The thing was, that upper memory wasn't just for TSRs. Anything one can shove there, would happily stay there and run just fine.
My journey towards the most free, conventional memory ended at 637k on my 386 DX-33 with 8megs of RAM and a SoundBlaster card, with everything possible being shoved to high memory. Mouse driver, MSCDEX and even COMMAND.COM.
637k. So proud, much wow!
Good times!
I'd done so well optimizing my conventional memory with my rig (a 486SX w/ 4, then later 16 MB of RAM), then I purchased a Media Vision Pro/ Audio Spectrum 16 card and screwed it all up.
The silly thing purported SoundBlaster compatibility but needed a TSR that, if memory serves, couldn't be loaded into upper memory for that "compatibility" to actually work. It was maddening, but I'd already spent the money. Then there was the matter of throwing away more memory for the drive for the card's onboard SCSI controller... Grr...
This was detailed in Geoff Chapells "DOS Internals". I loved that book.
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.
He was running Dr -dos
Yep, that made it a bit easier.
Still around, you know!
It's the kernel of SvarDOS.
If you remember seeing how, you'll get a free virtual cookie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Protected_Mode_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Control_Program_Interf...
I remember toying with DPMI in MS Assembler as a kid, as curious kids those days did.
The ARR is probably Aaron R Reynolds (also associated with the AARD code for detecting non-MSDOS environments), but you can't ask for his opinion since he passed about 20 years ago - https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/in-memoriam/obituaries/no....
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code and a Raymond Chen story involving aaronr - https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190924-00/?p=10... and a pic of him with the Windows team - https://web.archive.org/web/20191014055254/https://community...
from another os2museum.com article about MS-DOS, https://www.os2museum.com/wp/dos/dos-3-0-3-2/
The development of DOS 3.0 was led by Mark Zbikowski and *Aaron Reynolds*, both experienced DOS 2.x programmers.https://youtu.be/c6yPoWrdjkU?si=hxvXTE6ZsdvJs5U9&t=1266
(roughly 21:06 into the video)