I have 2. things I need help understanding and they do not realy go togather.

First I just made a boot disk for a win98 COMPUTER if I ever need it and I did it from  bootdisks.com

As far as memory drivers it only has the file Himem/sys on it.  And I know this is a Driver for managing the High memory area so that is why that put it on the Boot disk.

But win98 uses XMS memory  so why did they not put the emm386.exe for managing extanded memory??

And secound.
Win98 uses extanded memory and that is what the file  emm386.exe if for it can manage all of the extanded memory block and turn off the EMS window  untill it is needed by an older program.

So it does booth so why idi they have Himem.sys  just for that 64 kB area right after the first MB    or was it for more then that??First and foremost- Extended memory and Expanded memory are different things. And yes, it is extremely annoying that their names are so darn similiar.


himem.sys is the XMS memory manager for extended memory (all of it, not just 64K, unless a specific switch is supplied, then it will only provide the 64K of Upper memory blocks). emm386.exe is for emulating expanded memory with available extended memory. Extended memory is the only type (aside from conventional, but let's not complicate this to thoroughly here) of memory usually installed in computer for the last few decades, whereas Expanded memory was found on add-on board that went in the ISA slots of early PCs that could only address up to 1024k (640k+384k HMA), and was accessed via a memory manager that usually came with the card. In order to access the expanded memory, applications needed a generalized method that was the same with each card vendors memory manager, and so they all conformed to a standard known as the LIM EMS(Lotus-Intel-Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification). However, after a few years, and extended memory became the norm, expanded memory just became a fading, err- memory.. However, the applications originally written for the memory couldn't use any Extended memory, since they conformed to the previously mention LIM EMS, not the newer XMS, standards. And so, Microsoft stepped in and provided emm386, or an Expanded Memory Emulator for 386 processors. What it does it it allows programs to access expanded memory USING the older LIM-EMS standard, even when the computer has no expanded memory installed. Instead, Emm386 turns around and uses some XMS memory when the application isn't looking (emm386 new that if the program found out it was actually using XMS memory, it would be 386 lashings!).

Quote from: NYMPH4 on June 27, 2008, 10:58:38 AM

But win98 uses XMS memory  so why did they not put the emm386.exe for managing extanded memory??

And second.
Win98 uses extanded memory and that is what the file  emm386.exe if for it can manage all of the extanded memory block and turn off the EMS window  untill it is needed by an older program.