As you already know There were a few Windows games that were more pleasant with 4mb of ram
but most msdos 286 games that could use more than 1mb had it as optional with additional features when you had more ram.
Arkinoid was one, wing commander another
Can’t list a single game where it was mandatory.

AOL for windows 1.0 needed a 286 w/ 4mb

Not 4MB, but Prince of Persia 2 runs fine on a 286 and requires 2mb of RAM if you want sampled sound effects and speech. It'll run on as low as 640kb, but you'll only get FM sounds.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-10-21, 01:53:

Not 4MB, but Prince of Persia 2 runs fine on a 286 and requires 2mb of RAM if you want sampled sound effects and speech. It'll run on as low as 640kb, but you'll only get FM sounds.

Good point ! There were quite a few old 286 games that did work better or had better options with more than 1MB but had a brain cramp and could not remember which games.
added: If my 286 can handle 4MB (and it does) I would give it 4MB (and I did) think it better in the long run, sort of like maxing the ram on a Pentium, Slot1 or any computer.... if you can 😀

Horun wrote on 2021-10-21, 02:11:

added: If my 286 can handle 4MB (and it does) I would give it 4MB (and I did) think it better in the long run, sort of like maxing the ram on a Pentium, Slot1 or any computer.... if you can 😀

On most 286 computers, you don't even have to worry about cachable areas, which are a common limit to RAM expansion on 486 and Pentium boards. If the board accepts 1MB SIMMs, upgrading it to 4MB should be a no-brainer. While those modules cost some real money now, people that are computer enthusiasts since those days usually have them in a "spare parts box" after upgrading 486 boards to more than 8MB.

My Zenith 286LP Plus (286/12) manufactured in 1990 has 8megs of ram 😉 It cames in very useful indeedy.

+1

Ekb wrote on 2021-10-21, 00:43:

Which game requires more than 1MB of memory (e.g. 4MB SIMM 30pin) and runs on a 286 processor?

Hard to say. Especially if we haven't defined what "requires" means. It's often highly individual, I'm afraid.
a) can execute b) is playable c) is feature complete d) ?

Ekb wrote on 2021-10-21, 00:43:

I ran a lot of heavy games that worked well on the 286 and the usual 1MB of memory (384KB XMS or EMM286) was enough. For example Dune 1-2, Wolf-3D, Civilization, WingCommander, etc.

Sure, I think, because most of these are Real-Mode compatible games.
So they are made that way that they run within the first MB.
If they *required* XMS, they would have been targeting PC/AT or 286+ right from the start, since XMS on XTs was non-existent in practice.
And at this point, developers could have had used 16-Bit DPMI (286 Protected-Mode), as well.
EMS supporting games were the only sensible exception here. Both higher end XTs and ATs (NEAT chipset etc) did feature EMS support.
However, EMS support apparently became more popular in the early-mid 90s (~1994+), a bit past the 286's heyday (ca 1992), when the 386/486 systems were more common.

That being said, multitaskers like DesqView did make use of EMS.
Maybe some logic games, puzzles or simulations, too.
And EMS boards from the late 1980s were equipped with 512KB to 2MB, often.
So if we add that to the 640KB to 1MB of base memory, we're at ~3 MB total memory.
Which isn't that far away from 4MB.

Also, there's shadow memory (useful), which can consume a bit of the lousy 1MB pre-installed in old 286es.

Ekb wrote on 2021-10-21, 00:43:

Also, there will be no Windows 3.xx, as there are no good games. MS-Dos only.

Oh no, so all my childhood had been a lie! 😭

Windows 3.x could run some protected mode games with 2MB of physical RAM when 4MB was required in DOS. Unfortunately max swap file size was dependent on physical memory size.

thanks everyone 😀

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-10-21, 01:53:

but Prince of Persia 2 runs fine on a 286 and requires 2mb of RAM if you want sampled sound effects and speech.

I think the loss is not great;)

Horun wrote on 2021-10-21, 02:11:

added: If my 286 can handle 4MB (and it does) I would give it 4MB (and I did) think it better in the long run, sort of like maxing the ram on a Pentium, Slot1 or any computer.... if you can 😀

This is the problem, that the 286 motherboard with the removed DIP memory becomes very unattractive. Many people here like it when the motherboard is installed full of everything: coprocessor, bios, caches, etc.
And 286 using 4MB SIMM will empty almost 50% of the motherboard space (many empty dip16-20). 🙁

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-10-21, 07:21:

My Zenith 286LP Plus (286/12) manufactured in 1990 has 8megs of ram 😉 It cames in very useful indeedy.

what was it used for?
Aside from win3.xx and caching, what is 8 MB useful for? 😀

Jo22 wrote on 2021-10-21, 11:11:

Oh no, so all my childhood had been a lie! 😭

i got hasty 😀
my favorite game under Win 3.xx was logical CHIPS and SkiFree.

Luckily I found a CHIPS game under MS-Dos. 😀
And I haven't found SKI yet. Perhaps some of the Vogons know.

Ram disk. Provide extra memory fot win 3.x and Geoworks and lots of other stuff 😉

That reminds me of GEOS on my C64..
I still need to get a GeoRAM module or any of these REUs. ^^

I had 16Mb RAM (15Mb useable) + 2MB EMS Card in 286 in Windows 3.1 this was very handy specially if you run Developer IDEs or Compilers. Borland C for example with windows ide
It will accelerate stuff a lot.

With the 8086/8088 it already became clear the 640kB barrier was too small for large spreadsheets etc. To overcome this, EMS came to place. But was the XMS ram able to fill in that part?

If you are a masochist, you might want to try running a web browser. I was still a bit n00bular with PC hardware when I first met the web on a 286 machine in early 90s and I wish I could remember more specs/details. I believe it was a 16mhz machine, possibly an Elonex. They got swapped out for Viglen P90s the following year, talk about a huge performance jump. This was at a college. They went to NT 3.1 then 3.5 on those in a few months, from win 3.1 on the 286es over Novell Netware 3xx. That was a teaching lab though, only when I had courses was I allowed in there. (And for duration of course when no lecturer using the lab, to do the coursework) There were Elonex DX2-66 and Viglen DX4s elsewhere, library etc. Then summer I left they got P120s in the library. Everyone was a bit awestruck by the multi thousand dollar P90s and later 120s, because they were very bleeding edge, not mainstream at all then, DX2-66 remained thought of as "higher end" for a year or two for home use. I think one lad who hung around a few days after summer term ended scored a DX-2 machine from the take-outs. I visited again late summer to pick stuff up, and found out about it.

Anyhoo, yah, 1993ish first web experience on a 286, so I know they can do it, though finding stuff they will render with compatible browsers nowadays is tough.

Edit: you know what though, I did score something and maybe could have guessed they were upgrading, because they were giving out MSDOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 packages to anyone that wanted them at the end of that year, so they had those systems condemned already.

https://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/hackaday-retr … n-the-internet/

Early on, I had PS/1 2011, floppy only with terminal on another floppy with serial connection via adapter cable to the wall (b-jack) in 1993 during college. Once I got my LTE 386s/20 working correctly same way the 2011 got sold. Same with my 486 computer finally running later on once I got all the parts I needed.

Cheers,

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-10-21, 00:56:

As you already know There were a few Windows games that were more pleasant with 4mb of ram
but most msdos 286 games that could use more than 1mb had it as optional with additional features when you had more ram.
Arkinoid was one, xwing another

X-Wing required a 386.
But Wing Commander could use 2 MiB for speech pack add-ons.

I'm not aware of any game that benefits from more than 2 MiB on a 286. This could simply be because RAM was extremely expensive and gamers usually had little more than 1 MiB. The 2 MiB version was already absolute luxury for the typical gamer, thus there was no market for games with more than 2 MiB. And when memory became cheaper, the 286s were too slow for more modern games and you needed a 386 or better because the advantages of the DOS extenders simply outweighed them.

More than 2 MiB of RAM therefore only made sense on office PCs, where the cost of the large amount of RAM plays a minor role and where the memory cannot be large enough to fill it with data.
There were also multiuser setups with XENIX on a 286:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm57LMkUWpE

Exploit wrote on 2023-11-13, 13:20:

X-Wing required a 386.

False - X-Wing will run on a V20 with an EMS board.

I'm not aware of any game that benefits from more than 2 MiB on a 286. This could simply be because RAM was extremely expensive and gamers usually had little more than 1 MiB. The 2 MiB version was already absolute luxury for the typical gamer, thus there was no market for games with more than 2 MiB. And when memory became cheaper, the 286s were too slow for more modern games and you needed a 386 or better because the advantages of the DOS extenders simply outweighed them.

Both Master of Magic and 1830: Railroad Robbers and Barons will run on a 286 and requires 2.7MB of EMS. They will also probably run on a V20 with a 8-bit EMS card that supports >2.7MB, but I don't have one to verify beyond the fact that they gracefully exit when not detecting enough EMS memory.

Re: Is there any reason to install more than 1 MB RAM on a 286 PC?

DEAT wrote on 2023-11-13, 23:10:

Exploit wrote on 2023-11-13, 13:20:

X-Wing required a 386.

False - X-Wing will run on a V20 with an EMS board.

Well, if you say so. However, this is a very special setup.
The package says system requirements: 386.
Of course, it could also be because the publisher wanted to put less effort into support, so he wrote that it works with a 386 or better.

I remember my dad and I spending a lot of time getting his Unisys 286 configured with 1MB of ram in 1988 or 89. It was all individual chips and needed jumper settings on the motherboard. Of course it was a DOS only system.