Hello friends of old-school technology ;-)

Who still remembers 386MAX from Qualitas? Next to QEMM it was one of the big memory managers for DOS and Windows 3.x. Qualitas released the sources under the GNU GPL v3 some time ago – and Open 386MAX is my fork that builds everything with open-source tools on Linux (Open Watcom, JWasm, jwlink), replaces the parts that only existed as binaries and develops 386MAX further.

It is the whole package: 386MAX.SYS, 386LOAD, 386UTIL, MAXIMIZE, ASQ, the MAX shell, ExtraDOS, the Windows tools (MAXedit, MAXmeter, PIF editor, GoAhead, DOSMAX, Toolbox) and the DOS and Windows installers – in English and German, without serial numbers or registration.

There are two new releases:

Open 386MAX 8.58 – the stable maintenance line, bug fixes only:

• A20 handling fixed (port 92h, INT 15h 2400h–2402h)
• INT 15h E801h/E820h no longer show 386MAX’s own memory as free
• fixes in XMS, EMS, VCPI (machines with 1 GB of RAM and more) and nested DPMI callbacks
• no more fake Weitek/EMC87 coprocessor on 486 and newer
• SETUPDOS, MAXIMIZE, STRIPMGR and ASQ know FreeDOS and DR DOS (FDCONFIG.SYS, DCONFIG.SYS, FDAUTO.BAT, …) and their memory managers
• ASQ no longer writes into the system ROM area (crash under UEFI with CSMWrap)
• every fix has its own test in the regression suite

Open 386MAX 9.00-beta1 – the first test release of the new development line, not for production use:

• QEMM programming interface (QPI): port trapping, mapping contexts, IRQ calldowns and more – the functions DESQview, SBEMU and VSBHDA use on QEMM 97
• DESQview 2.80 runs on 386MAX in its QEMM mode, background windows and a BBS node on COM1 included
• DPMI host on par with HDPMI: long file names and FAT32 from protected mode, mouse translation, HX and DOS/4GW together with VSBHDA
• XMS 3.5: RAM above 4 GB as super-extended memory, a RAM disk up there with 386DISK /XMSSX
• modern machines: shadow RAM of Intel and AMD chipsets (up to Zen 5), the free upper memory of a UEFI CSM
• unattended installation with SETUP.INF, a RAM disk for TEMP
• ASQ for Windows (WINASQ) with a graphical map of the first megabyte
• a regression suite of about 50 test programs under 386MAX, EMM386, JEMM, HDPMI, CWSDPMI and QEMM 97 on MS-DOS 6.22/7.1, FreeDOS, DR DOS and SvarDOS

Everything was tested in QEMU – the beta now needs real hardware. If you have an old (or new) machine with DOS on it, please try it and report the machine (chipset/CPU, RAM, BIOS or UEFI CSM), the DOS, your CONFIG.SYS and 386MAX.PRO, how much upper memory 386MAX finds and whether MAXIMIZE completes. On a hang a photo of the last screen helps a lot.

The releases come with floppy, USB and CD images, English and German.

Project Page

Release Page

Have fun with the new releases.

If you find any bugs, you can keep them ;-) – or better report them this time ;-)

mfg

Mario