Try HIMEMX and JEMM from FreeDOS, they support more than 256Mb, but remember that Windows 3.x may not run in other OSs than MS-DOS.

If you install 256Mb of RAM in a DOS machine, it will boot but it won't use more than 64Mb. Also, Windows 9x, NT4 and later will get happily that amount of memory, so you may still have a 256Mb machine without any special memory manager.

I guess that no DOS game or application would run faster or better with 256 Mb, so you could stick to the 64 Mb supported by normal DOS.

Some games might even not work with too much memory. I think I read about some limitation with Ultima 8. Not sure though 😉

Privateer develops audio problems with 16 MB EMS. Limit EMS to 12 MB and it works.

Dominus wrote:

Some games might even not work with too much memory. I think I read about some limitation with Ultima 8. Not sure though 😉

i know, i think i had simcity2000 freezing within a few minutes into the game on my 512mb pentium3 rig.

unpatched win9x also has 512MB memory limit.
windows 3.x also need patch under FAT32, otherwise you'll see directories corruption.

The himem.sys that ships with DOS has a bug that limits it to 64Mb. emm386.exe relies on himem.sys for its memory extender behaviour, so it is also limited to 64Mb.

Discussions relating to 512Mb and FAT32 suggest that we're not talking about the same thing.

just in case TS want to use FAT32 capable win9x and win3.x
afterall TS did said 'windows' though.

Use QHimem.sys to make use of the memory above 64MB RAM. You can "limit" the available memory "seen" by DOS games by using utilities like XMSDSK or EMSDSK - which create RAM drive(s). These are newer utilities. and unlike DOS's RAMDRIVE.SYS, take much, much less memory, and can be loaded and unloaded at command prompt.

Using utilities like XMSDSK may help give 2 benefits :

1. Limit available ext/exp memory for dos gaming compatibility, and

2. Ability to have a virtual drive at the same time : Direct the temp. and other page swapping programs to use it.

In one of my systems, I'm using this method, which has 512MB memory - the system has Windows2000, Windows 98SE and MS-DOS 6.22. In the end, everyone is happy. 😁

Edit : I recall that once, when I tried running Crusader No Remorse in a PII system last time with 256MB installed, it wouldn't run. I used XMSDSK to "eat" up the available extended emory, leaving the system with 64MB visible RAM. It then loaded. Smehow, this was not reproduced in another system which had even more memory 512MB - Crusader ran fine without doing anything with memory.

ux-3 wrote:

Privateer develops audio problems with 16 MB EMS. Limit EMS to 12 MB and it works.

Isn't there some way to get each game to manage it's own resources so you don't have to make changes to your memory configuration before you start up every game?

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/driver.html

Step 1: Install XMGR to be able to use all your XMS memory
Step 2: Install UIDE for a 128MB+ disk/cd cache and UDMA support

And you'll have the fastest dos system ever. 😉

Combined with UMBPCI these two drivers use zero conventional memory. And if you have any games requiring EMS, get JEMM386 (can be loaded from command line!)

Isn't there some way to get each game to manage it's own resources so you don't have to make changes to your memory configuration before you start up every game?

No?

For a Pentium class PCI based system, it is better to make use of modern, Freedos (or other contemporary OS) derived managers like XMGR-UIDE-RDISK, HIMEMX-UMBPCI, JEMM386

Limiting available XMS/EMS to the OS is a MUST for quite a few games, among them are well-known ones like Ultima episodes, Realms of Arkania (many more SSI titles) etc...

+ not simply eating away avaliable RAM but assinging it to a virtual XMS/EMS drive has one more additional benefit: when using poorly shielded, early cards like a SB Pro 1, you can copy all or part of the game contents to this drive and run it from here> when heavy DMA transfers occur (loading the sound DAT files from disk), you will get less or no noise AND DMA sensitive games (like Dune 1, Dune 2) will not freeze even without patching (Dune 1 would freeze at ornitopther take-off, Dune 2 at deploying a radar)