if your goal is to free up more conventional you pretty much only have the option of adding physical memory in to the UMA or hoping your motherboard chipset has shadow RAM functionality that can be repurposed to create UMBs

if you have a genuine IBM 5170, there's no shadow RAM to play with so you'd be limited to the "add physical" approach like the lo-tech 1MB RAM card

Your other option would be to switch to PC-DOS 7. It uses less conventional by a few kB and loads a larger quantity of the kernel into the high memory area IIRC

DR-DOS. Maybe QRAM too.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-23, 00:15:

if you have a genuine IBM 5170, there's no shadow RAM to play with so you'd be limited to the "add physical" approach like the lo-tech 1MB RAM card

If I already have my Everex EV159 card though, wouldn't I not need that?

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-23, 01:46:

Your other option would be to switch to PC-DOS 7. It uses less conventional by a few kB and loads a larger quantity of the kernel into the high memory area IIRC

Is that 286 compatible? I know MS-DOS 7 (Win9x DOS) won't boot on a 286.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-01-23, 02:21:

DR-DOS. Maybe QRAM too.

Does DR-DOS use less RAM?

I'll try QRAM and see what happens.

DR-DOS comes with a 286 memory manager called EMM286. I think you can use it with other versions of DOS too.
At least out of the box, I remember DR-DOS providing more conventional memory than PC-DOS.

PC-DOS 7 runs a treat on a 286 - and it uses less conventional than any other version of PC-DOS when paired with a 286+ system

I'm not familiar with your Everex memory card's layout, but the vast overwhelming majority of ISA EMS/XMS cards do not support mapping physical memory into the UMA

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-24, 03:16:

...the vast overwhelming majority of ISA EMS/XMS cards do not support mapping physical memory into the UMA

They don't, but the 64KB EMS Page Frame itself is memory, which can provide 64KB of UMB as long as there no one else is using true EMS then. I don't think it is possible for QRAM or any 286 UMB providers to manage EMS and UMB at the same time. None of the 386 EMS managers cannot do that, too.

kjliew wrote on 2020-01-24, 03:30:

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-01-24, 03:16:

...the vast overwhelming majority of ISA EMS/XMS cards do not support mapping physical memory into the UMA

They don't, but the 64KB EMS Page Frame itself is memory, which can provide 64KB of UMB as long as there no one else is using true EMS then. I don't think it is possible for QRAM or any 286 UMB providers to manage EMS and UMB at the same time. None of the 386 EMS managers cannot do that, too.

Yeah, I didn't suggest using the page frame as a UMB because sacrificing access to all your physical EMS on a 286 for 64kB of UMB seems short sighted but it would work I suppose.

I tried QRAM (version 2). It doesn't like the EMM.SYS that came with the Everex card. Either way it doesn't work right and I don't have any documentation for it, sadly.

Do you know if your EV 159 is LIM 4.0 compliant? I used to own a few of these cards, but never tested the expanded memory functions.

QRAM should be able to let you use UMBs and EMS at the same time if your card is LIM 4.0. Make sure your EMM driver is the latest one.