FreddyV wrote on 2023-01-09, 18:09:

keropi wrote on 2023-01-06, 16:17:

FreddyV wrote on 2023-01-06, 16:07:

Hi,

@keropi

I know it is an old post but where I can get all these memory management tools ?

what tools are you referring to?

The Memory management / diagnostic tools, like Manifest

Quarterdeck Manifest is part of QRAM 2x package
Highmem is part of The Last Byte Memory Manager
😀

Sorry for digging up an old topic, but I’m currently facing a memory management issue with my 286 PC.

The system I’m working with uses a DFI 286-12/16E motherboard, 4MB RAM, and two hard drives running DOS 5.0 and DOS 6.22.
The board has the HT12 chipset, and EMS can be configured in the BIOS. So I tried enabling 1MB of EMS there and attempted to activate EMS under DOS.

First I tried HT12MM.SYS, but the driver reports that no '64KB page frame' is available.
EMM286.EXE works and does provide EMS memory, but the driver is so large that my conventional memory drops too low.

Following this thread here, I also tested The Last Byte 2.52a, but my system just freezes under both DOS versions.
Just to clarify: it’s not a HIMEM.SYS order issue - I’ve already corrected that in CONFIG.SYS.

I’m really pulling my hair out at this point and just can’t get a clean setup working.
Could someone please break down what I need to do for an optimal configuration?

All I want is a bit of EMS memory for certain games, the rest in XMS, and ideally some UMBs
to keep conventional memory as free as possible. Is such a setup even feasible on a 286?

Check back to here Re: Headland HT12/A 286 chipset: UMB driver? for TLB issues
Also https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/ht12_xms_ems.php - note that Memory relocation needs to be disabled, I guess EMS uses the same hardware as Memory relocation would

Backup plan, if you can get TLB to work, the EMM286 or maybe TurboEMS could locate the driver and the page frame in the UMB created by The Last Byte - inferior to HT12 EMS as it's copy mode, rather than chipset mapped, so any EMS access means the data is copied from/to XMS, like TurboEMS can also do with hard disk for EMS emulation - and they use a ton of RAM because unless they have access to already created UMB (they are NOT UMB capable alone), both the driver and the 64k page frame are allocated in DOS RAM - ah looks like you might need TurboEMS (Teleware) - haven't spotted if EMM286 has any option to locate pageframe