why doesn't ms-dos 6.22 support more than 64MB of ram even with the himem from windows 98?
I know the maximum ram in ms-dos 6.22 is 64MB but I have always thought that was because of the himem.sys included. I also know that the Himem.sys from windows 98 or windows 98SE works with ms-dos .6.22 as well, and I know that that version of Himem.sys supports more than 64MB, Why does ms-dos 6.22 still only recognize 64MB even if I use the Himem.sys from windows 98? I thought Himem.sys from windows 98 would make ms-dos 6.22 recognize more memory until I did the MEM command and saw it was still 64MB.
Comments
Due to many Software core limitations. In 1993, having more than 16 or 32 MB of RAM was crazy, so 4 GB was unthinkable. Why did I mention 4 GB? Because technically MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 could support that 32 Bit 4 GB RAM Limit, but since the people used to have 8 or 16 MB of RAM, they didn't bother adding support for more than that (Of course adding more support as the 'standard' was growing).
Technically you have to patch some core files (MSDOS.SYS or IO.SYS) or get ones that are already patched. Then boot your DOS PC and done. You can see all the RAM (But of course you'll need the HIMEM.SYS from Windows 98 to see all the RAM).
I'll search for info about patching DOS and if I find something, I'll post it.
I think I found something, I think ms-dos 6.22 does support more than 64MB of ram if you use the himem.sys from windows 98 and its the MEM program that came with 6.22 that if you check the memory with MEM it will only show 64MB. What I found out if you use the MEM program from windows 98 and use DOSVER to change the version of dos so MEM from windows 98 works with DOS 6.22 , that MEM version shows up the full amount of ram if you use HIMEM.sys from windows 98 , with MS-DOS 6.22. But I am not sure if you still need to patch files in ms-dos 6.22 though.
You could also use dos6.22 with qemm 7.5 (and up) to show memory above 64m, although I don't know of any dos programs that need that much memory.
Sorry, I wasn't sure about the patch thing. In fact, the only thing you need is a Memory manager that can show all the RAM. You can use the HIMEM from Windows 98 (Good choice!) or another one, like the one of FreeDOS
So the issue I was having with ms-dos still only showing 64MB even with the Himem.sys from windows 98 , was caused by the MEM version that came with ms-dos 6.22, using the MEM from windows 98 shows the ram correctly. But MEM from windows 98 doesn't work on MS-DOS 6.22 without using a utility to change the DOS version to 7.10 , I use the program DOSVER to do that.
You can use SetVer.exe which does the same function and comes with DOS 6.22
HIMEM.SYS from MS-DOS 6.x was limited to 65,535 KB (64 MB - 1 KB) of extended memory, because it used 16-bit variables to store the amount of extended memory in kilobytes.
This was obviously one of the software limitations that was implemented since 64 MB of RAM wasn't common until at least 1998 from my experience.
There are ways to overcome the 64 MB limit in MS-DOS 6.x such as using either a XMSDSK utility called SETXMSTO.EXE or by using QEMM v7 through QEMM 97.