QEMM is a piece of junk, don't use it. As far as the size of the resident HIMEM.SYS, I don't think I've seen that much taken up. I just checked a VM of mine and HIMEM is taking up 1kB of conventional RAM. I seem to recall it using more like 15kB in a real-world situation, but I've been out of it too long to remember. Unfortunately, you cannot create conventional RAM out of extended RAM.

hmm... well, i figured, since emm386 DOES emulate ems memory. mmm, would be fun to see if that could be done for conv too... why nobody ever thought of that, i wonder? but anyway. as i said it's first version's himem, maybe it was just THAT shoddy... i'll have to look into these hijinks a little more. other ideas, anyone? any memory managers i wasn't aware of? i found one, but that's for freedos - it wouldn't work with dos 7, right?

Try taking a look at this.

hunh? i thought dos was unable to load stuff into the upper and high memory blocks unless a memory manager was loaded, never knew they removed that quirk from 7. the relocation of the monochrome segment was a nice touch anyway, good work 😉 i'll try some of that stuff when i put my hands on his pc (i already tuned a bit of stuff so i'm just gonna implement the memory areas part and some other emm386 and maybe himem fixes i know of). good job, although i might suggest making multiple configs: maybe one that disables ems for some of those conv-hungry games or without optical devices support, but i guess that anyone with the need to do that kind of stuff should already know how to implement it themselves 😁 thanks man.

Check out freedos.org, I believe they have Himem and emm386 replacements.

well, they do have an alternate memory manager, but are we sure it's safe to use on standard dos? i mean, it's not gonna kwak anything up, is it? as i specified it's not my system, if it was i'd try it right away... but i gotta take precautions here. memory managers can be quite catty, you know 😜

It's only loaded for the current session; if anything goes wrong you can start in Safe Mode Command Prompt and change the config.sys/autoexec.bat back.

i guess you shoud have:
dos=high
in config.sys

DOS=HIGH,UMB is better

got that one covered. well... i guess i'll try with that memory manager, but if i can get himem to load into high memory i'm good to go without extra stuff. i'll let you know how it went, thanks you guys.

well lookie that, it worked without messing with alternate emm386 and himem versions: i infact managed to uncork about 585k or so of conventional memory. looks like i just needed to get my memory refreshed about the ol' tricks, thanks. but now there's another problem: the sound card is pulling shenanigans on me, it's a sb32 pnp and i can't get it to work under dos. it's cherry under windows, but there's no way in hell it's gonna work under dos... can anyone point me to some good dos drivers? all i found were drvs for sb16 cards, and although that one's setup does mod the autoexec there's still no output. no error messages but no audio either, nor in sb, neither in adlib mode. this just gets weirder and weirder 😵 same goes with the mouse: it's a ps2 mouse and ctmouse won't recognize it... sorry if i'm asking rather than looking for it, but since this thread is already open i thought i might even ask in one shot 😜

Games load their own sound drivers in DOS.
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 P330 (this has to match your actual setting but this is the default for AWE32 cards)

If you would please to be just using 2DOSWIN, you would not need to ask such questions.

pnp cards tend to need a small util that sets their address and irq on boot.

Well then let's take a quick drive over to Creative's download site for AWE32 on DOS.

...dammit, I found a bug.

this problem with himem.sys (win95b version) occupying about 40 kB of space is - or better was - well-known and confirmed by MS. There surely is an update available, but one can as well patch the binary itself. the bug is not in himem.sys but in io.sys (dated 5.9.1996, size 214836): modify byte at offset 51f6 from BC to 58!

whoa... guys, you rock. it's gonna be two weeks until i can test this stuff out, but i'm sure i'll be able to get the most out of that rig now. with that i should reach around 615-520k of free conv - maybe i'll even crack an attempt at ems memory - AND get the sound up and working with some thinking and little fuss. thanks dudes. p.s:

If you would please to be just using 2DOSWIN, you would not need to ask such questions

i gave a look at your config, it's good but it's designed for sb16 cards. the sb32 set blaster line, on the other hand, has two more values, the first is the well-known T6 (which is found on sblive drivers as well), the second was something620... eh, don't remember. hence, i apologize in case i looked stupid, but it looks like it wasn't such a straightforward problem. that's all i'll say in my defense 🙄

A220 I7 D1 H5 T6 P330 E620?

yeah, that one. it also loads the ctsyn driver, which appears to be needed with sb32 cards... what a mess. wish that piece of junk was recent enough to run dosbox... or had a regular joe's sb16. it was fun messing with dos again tho', it gave me this nostalgic feeling, you know? groovy. i think i might actually rig myself up a pentium solely for abandon... heh, who knows 😀