VOGONS


First post, by kingcake

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I know DOS 3 doesn't come with HIMEM.SYS. Do I gain anything by using a third party memory manager like HIMEMX from FREEDOS? Or does DOS 3 just not support anything but base memory regardless?

Thanks.

Reply 1 of 5, by Kippesoep

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DOS 3 (or even DOS 4) itself doesn't support something like that, however, there were things like Quarterdeck's QEMM and QRAM, Helix's Netroom, and Qualitas's 386Max that were capable of moving all kinds of stuff around. In many cases, they would work with DOS 3.3 or even 3.2.

Official support for was introduced with DOS 5's own HIMEM.SYS. This also made it much more convenient to load device drivers high, as it simply had the "devicehigh" command in config.sys

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Reply 2 of 5, by Zup

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Or you can try using Compaq DOS 3.31a. Compaq shipped their Desktop 386 with a version of MS-DOS that supported FAT16B (=2Gb FAT support) and some memory management utilities (an EMM386 ancestor was included).

I don't know if that will work on every computer, but it's worth giving a try.

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Reply 3 of 5, by Jo22

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MS-/PC-DOS 3.x does not know about HMA or UMBs, but you can still load Himem.sys on these OSes.
Programs using XMS will continue to work just fine.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 5, by kingcake

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Jo22 wrote on 2021-01-16, 08:42:

MS-/PC-DOS 3.x does not know about HMA or UMBs, but you can still load Himem.sys on these OSes.
Programs using XMS will continue to work just fine.

This is exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you!

Reply 5 of 5, by Jo22

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You're welcome. :)

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//