Using Expanded Memory Beyond 640KB

The Equity 386SX/16 PLUS comes with 2MB of random access memory. MS-DOS and your application programs that run under MS-DOS use the first 640KB of memory. You can use any memory above 1MB as extended memory (up to 16MB) or expanded memory (up to 24MB).

Shadow RAM uses 128KB of the RAM available between 640KB and 1MB in your system (384KB). If you use the shadow RAM feature, 256KB of this memory is available for use as extended or expanded memory. If you do not use shadow RAM, you can use all of the 384KB of RAM as extended memory but only 256KB of it as expanded memory (to allow room for the expanded memory page frame).

Expanded memory is required by certain programs (such as Lotus 1-2-3) that support the Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded Memory Specification (LIM 4.0 EMS). To take advantage of expanded memory, you need to use a memory manager to convert the computer’s extended memory to expanded memory. If you do not have another memory manager (such as HIMEM), you can use the one provided on your Reference diskette, EMM386SX.SYS. Follow the steps given below.

1.Run the SETUP program to allocate the amount of memory you want to use as expanded memory. See “EMS Size” in Chapter 2 for instructions.

2.Copy the file EMM386SX.SYS from your Reference diskette to the root directory of your hard disk (or the Startup diskette).

Enhancing System Operations

4-7