ChrisRƎTRO's DOS tool collection

Hi there and welcome to my DOS tools page! Whenever I find the time, I delve into ancient software development. Here you can find some tools I created for MS-DOS and compatible operating systems.

If you like my stuff, why not follow me on Mastodon or X, and if you are a developer yourself, you are welcome to have a look at my source code (links below). Let me know, if you find bugs or just something that can be done in a better way.

Quick links

(click to jump to the tool)

• CDBeQuiet! - cdbq.exe - Silence fast and loud optical drives
• MCBscan - mcbscan.exe - Scan memory for loaded programs/drivers

CDBeQuiet!

Description

CDBeQuiet! (aka CDBQ) is a tool for slowing down optical disk drives. This can be useful, if you have a relatively fast drive that can produce unwanted noise during operation (e.g. gaming). It allows you to set a desired speed.

For info on system requirements, usage guide, change history, refer to README.TXT.

For a list of drives that are known to work, have a look at DRIVES.TXT.

IMPORTANT: Before making adjustments to disc speed, it is best to run a few tests (benchmarks). Usage without proper testing can lead to poor read performance, see README.TXT, section How to test the settings and which rate to choose?.

Acknowledgments & Special Thanks

The basic approach of this tool is derived from an assembler program by a guy called "Hackman". Thanks Hackman! :) For more info have a look at his page and especially his Introduction To Programming With ATA And ATAPI.

Downloads

• Current release candidate (2024/03/28): cdbq-1.3.0rc3.zip ← Test the newest version, if you feel lucky!
• Current stable version (2022/12/11): cdbq-1.2.zip ← This is the one to get, if you are unsure what to download!
• Current source: cdbq-1.2-src.zip
• Archived versions (deprecated): 1.1-bin 1.1-src

Links

• Explanatory video on YouTube by PhilsComputerLab
• Thread on the german DOS-Forum
• Thread on VOGONS

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MCBscan

Description

With MCBscan, you can list information about currently resident (loaded) programs (e.g. Terminate and Stay Resident programs known as "TSRs", or drivers). For that, it scans the so-called memory control blocks (MCBs) to determine, if a program or driver with a specific name is currently loaded. An exit code is provided based on the results of the search, making it easy to incorporate into batch scripts.

For example, you can use MCBscan before loading a network driver to check if it's already loaded. This prevents the driver from loading a second time, which is useful, because not all TSRs or drivers automatically check, if they are already active when they are started and some would even (undesirably) load as multiple instances.

Acknowledgments & Special Thanks

• MCBscan is based on a program for DOS called MCBC. It was originally developed and published by Michael Tischer as part of his book series "PC intern", which is about system programming for the IBM-PC and compatibles. You can find the unaltered source code of MCBC supplied with the source of MCBscan, with kind permission to publish it by Michael himself. Thanks, Michael! :)
  For more info on him, have a look at his homepage.
   
• Special thanks go out to Eric Voirin a.k.a. Oerg866 for helping me in development by pointing out that alignment (specified via #pragma pack()) matters on structs when assigning MCB pointers!
  Check out his profile on X.

Downloads

• Release candidate (2024/03/28): mcbscan-1.0.0rc3.zip
• Current source: [coming soon!]

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Had to add these for the retro-web experience :-)

Source for cheesy background image: spacejam.com