a couple of neat things you can do with them. I think some drivers will load into EMS, it can be used for some VGA games, running Windows 3.0 and running a RAMdrive. I'm really anxious about getting Windows 3.0 going in all it's EGA resolution glory. I have my V20s coming in the mail. They're $.50 each at DEBCO electronics.

Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 8:49 pm

EMS could almost be called Database/spreadsheet memory. Large datahouses with Lotus made EMS standards as in the day you could not navigate large spreadsheets without the data in memory. There were some games and Windows 1.0/2.0 programs that used EMS if it was there but Windows 3.0 support was a holdover from the older versions of windows. I believe word 1.0 for windows can use ems and old autocad versions can as well.

(PS has anyone ever made a list of all available programs for windows 1.0/2.0? Their so rare they should be archived)

Most device drivers can be loaded into EMS and usually if someone had an EMS card it would have the hard disk cache and device drivers loaded into it, but usually unless you were running cad or large databases large amounts of EMS was almost useless. The more flexible EMS cards that ran almost as well as XMS cards came out too late to be supported fully by much of anything. Its too bad we didn't stay in XT era for another yr or two to see were it would have gone.

The one EMS card I owed (made by ast) was installed in an XT with a aboveboard 386 and the ems memory was used for storing realtime plotting weather data from various probes at Toumey nursery in the U.P. It had an odd program that could use a modem to dial usefull data to a central authority as it came in. It was semi automated from 1983-1997

Good Luck

Guest

because of the 8088's inability to address above 1 meg, there isn't much you can do with a memory card for a 8088 system. ( with a 8088 cpu)
mostly all you can do is make a big ramdrive.
there were various schemes to load files at bootup to this drive and
speed up the functioning of the system.

the intel aboveboard--up to 8 megs per board--
worked well with a 286 for which is was designed. but it topped out at 16 megs, the limit for a 286. I asked intel at the time but the software for it was limited to the 16 meg top end. you could use more than one board and you could set the starting memory,address, and top ( amount of memory)

there was no battery and the board remembered , even after being on a shelf for a year or so. the boards would work in 386 and 486 systems with isa bus.

there was NO driver and no file in config.sys. But you needed the software to set the board initially.

possibly, there was a 14 or 16 pin socket on these or similar boards to permit use on a 8 bit slot. ( the socket was used for a jumper block)

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Yes, but that's not going to stop me from wanting one Very Happy

I am working on installing a 1.44MB drive in my XT at the moment. I must say that the physical mounting is a real pain in the @$$. It seems that it's just slightly too tall and too wide. I managed to squeeze it in somehow though. The same goes for my CD-ROM drive. I think the newer components are all slightly too large for the XT drive bays. I guess it's time to invest in a dremel.
You know, I recently realised with all the things I wanted to install into my XT, that I don't have enough IRQs for everything. So, it looks like a COM port and an LPT port are going to have to be put aside for more important things such an ethernet and soundcard. Anybody have the CMS chips for an SB 2.0?

Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 169 Location: behind you!

You need a lim ems board. The allows the 8088 to really be expanded through a 64k window of memory (which would allow more than 1mb of addressable ram with some programs) I forget what the largest lim ems board was but I think it was 8mb (perhaps 4?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory

BTW
I still have my super xt with 640k ram along with a 200mb ide hdd and a 16-bit stereo soundcard (8-bit interface). Perhaps it's time to dig it out again and remember the good times before I got into 3d gamming.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

It's never too late to get back into 2D 16-bit gaming. I'm in the process of building a sooper-dooper XT right now. Though, I'm going with a SCSI interface instead of IDE. I just upgraded to a V20 and an SB 2.0. There is a way to run the V20 and the rest of the XT at 10MHz, and I'm going for it! I think all of my cards are capable of handling the extra speed. I hope the EMS memory board agrees. Anyone ever ran civilization on an XT before? I couldn't load it on the 8088, but now I can get through the intro with the V20. Perhaps I just don't have enough conventional memory.