uhhh....Falcon 3.0? Blake Stone? Going to have to go through my list and look for 286 only games....

I don't think many games would take advantage of the 287 numeric coprocessor but I think both Ultima Underworld 1 and 2 will run okay.

I will add that my machine has

32 MB of switchable EMS/extended memory

So i guess it doesn't have to be a 286 only game. I suppose any game using extended or expanded memory should work and only protected mode games won't work.

You may be able to play more games with a 286 at 20Mhz than a 286 at 6Mhz and play a lot of them more smoothly. However, at most you can only have 16MB of extended memory with a 286 processor. In fact, I hazard that a 20MHz 286 can probably run virtually any game that does not utilize protected mode at a good or reasonable speed.

robertmo wrote:

I will add that my machine has

32 MB of switchable EMS/extended memory

You mean the hardware EMS (memory expansion card?), so you don't need EMM386 or the likes to use expanded memory? 😳

The 286 CPU can only address 16MB directly. So the expansion card uses a small portion of that address space to map in parts of its 32MB memory.
The disadvantage is the expansion cards run at ISA bus speed whereas the memory bus of a 286 could already be faster.

Running emm386 on a 286 is a bit difficult 😉

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

The 286 CPU can only address 16MB directly. So the expansion card uses a small portion of that address space to map in parts of its 32MB memory.
The disadvantage is the expansion cards run at ISA bus speed whereas the memory bus of a 286 could already be faster.

Running emm386 on a 286 is a bit difficult 😉

So, uh, where did you get an Expanded Memory Card on the first place? Ebay? 😀

Yes, Ebay. 😀

AST's RampagePlus 286 expanded memory board is a full-featured memory/multifunction board that offers unprecedented performance […]
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AST's RampagePlus 286 expanded memory board is a full-featured memory/multifunction board that offers unprecedented performance and flexibility for all of your memory needs.
- Up to 8 MB of memory on one board
- User upgradeable in 512KB increments (using 256KB SIMMs) and/or 2 MB increments (using 1 MB SIMMs)
- Full EMS 4.0 functionality and support built into hardware, also supports EEMS and EMS 3.2
- Optional I/O piggyback modules add one serial port and one parallel port
- Runs at bus speeds of up to 12.5 MHz 🙁
- Memory is also configurable as extended memory
- SuperPak utility software is included
- Two-year warranty 😉

I have four cards so I can stick eight 1MB SIMMs in each card and plug all four cards into motherboard to have 32MB EMS (or 16MB extended).

Unluckyly cards work only with speeds of up to 12.5 MHz and my 286 processor is 16MHz so i have to switch turbo button off or the card floods the screen with errors during memory test at booting. And with turbo button off the computer is really slow, but works OK.

Unluckyly cards work only with speeds of up to 12.5 MHz and my 286 processor is 16MHz so i have to switch turbo button off or the card floods the screen with errors during memory test at booting. And with turbo button off the computer is really slow, but works OK.

Is that because your RAM is too slow or because the board itself is not designed to handle faster speeds?

It is not a problem of SIMM modules (I have tried 1MB 70ns SIMMs and 60ns SIMMs - the result is the same).

It is a problem with a memory card.
On the box it says:
"Runs at bus speeds of up to 12.5 MHz"
In the manual in configuration section of card driver it says:
"Wait State.
If your computer runs at a bus speed of 10 MHz or slower, select zero added wait states; If it runs faster than 10 MHz bus speed, select one added wait state."
I have tried 1 wait state and it still doesn't help with my 16 MHz board. I had to switch turbo button off.