Comment by MrBuddyCasino
8 hours ago
637k is pretty good! There was an automated command in later DOS versions that would try to optimise memory, but I don't think it got results as good.
8 hours ago
637k is pretty good! There was an automated command in later DOS versions that would try to optimise memory, but I don't think it got results as good.
Its not just good, its the maximum you can get with MS-DOS. The remaining 3 kb are the interrupt table, the BDA and the IO.SYS stub.
This was detailed in Geoff Chapells "DOS Internals". I loved that book.
BTW for anyone interested, Geoff Chapells has a wonderful website dedicated to Microsoft OS internals. RIP Geoff.
Wow, you're saying I've literally maxxed it out?
MEMMAKER. It was okay, but it was so invasive in modifying your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT that I never really trusted it. I preferred hand-optimizing.
> I preferred hand-optimizing.
Same here.
But then, it was my job, it wasn't for gaming or anything. I don't play games much and I had an Acorn Archimedes at home.
I could usually get 620 kB free by hand with no problem, even with a mouse, a CD, and a network stack.
That was enough for 99% of work business apps.
Being able to get ACT! for DOS running alongside a Novell Netware client on Sony laptops won me a senior job in the City of London in about 1992. (I didn't like it and quit a few years later, after a major motorbike crash made me re-assess life priorities.)
In that job I rolled out 10base-T and desktop Windows for Workgroups 3.11. That specific version, WfWf 3.11 (and not WfWg 3.1 or Windows 3.11, which were both different) contained the first version of what became VFAT, which led the way to FAT32 and Long File Names on FAT. It was a prototype of the 32-bit driver subsystem that enabled Windows 95.
And Win95 not only made the Win3 GUI irrelevant, it made DOS memory optimisation irrelevant too.
In the same City job, I also rolled out Windows NT 3.1 in production. Of course, a decade later, that rendered Windows 9x irrelevant.