CAD problem under XP - SP2 (Desi-III)

[Jack Gillis]

This may not be an XP problem but I have posted it in alt.cad as well as
asked it of the developer and, as of yet, not found a solution.
If I have presumed too much by posting it here, please forgive and
ignore.

It concerns a CAD program, Desi-III, that requires it to be installed on
a either or FAT 16 or 32 partition. I am running XP SP2.

I downloaded Desi-III version 5.72, installed it in a 47KB FAT32
partition and set the parameters for Desi3.exe according to the info I
found when I downloaded the file as follows:

Conventional Memory Auto
Initial Environment 768
EMS Memory 4096
XMS Memory Auto
Checked Uses HMA
DPMI Memory Auto

I understand no changes are required in the Autoexec.bat or Config.Sys
files. They both, as it turns out, are empty and that may be the cause
of the following problem.

When I execute Desi3 I get an error message from 16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem
that says something like "The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal
instruction. And, a message from Desi3.exe itself that says " EMS
Frame Error -- Desi-II needs 128Kb EMS-Memory. Check the EMS Manager
command in the Config.Sys files." As I said there is no such command in
the config.sys file. Nor in config.nt that I can find.

I expect I need to add something to Config.sys or Config.nt but have no
idea what.
Can someone help me out? This is my first attempt to run a DOS program
which requires either EMS or XMS memory under Windows XP and I thought
windows xp would
provide enough to satisfy whatever program required it especially since
I had specified 4092 for it as above. The problem may be with SP2 and
not XP itself. And of course it could be with the way I have set things
up.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Bob I]

Please make a shortcut to the Desi-III exe file. No right click on the
Shortcut and select properties. you will find the settings you desire on
the "Memory" tab.

 

[Jack Gillis]

Thanks, Bob.

That is what I did to set the recommended values. mentioned below.
They came from the Desi site. Have tried changing those values to others
but I still get the same error message.

 

[Bob I]

Not having ever used this program I can only surmise that it is
"checking" for the available memory in a manner that throws the NTVDM
error. A "47 kb partition" seems a tad on the small size. Why not run it
from a 1.44 mb MS-DOS boot disk?

 

[Jack Gillis]

Not having ever used this program I can only surmise that it is
"checking" for the available memory in a manner that throws the NTVDM
error. A "47 kb partition" seems a tad on the small size. Why not run
it from a 1.44 mb MS-DOS boot disk?

That is a good idea. I've forgotten how to set up Expanded memory in
config.sys. Guess I will have to re-learn.

 

[hma]

DESI-III runs nicely in DOSBox, an Open Source DOS emulator (www.dosbox.com) originally developed for playing older DOS games in all kinds of OS (Windows, Linux, Apple OS X, Beos, BSD, etc). You can find the installation procedures on the renewed DESI-III site ( http://users.telenet.be/desi-iii )

Hugo Marien