MS DOS 6.22 hangs on modern hardware after loading HIMEM.SYS

Question

I am trying to run MS-DOS 6.22 on modern hardware. I successfully created bootable flash disk with MS-DOS 6.22. But when it starts with HIMEM.SYS enabled in CONFIG.SYS it hangs. Searching Internet the only explanation I found is from the old Microsoft knowledge base https://www.betaarchive.com/wiki/index.php?title=Microsoft_KB_Archive/105792. It recommends the following fix to the issue.

To work around this problem, disable the hardware cache controller or contact your hardware vendor for assistance.

The question is: How can I disable the hardware cache controller? And what hardware cache controller is and how can I work with it? I think this may help me. I do not think that hardware vendor will help.

Since this is about a hardware issue, it might be helpful to exactly specify the hardware you're using. — Raffzahn, Dec 20 '22 at 02:05
The questions are: How can I disable the hardware cache controller? And what hardware cache controller is and how can I work with it? — Art Spasky, Dec 20 '22 at 02:11
Please, add this to the question, not comments. Also, if this is about CPU cache as it seems, then you're simply out of luck, unless you can find some BIOS setting for it. It's the tough luck of those sandwich software, too old for new hardware but too new to run on what today is considered compatibility. — Raffzahn, Dec 20 '22 at 02:25

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 20 '22 at 07:13

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I have tried similar patterns, and found out that the culprit was the - too big to handle - amount of memory.

As stated in VOGONS Wiki, the HIMEM.SYS from MS-DOS 6.22 (version 3.10) will only be able to run with 4GB of RAM. Which is obviously not the case with Lenovo X1 Extreme 2 Gen (32GB or RAM if I read it correctly)(no idea on the Asus K53).

You may try to disable HIMEM (and EMM386) - but in this case, you'll only get access 640kB or RAM; or use another memory manager such as HIMEMX.EXE.

Also, you may find this thread on Windows 98 and 2GB RAM interesting

answered Dec 20 '22 at 07:13

Olivier

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If it's a RAM quantity issue, it might be worth seeing if the EFI/BIOS has the option mine has, which is to disable decoding above 4GB. – Matt Lacey Dec 20 '22 at 14:59
@MattLacey what "decoding" is this? Do you know? – Andrew Savinykh Dec 20 '22 at 21:54
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@AndrewSavinykh decoding in this context means that the memory controller answers to processor requests to physical addresses above 4GB and directs them to physical RAM. – Michael Karcher Dec 20 '22 at 21:56
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Some more information here but does not look comprehensive, it looks like this is more about video memory than anything else – Andrew Savinykh Dec 20 '22 at 22:01
I was thinking it related to RAM but it's actually memory-mapped addressing for PCI-E devices it seems. Though turning it off would prevent devices being able to use addresses a 32bit OS can't cope with. – Matt Lacey Dec 23 '22 at 14:12

MS DOS 6.22 hangs on modern hardware after loading HIMEM.SYS

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