Quick background...old voicemail computer died last week...was originally installed in like 1996...simple setup, 2 modems in ISA slots, HDD, 3.5" drive, DOS, voicemail software...I figured it was the power supply, so I swapped it out, no luck, figured its the motherboard, so I find an old system with ISA slots, plug in the modems, move the HDD into that machine, and use that as the new VM machine

it took me awhile to get everything configured, even had to bust out an old copy of QEMM to get the expanded memory allocated properly so that everything would run (if you were a DOS gamer, you know how difficult it can be to free up EMS)...anyway, I got a setup that works fine...however during boot, I get a message about how some of the memory is loaded in a certain place and how that limits conventional memory usage...which is fine for me, since I have it configured for the VM setup...but I am forced to hit spacebar (or any key) during bootup to get past that screen...after that, the batch files I have setup boot fine and load the voicemail machine

My question is, is there either a command I can add to the CONFIG.SYS file immediately after the line that causes the memory message, that would essentially be telling the computer to hit a key, and bypass that message? Or is there anything in the CMOS setup that would allow it to ignore any boot warning messages?

Thanks.

9/7/2010 8:03:28 PM

Halt On: [No Errors]

9/7/2010 8:25:10 PM

I'll check the BIOS settings tomorrow

9/7/2010 9:57:40 PM

Do you know the particular command that is causing the screen to appear? Can you set any flags for the command that will stop it from warning you?

9/8/2010 2:59:02 AM

Ok, I couldn't find anything in the BIOS about Halt On

The message I get during boot is this:

Quote :

"QEMM386: Warning: The EMS Page Frame has been put into conventional memory, thereby reducing the amount of conventional memory available. Press any key to continue..."

The line in the CONFIG.SYS file that is causing this to popup is the following:

DEVICE=C:\QEMM\QEMM386.SYS RAM X=C000-C7FF R:10 ARAM=D000-D3FF X=D400 D4FF X=D600-D6FF X=D800-D8FF X=DA00-DAFF X=DC00-DCFF X=DE00-DEFF ST:M BE:N XSTI:13 XSTI:40 S=C300-C3FF S=C700-C7FF S=F700-F7FF S=FE00-FFFF

Also, the two modems are loaded into memory addresses D000 and D200

9/8/2010 1:24:23 PM

anybody know of a comprehensive list of switch modifiers for QEMM386.SYS or EMM386.EXE? I wish I knew what some of the things like "R:10" and "XSTI:40" even meant

9/8/2010 2:51:59 PM

wow, i remember the days of fucking with EMS

9/8/2010 8:10:44 PM

Yeah this is way beyond me, sorry bro.

9/8/2010 8:20:43 PM

I think I got it figured out, enough anyway

There was a setting in the voicemail software that was set to exit to DOS at like 7:30pm every day (not sure why)...it was ok on the other computer, because it didn't just exit to DOS, it automatically rebooted, ran SCANDISK and booted back up...like 1 minute of downtime each day...but I just changed the time to 00:00 so it doesn't reboot every day

At first I thought it was rebooting if there were more than a certain number of lines in use, since we recently decreased the number of lines and the VM was looking for more, but I guess it was just a setting in the VM software...so it shouldnt be an issue unless the power goes out long enough to drain the UPS

9/8/2010 9:28:39 PM

http://textfiles.fisher.hu/computers/all-help.tec Try that?

9/9/2010 12:08:36 AM