appiah4 wrote on 2021-07-14, 09:30:
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-07-14, 07:52:
Never had any issues with getting 600 KB of conventional memory free on my DOS rigs. I do pick my hardware very carefully though.
That said, I can see how this could have been a problem for people who used sound cards that included TSR programs in their drivers back in the day.
This was easy post MS-DOS 6.0 but as someone who got into DOS gaming seriously with 5.0 (I had an XT with 3.x earlier for a while though) I can say that memory management was a nightmare for me before I found (a pirate copy of) QEMM.
Yes, I do acknowledge that pre-QEMM and pre-DOS 6.0, memory management could be an issue with some games. But, even then, you tinkered and got it right and all was good. DOS wasn't "in the way" so much that the 640K barrier was. Once QEMM / XMS came out, those memory problems could be easily solved, even by those who just "wanted to play the games."
Now, with modern systems and DOSBOX, I consider the multi-gigabyte bloated, behemoth of Windows, MacOS, or other "modern" operating system to "be in the way." It's so much easier to wait 5 seconds by booting a DOS USB memory stick and be in DOS gaming bliss than is it is to wait 60 - 90 seconds or longer, for 10 Gigabytes of bloat to load first, *then* run my DOS game in an emulation mode, using a bloated program, with imperfect screen resolutions.
But, I get the notion that DOSBOX has indeed "kept DOS alive", and at least I'm grateful for that. 1% of current computer operators are tinkerers, the other 99% are users, of course. But, I've alway been and always shall be a tinkerer. Thanks for places like VOGONS which keep us in communication, the dwindling few. The playing and using is a bit of a bonus that makes the tinkering so incredibly satisfying!