First post, by nemail
Hi
so I've got a beautiful, old 286 up and running again (I love tinkering with old computers) and because I was veeery young when I got my first 286, I can't really remember much about memory management.
What I have found out/done so far:
- The motherboard has 1 MB onboard
- BUT it allows me (via jumper config) to either use 640k conventional memory and "ignore" the remaining 384k OR use 512k conventional memory + 512k of UMA (upper memory).
- I have bought, assembled and installed one of these 2MB EMS cards: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-ems-2-mb-pcb/
- If I configure the motherboard to 512k/512k, the biiig downside is, that I'll never get more than 500-something conventional memory free, regardless of how well I optimize driver loading
- If I configure it to 640k/0k, I don't have UMA, don't have himem.sys loaded, don't have UMB and so on.
- EMS memory (link above) is installed and LTEMM driver is up and running, 2MB EMS detected and ready
What I ask myself:
- What would be the ideal config to get as much conventional memory as possible + utilize EMS as good as possible
- Would EMS even be used by any software except games which specifically ask for EMS?
- What about QRAM or QEMM or Above Disc?
btw. himem.sys says "no available extended memory was found" when using the 640k/0k config.
Thanks 😀