#Upgrading DOS 5.1
4 messages in this thread
I am considering upgrading from DOS 5.1 to 6.2. I am using 3D Studio
Ver 3 and Animator Pro ver 1.3. Are there any compelling reasons for doing so
such as significant speed improvements etc?
Well, one of the most compelling reasons people will tell you to
upgrade is to use the doublespace option. This feature allows you to
compress your hard drive to gain more storage space. This is very
good, but please remember:
3DS, more than any other application, relies on the VMM swap drive
that Phar Lap creates for memory intensive tasks such as rendering.
This swap drive should be placed on an UNCOMPRESSED drive.
What many people do to gain some benifit from Disk compression is to
compress a portion of their drive, and leave another prtion
uncompressed. Then direct the Phar Lap swap files to the uncompressed
section of the hard drive.
P.S. You can direct the swap file to a certain drive with the CFIG386
3DS -SWAPDIR command. Refer to your reference manual for details.
Other than that, there are some added bonuses like virus protection,
file recovery, and backup features. None of these should present any
problems with 3DS.
In addition to Brian's comments: there is an improved memory manager,
better control over Config.sys and Autoexec.bat during boot-up,
overwrite protection for the copy command, more DIR command options,
a scandisk utility for hard disk problems, and commas in directory
file sizes (12,345,678) to improve readability.
This is true, however, personally, I feel the DOS memory managers still do not
give people the control over their memory (at least easily) that is needed for
intensive applications like 3DS. I'm am much more in favor of using a more
robust and controllable memory manager, like QEMM.
-Brian