Nostalgia time: MS-DOS memory management!

[manveruppd]

http://archive.org/details/memory_2

In my case we had a 286 wqith 1MB RAM and I used DR-DOS 5 to load most of the OS into high memory (HMA) and XMA. I had more base memory free than my friends with fancy new 386s with like 4MB RAM!

That little video made me think though: how come Windows won the battle of the DOS-extenders? (Which is all it was up until 95 when it started forcing you to boot directly into it - and even then it was still just a DOS-extender imho, just a better disguised one) There were other alternatives, including stuff like OS/2 which could do stuff we didn't get on Windows till the NT kernel!

 

[manveruppd]

Creating dos disks to get the games to run those were the days. I remember trying to get a Star Trek game to run and it must have took me all afternoon and evening to get enough memory to run it, I think I needed 593K free and I really struggled to load everything in.

Would that be Star Trek: 25th Anniversary?

(off topic: I recently felt really old when I realised that this year was TNG's 25th anniversary... TNG'S!!!!! )

 

[manveruppd]

Yes that was the game, it was a right pain to get to run with the memory problem lol, but it was worth it though

It ran fine on my 286 (once I loaded everything in HMA), but I got abysmal framerates during the space battles if there were loads of enemy ships. Really stuttery! All the other sections were fine. Never really finished it.