Falcon 3.0 under OS/2 2.0

By Eric Pinnell.

Dear Falconers,

Many of you have been trying to run Falcon 3.0 under IBM's new OS/2 2.0 operating system, but have been confused and bewildered by the huge array of DOS settings available to you. So, after consulting technical manuals (The IBM Red Books), here are a list of settings you need, and why they must be set that way:

(If Falcon is running in background, it will suspend processing. Otherwise, it will eat too much CPU cycles) (This will give us extra memory for the DOS session) (This will give us some more memory) (More memory by using Upper Memory Blocks) (Falcon Doesn't use DPMI memory, so we gain speed by not emulating DPIM) (We don't use DPMI) (This speeds up BIOS functions) (Makes Idle detection a long time) (this disables idle detection, so Falcon will always be checked to see if it needs CPU (We only plan to use the program with the 1 mouse pointer) (Saves memory by not allocating video buffer) (Speeds processing by putting ROM in RAM) (Lets app know when switching to full screen mode) Eliminates 8514 video buffer overhead) (For mapping HMA) (Not using XMS memory) (Any HMA request will be filled)
 * DOS_BACKGROUND_EXECUTION to OFF
 * DOS_HIGH to ON
 * DOS_LASTDRIVE to D (or whatever your highest drive letter is)
 * DOS_UMB to ON
 * DPMI_DOS_API to DISABLED
 * DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT to 0
 * HW_ROM_TO_RAM to ON
 * IDLE_SECONDS to 60
 * IDLE_SENSITIVITY to 100
 * MOUSE_EXCLUSIVE_ACCESS to ON
 * VIDEO_ONDEMAND_MEMORY to OFF
 * VIDEO_ROM_EMULATION to ON
 * VIDEO_SWITCH_NOTIFICATION to ON
 * VIDEO_8514_XGA_IOTRAP to OFF (Only for 8514 Cards)
 * XMS_HANDLES to 32
 * XMS MEMORY_LIMIT to 0
 * XMS_MINIMUM_HMA to 0

With these settings, you can expect to get a frame rate of roughly 70% of that of DOS (your mileage may vary). You will find that if you had memory manager problems before, OS/2 is much more stable and less likely to crash and burn.

If you have any comments, please feel free to address my CIS UID at 70031,435.

Eric Pinnell