For Windows 3.11 it was answered here: Re: 486 Motherboard
For Win9x theoretically it's 4 GB, but practically giving more than 1 GB is a waste of money IMO.

Windows 98 can use 1GB of RAM at max but you need some system.ini edits, or else it will act all screwy. You can have more in the system itself, though, just limit the amount of RAM Windows can see, and you have to have less that 1GB in there when you do that.

I'm having 512MB in my Windows ME/98SE system.

256 MB in Dos/Windows3.11 system.

Anything more may cause problems in the said OSs.

I once used Dos and it's games in a PIII 450MHz system with 512MB RAM. Crusader No Regret refused to run with this 512MB RAM. I used RAMDISK to "reduce" the available memory for dos, to make it work.

So far, all dos games in my collection can run with 256MB RAM.

yep, 256MB here on my win98SE/DOS K6-II machine...
I have found that some SSI CD installers (from games like Ravenloft, Menzoberazzan) get confused in DOS with 256MB and hang... they only way is to install from windows, where the dos memory is limited (and you can select the amount you want DOS to see)

@everyone,

Thanks very much for the info! 😀

@keropi,

I really like those SSI games. (Scary/cool looking Avatar you got there too!)

@Malik,

Really minor point. Really minor, but it's "I have", not "I'm having". 😀

Having more than 512MB in Win98 can cause issues. If you google "windows 98 512mb ram" you'll find all the explanations.

I have 320MB in mine and that oddball number is there only because it was the ram I had lying around. I can't imagine any Win98 app would need more than 256MB, unless there is a Photoshop version that still runs in Win9x.

I have a WFWG 3.11 box with 64MB of RAM and I have nothing that needs more than 16MB. I set a RAMdrive to 44MB, put my TEMP folder in there and let Windows use that "drive" for its temporary swapfile too. Eh, why not?!

retro games 100 wrote:

@Malik,

Really minor point. Really minor, but it's "I have", not "I'm having".

I stand corrected. 😀

*wonders how the hell he's managed to have a trouble free windows 98 1GB experiance for three years*

Oh, I know, I must be making this shit up. :eyeroll: 😒

retro games 100 wrote:

@keropi,
I really like those SSI games. (Scary/cool looking Avatar you got there too!)

yeah, rpg's rule! My avatar is from Catacomb games from ID , the final boss

Moogle! wrote:

Windows 98 can use 1GB of RAM at max but you need some system.ini edits, or else it will act all screwy. You can have more in the system itself, though, just limit the amount of RAM Windows can see, and you have to have less that 1GB in there when you do that.

As far as I've tried, its limited to 999MB 😀 When it gets >1000 it goes into offset and reports that its out of RAM. I switched to WinXP only because of this 🙁

I've not had to trip the limit to 999 setting unless I've actually had more than 1GB.

I guess Windows 95 will be comfortable having 64MB for itself. 128MB for it maybe a luxury already.

As for Windows 98SE and ME, 128MB should make them happy, 256MB may make them get excited for nothing and 512MB is like making them a spoilt rich kid.

Windows XP 32-bit doesn't know what to do with anything more than 3GB.

And last but not the least, the Great Ol' DOS will take whatever you give it. It doesn't care as long as it has it's first 640k RAM. Or 512k RAM. Or 384k RAM. Or Whatever!! Maybe it has a limit to how much of the memory it can access, but nothing will stop it from running! 😉

Windows 95 is comfortable with 32MB RAM. Back then that OS came out I had all of 8MB in my 486. Some of my friends were running an enviable 16MB, and others still had 4MB.

Well, in my experience, it often doesn't matter how much mem you give it(w98) . It just takes and takes and...

I have had 512mb for years now, with no special win98 settings - but particulary after a long session online, or watching vidoes, playing music, downloading stuff or whatever - the amount of free memory goes down to the last few kb... and doesn't release the crud automatically after tasks are done.
(is this what is referred to as a 'leak' ?)

I do have this freemem app installed, which helps to clear some again when I tell it to, but still... annoying 😜
(same goes for that stupid swap file, suddenly all space is nearly gone on C:\)

As for games, hmm, not playing that many on this rig, so I wouldn't know how much is used...

Years ago I had some memory weirdness in windows 98SE too, eventually I could not find the OS guilty. Here is what I wrote at the time:

gerwin wrote:

OK, there is nothing wrong with allegro on it's own. Like gillius proposed I made this quite empty test program that only initializes allegro stuff. I made a batch file and ran it hundreds of times. "Free Memory" readout decreases 150kB per run, until it reaches 7 Megs. The whole system keeps working just fine, I can run for example "Ghost Recon", and afterwards "Free Memory" jumps back to 130MB.

I think I had 384MB ram installed at the time. Now I have 512MB on that system. The unofficial 98SE service pack mentions "suitable for systems with more then 512MB", so that is nice.

But windows media player may be another thing, I read it had a memory leakage problem in some of its older releases.

I like the unofficial 98SE service pack. I've installed it dozens of times now, and altered its installation options quite a few times, and it seems stable. There's also an unofficial 95 service pack on the net too. (I have DL'd it, but not tried it yet.)

retro games 100 wrote:

There's also an unofficial 95 service pack on the net too. (I have DL'd it, but not tried it yet.)

Is that the SP1? I have installed the service pack 1 on a Win95c installation. After installation, the My Computer Properties page shows as Windows95a.

Anyway, I've downloaded the files from Lightspeed Win 95 Page.

I haven't done enough research in to win 95 service pack(s), but the one I DL'd (and as yet, not tested) was from here -

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=129504

It's the very first link on that page, the 49MB download.

gerwin wrote:

I think I had 384MB ram installed at the time. Now I have 512MB on that system. The unofficial 98SE service pack mentions "suitable for systems with more then 512MB", so that is nice.

The only noticeable modification that the unofficial 89SE service pack does in order to make Win 98 suitable to work on systems with more then 512 MB RAM is by software limiting the amount of RAM visible to windows to 999MB. You can do it yourself in msconfig utility too. 😀

So even if you insert 4GB of RAM, it will still see and use only 999MB. As I said, that was the only reason I switched to Win XP at that time.