Solar4A wrote:

obviously too small for a 486 gaming rig.

"Obviously"? That all depends on what exactly it is that you want to run. I can't imagine there's much software that would require much RAM that also wouldn't run much, much better on a Pentium. But perhaps that is another story.

Anyway, have you checked your motherboard manual? Some of these 486 boards are extremely picky about exactly what specific combinations of modules may be used.

Sadly I don't have the manual for either board and am unable to find one on the internet. Would have been nice to read 🙁
The reason 4MB wasn't enough for me is because after installing my soundcard, mouse, and external CD drive (no free drive bays) I'm left with about 1MB, and while that'll run a lot of era-correct games, I wanted a bit more breathing room for messing around with software and not-so-era-correct games 😀

Solar4A wrote:

The reason 4MB wasn't enough for me is because after installing my soundcard, mouse, and external CD drive (no free drive bays) I'm left with about 1MB...

That doesn't sound right. Drivers should only take up a few kilobytes each and are always loaded in conventional (below 640K) or high (between 640K and 1MB) memory. The rest is accessed via XMS or EMS (don't know if I'm explaining this correctly).

Are you sure you don't mean conventional memory?

Post a screenshot of the mem command.

If I were you, I would try 8 x 1MB SIMMs. 8MB should be enough to run Windows 3.1 (and 95 if absolutely necessary) and all games of the 486 era.

Some boards can be VERY picky with the RAM modules. Try another set...and another....and then, yet another. I have one 486 board that I went through FIVE (FIVE!!!) sets of 4x1MB 30pin Parity SIMMs before it would boot. That was after a BIOS clear and reseating the RAM numerous times. I knew it would boot, because I tested it as soon as I got it with its own RAM. I removed the RAM to use in another system...but didn't think that not using the original RAM might make the board not boot anymore. Luckily, i found the system with the original RAM and it worked just fine.

DO NOT QUOTE ME ON THIS just yet.....I think many 486 systems require Parity FPM RAM in order to work correctly. I've used EDO before in a few 486 systems and usually EDO is off limits to 486 systems. I only use EDO in Pentium systems.

Also....your RAM usage isn't right. Drivers for hardware are used typically in 640K, and sometimes in the 384K UMA if you can load them high. Drivers don't take up that much RAM.

I concur. It is quite inconceivable that the installation of your soundcard, mouse, and CD drive could have consumed 3 MB of of RAM.

Have you tried using only two 16 MB SIMMs instead of all four?

Elonex systems are always a bit weird in my opinion. They are the machine of choice for places like Children's homes here in the UK. Perhaps this has some incompatibility with the standard memory drivers? I know that some machines, such as my T3200, which do not have standard implementations of things related to memory can report that memory is unavailable for some reason.

Jorpho wrote:

Have you tried using only two 16 MB SIMMs instead of all four?

30-pin SIMMs in a 486? You need all four, pairs won't work at all (8 bit SIMMs for 32 bit address bus).

I've tried pretty much every combination I could think of, even including mixing ram and using two sticks (and the way the text on the board indicates), but it didn't help. Also, I was basing the ram numbers on Rayman, which wouldn't start because I apparently had "1.231 Mo." free. The mem command picture (with the Goldstar ram) is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H0B5rF2we0 … nZIMDFiVG8/view
I'll look around for smaller sticks, and stay away from EDO and non Parity. Is there anywhere other then ebay to search for some? Most of the ones on ebay are in the US, and I'd rather avoid the somewhat expensive shipping a third time. One interesting thing from the above post is that I only got two sticks of the non-Parity ram for testing, rather then spend on four sticks that may or may not work; but if it wouldn't have started with two anyway, I guess that test was invalid.

Solar4A wrote:

I've tried pretty much every combination I could think of, even including mixing ram and using two sticks (and the way the text on the board indicates), but it didn't help.

I was thinking there might be text on the board. Perhaps you could take a picture of that particular region?

Also, I was basing the ram numbers on Rayman, which wouldn't start because I apparently had "1.231 Mo." free. The mem command picture (with the Goldstar ram) is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H0B5rF2we0 … nZIMDFiVG8/view

That seems odd. You may need to adjust your BIOS options. Can you capture the first page of "mem /c /p" ? I suppose it might be possible that your external CD-ROM drive uses a big chunk of XMS, but in that case I'd suggest finding some way around having to use that at all.

In any case, you'll probably want to tinker some more with your startup files, as your amount of free conventional RAM might be too low.

Here's "mem /c /p" : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H0B5rF2we0 … iew?usp=sharing
And the text on the motherboard : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H0B5rF2we0 … iew?usp=sharing

For the CD drive, I did have a crazy idea about getting an ATA cable out of the case and into the external drive casing, bypassing the awfully slow parallel controller...

Edit: I should mention the picture of the motherboard had the non-working parity ram installed as well as the goldstar ram.

Solar4A wrote:

And the text on the motherboard : https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8H0B5rF2we0 … iew?usp=sharing

Oh. I remember seeing one board that explicitly diagrammed which module sizes could be accommodated by each slot, but no such luck here, I guess.

(I'd be slightly concerned about what " 😀 1" in the mem /c output is, but we should probably deal with one thing at a time.)

How much memory is SmartDrive "stealing" for its own cache? You can try setting it to a lower amount. And does the amount of free XMS/EMS increase if you do not load the CD drivers?
Also, no SB16 really needs most of the crap the installer puts on CONFIG.SYS. You can comment them out if you need conventional memory as well. Using the "/E" switch when starting MSCDEX.EXE can also regain 10KB of conventional memory (but will use a bit of EMS).

I probably don't need SmartDrive to be honest, so I think I'll disable it. When I was still using the 386 board I recall some games no longer working after installing the CD drive, so I'll look into solutions for that. Also, that 😀 1 item in Mem looked off to me too, I may do a reinstall at some point. I've found some 4MB simms in Germany on ebay, they are FPM Parity, 70ns. Should I give them a go? Also, does it matter if two are NEC and two are Siemens? They are the same spec, and even have the same amount of chips. Also, thanks for all the help 😀

That weird thing might be CTMOUSE. I don't remember if loading it with LH causes it, or loading it without (but letting it move itself to UMBs automatically). It is just a cosmetic issue, and its not harmful.
What I meant is that you probably don't need CTMMSYS and CTSB16. AFAIK only some of the utilities that come bundled with the SB16 drivers need those, games don't.

Btw, those seem to be more "period-correct" than 4x16MB but I don't dare say if it will work or not, but if they are not expensive I'd grab them.

Ah, could be, as I did try to load CTMOUSE with LH. I'll look into optimizing the SB16 stuff, and see if that ram works. Thanks!