After Hours — Running Flight Sims with Win 95

Windows 95 – Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks

Loading Windows 95 (or Macintosh 88! – Ed) is a bit like being at the takeoff end of the runway on your first solo — you have taken the training, you are pretty sure you can handle the situation, but feel very nervous about the end result. Do you push the throttle open and take off, or wimp out and taxi back to the lines?

So I loaded the CD-ROM with the Windows 95 upgrade, typed ‘Setup’ and watched the action. The install programme is a work of art, in my case flawlessly finding all the equipment and programmes. You can elect to save the old MS-DOS and Windows information and un-install later, but in my case it was ‘Damn the Sidewinders — full afterburner and let’s rock’n’roll!” However, throwing caution to the wind has a price. During the installation, the programme rejected QEMM and I had to use an old copy of my non-optimal Microsoft Config.Sys and Autoexec.Bat files. QEMM is a far superior memory manager for most flight simulators, and I use it for all simulations except quirky ones like Wing Commander 3. I breathed a sigh of relief when the Windows 95 desktop appeared. Now to see how the new dog performs. Well, a dog it was. Nothing except Windows programmes ran. Some programmes locked the machine, while others bailed out reporting memory deficiencies. I wished that I had elected to use the ‘un-install’ option so I could retreat to the reliable MS-DOS and Windows combination. Since I had fallen through that trapdoor, I either had to make Windows 95 work, or spend several hours reloading software from the core operating system up. Why is it that IBM PCs are so pernickety about memory management? The answer is the way IBM designed the machine way back in the early 1980s. Imagine that the memory in which the computer’s programme runs like a road. Some smart operators such as Tandy put all the road building plant and support equipment at the beginning of the road, and built in a clear highway from there. Not the ever wise IBM. They decided that 640k of road was an unimaginable amount of length in which to run a programme (which it was at the time), and put all the support services between 640k and 1024k. In short order, programmers used all of the 640k and demanded more. Soon, it became possible to use a road length of 1024k out to 8000k, and now 16,000k is the norm. Powerful programmes zoom down the road, but quickly crash into the service areas between 640k and 1024k. They must cautiously negotiate the path through and around these areas, before screaming off down the memory superhighway past 1024k. Sounds dumb, and it is. We all expected Windows 95 to solve these problems, but in reality, it is just an advanced version of Windows sitting on top of a slightly modified DOS. So the old and frustrating problem of optimising memory is still with us. To run Windows 95, you click on ‘Start’ and a menu appears. Using the MS-DOS prompt in the Programmes section, I looked at the memory available with the MEM command, to find that less than 500k was free — little wonder that nothing ran. The MEM /C command showed a nasty new addition to the overcrowded memory — VMM32, which takes about 80k and is no doubt a 32 bit Virtual Memory Manager for Windows 95. The Memmaker command still works in DOS, and after some experimentation, I managed to leave the memory optimised for Windows 95, load all the device drivers and still have 579k free. One secret was to use settings on Smartdrv that limit buffer and cache sizes and hence reduce the memory requirements. A few programmes would now run, but overall it was still unsatisfactory as memory hungry programmes such as Falcon 3 and Strike Eagle 3 — my favourites — simply ejected when called on. The descriptions ‘persistent’ and ‘relentless’ have been used about my approach to getting computers to work. Using XTGOLD – a dangerous programme inside Windows 95 which uses long file names — I found a vague hint on how to run MS-DOS programmes inside Windows 95 in a text file called ‘Programmes.Txt’. This clue set me on a path that makes Windows 95 a preferred Flight Simulation environment to the old DOS — Windows 3.1x environment. The secret follows. Click on ‘Start’ on the Windows welcome screen, using the RIGHT mouse button and a menu with ‘Explore’ will open. Select ‘Explore’ and a presentation like File Manager will appear. Negotiate the file tree on the C: drive, opening the Windows directory and moving down until you find ‘Start Menu’. Click on ‘Start Menu’ to open the screen and from ‘File’ and then ‘New’ select ‘Folder’. This will open a new group which will create a set of menu selections when you initially open ‘Start’ with the LEFT mouse button. I used an imaginative name ‘Simulations’ for mine. Close the screens to get back to Explorer, and click on the folders or directories where you have stored your simulation. I keep all mine in sub-directories of a C:\Games directory. Using the point and click method, open the directory with the simulation that you require Windows 95 to run and find the file that starts the programme — usually it has an EXE, COM or BAT extension. The documentation generally tells you the name to type to get the wheels rolling. Now click on this programme with the RIGHT mouse button, a menu will open, and you click on ‘Create Shortcut’. A new file will appear with a tiny MS-DOS icon with the name ‘Shortcut to ….’ Put the cursor on the file, hold down the left mouse button and drag’n’drop it onto the ‘Simulations’ folder you created in the Windows — Startup directory. Now open the Simulation folder with Explorer. Again using the right mouse button, select ‘Properties’ and a box with a lot of tabbed options on the top will appear. Select ‘Programme’ and check the ‘Close on Exit’ button to make the programme reload Windows 95 when it ends. Take a deep breath, and click the ‘Advanced’ button which now enters another box to set advanced programming options. This is where the trickiest of programmes can be coaxed to run under Windows 95. Select the ‘MS-DOS’ mode, uncheck the ‘Warn before entering MS-DOS Mode’ box, and press the ‘Specify a new MS-DOS Configuration’ button. The CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT windows open for entry. If you have experimented at the DOS prompt and know the settings the simulation needs to run, you type them in here. Alternatively, clicking on the ‘Configuration’ button goes to yet another screen which offers some simple choices regarding EMS memory, disk caching etc. This step takes some experimentation, and you may need to have several tries, progressively tuning the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files until the simulation runs. For example, if you need EMS memory, you need to type the argument ‘RAM’ after the Device=C:\Windows\EMM386.EXE line. The advantage is that, notwithstanding the small windows, you can enter and edit the text in the same way as you would in any other Windows text programme, avoiding the need for another text processor such as XTGOLD. Close the windows all the way back to the ‘Start’ option. Now open ‘Start’ with the left mouse button, then open ‘Simulations’ and next the programme you have just set to run in DOS mode. Windows 95 will reboot with the new CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files optimised for this simulation. On exit, Windows 95 will reload the configuration optimised for Windows programmes. So there you have it. You can set Windows 95 to run optimally for Windows programmes, yet load MS-DOS programmes into a computer optimised for that particular programme — and all automated so just mouse clicks are required. The process is ‘fiddly’ and initially requires several attempts as you wend your way through the maze of menus, folders, choices and text boxes. If you lack patience, you can treat it like an adventure game and keep trying until it works the way you want. Having solved the puzzle, the reward is a simple interface that lets you select all your programmes to run in an optimised environment. So with persistence and patience, you can teach even a new dog old tricks.