What's better - Pure Dos or Win98 booting to DOS?

[JLR2000]

Ok, this may be a dumb question, but is there a difference between a "pure" dos install and a Win98 install changed to boot straight to dos?  Is there even a difference?

Trying to get as much as possible out of my PII350 with 192mb.

Thanks for your input!

[Jakobud]

First of all, why would you want to boot into Win98 and then goto DOS?  THe choices for me would seem to be either do Pure DOS or Pure Windows.  I think that you probably need to try both but I am will to bet that Pure DOS will probably give you better performance since you don't have a fast system.

[OSCAR]

Ok, this may be a dumb question, but is there a difference between a "pure" dos install and a Win98 install changed to boot straight to dos?  Is there even a difference?

Trying to get as much as possible out of my PII350 with 192mb.

Thanks for your input!

A big plus is that USB devices work in the Win98/DOS mode.  If you are going pure DOS, then USB support is determined by your motherboard.  Most current motherboards support a USB keyboard under DOS, but that's about it.

Performance varies.  I have found that the latest MAME builds seem to actually run faster in Windows than the DOS versions do under pure DOS.  I think this is the general consensus, but Howard or SPoonga could probably give you a better answer.

[rampy]

First of all, why would you want to boot into Win98 and then goto DOS?  THe choices for me would seem to be either do Pure DOS or Pure Windows.  I think that you probably need to try both but I am will to bet that Pure DOS will probably give you better performance since you don't have a fast system.

I'm not sure but what I *think* the original poster was referring to was the difference between installing windows 98 and F8'ing into command prompt only (or in msdos.sys setting bootgui=0)

AND

installing on a clean partition dos ONLY, say off a boot disk or  DOS 6.xx diskettes ... (i.e. no trace of 98 at all)

HC contends (and may be right) that some windows registry is loaded  when using so called windows 98 "pure dos"  boot to command line style...  which is why I presume the original poster was curious as to whether this costs him fps or not... (my contention is that the difference would be negligible, but have NOT done a side by side comparison,ymmv)

*Shrug*  i hope that clears it up a little (or opens the discussion a little more) but I could be totally off base

rampy

[JLR2000]

Rampy - you are exactly right on regarding what I was asking....

I had Win98 loaded, so I did the bootgui=0.  It was convenient to have 98 loaded for hooking up easily to the network when needed.

I have my Pole Position cab loaded  with PURE Dos (6.22 loaded from diskettes).  I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with one load being better than the other.....

Thanks for clarifying.....

[Geo]

JLR2000,

Two things about DOS 6.22 come to mind. It can't recognise FAT32 and those 4k clusters can be 'slack space' savers with a zillion MAME files on the HD. There is a max HD capacity limit that DOS 6.22 can see (don't recall the number, though).

Win98 DOS, which some refer to incorrectly as DOS 7, works fine with the absense of a Windows directory so I think its safe to say no registry info is needed until Windows is launched.

To get to the heart of your question, I've never run a benchmark between DOS 6.22 and Win98 DOS running a MAME game *but* it should be real easy to do with a BOOT floppy from each version. Any particular game or setup you'd like to test? It would be worth a try.

George

[Jakobud]

Ah gotcha.  I thought you were talking about booting into Win98 and then opening a DOS window or something.  I wouldn't worry about the 'difference' between what you are asking.  The only thing I would not be sure about it memory managers...like himem or emm386.  I'm not sure if those program are even necessary nowadays....haven't twiddled in pure dos for a while.

Anyways, regarding performance and stuff, basically, if I put together a new computer, say a 2 gig AMD system, and then load it with pure DOS and run DOS Mame, I will not get as good as performance as I would if I ran Win98 or 2000 with win version of Mame.

And vice versa, if I had a slow computer like yours (no offense) and I loaded up Win98 or 2000 and ran Win Mame, I would not get as good as performance as I would if I just did pure DOS.

Hopefully that will help you out.

[Wade]

If you are trying to sqeeze the most out of an older machine, make sure you use mame 0.36 instead of a new version.  A lot of games were unplayable with 0.63 and now those same games run at full speed!  Thanks to this suggestion made recently by others on this forum.
BTW, My machine is a 450mhz AMD with 32M ram.

Wade

[JLR2000]

Thanks for all the input guys.....

I think I will keep it the way it is for now.  The intent was to make a cocktail cab for Vertical classics using a PC I had already.  I thought a PII350 would be more than enough for that.......but of course, once built I've become a "GAME PIG"- trying to get as many vertical games as possible running on the cab even if I will never play them all...

Now that I think about it, I'm considering going with Mame 36 final.  I've heard the older Mame runs better in DOS and there will be plenty of classic Vertical games for this release.  My only concern is making sure my roms will work with that release....

[Dave Dribin]

Now that I think about it, I'm considering going with Mame 36 final.  I've heard the older Mame runs better in DOS and there will be plenty of classic Vertical games for this release.  My only concern is making sure my roms will work with that release....

I've always heard that about the old versions being faster, too, but I've never noticed a difference myself.  The DOS core hasn't really changed, AFAIK, so I see no reason why newer releases would be slower than older ones.  Has anyone actually quantified this?

-Dave

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah since the artwork system was added it's just a touch slower... you can only see it on older pcs (like p166 or lower)  

Other than that though, I've never noticed a diff either.