Hi!

> >I just downloaded EMM386.EXE & HIMEM64.EXE from ftp.devoresoftware.com 
> >7/4/04, but I can't seem to get them to work with the soundblaster 
> >SBINIT.COM driver which initializes my new soundblaster 16 PCI card. 
> 
> >"Could not allocate code/patch ram below 4mb boundary.
> 
> DEVICE=C:\FDOS\BIN\HIMEMORY\EMM386 FRAME=NONE EMM=1024

I would like to add that some other programs simply have to be started
BEFORE emm386. One such example is the Intel Plug and Play Manager for
DOS / Windows 3. It initializes the ISA PnP and PCI busses (you usually
only need that if your BIOS has no "PnP OS installed = no" setting around)
and stays in RAM (quite small) to offer some services to Windows. Some
EMM386 versions get confused by the 32 bit port I/O accesses. However, as
those only happen during init (and during config changes / accesses with
the enclosed tools or Windows), you can simply load the driver before EMM386
to solve the compatibility problem.

Note that INSTALL lines are always processed after DEVICE lines, so because
your SBINIT cannot be loaded as DEVICE, and because EMM386 can only be loaded
as DEVICE (or does DEVLOAD work for it?), my suggestion will probably not
solve YOUR problem. Anyway, Michael already suggested another solution :-).

> >"Could not allocate code/patch ram below 4mb boundary.

I think this means that the driver wants to get some RAM pages in the
first page table, which maps the first 4 MB - normally, EMM386 will only
fill the first 1 MB + HMA + some (some = for internal use of EMM386) at
startup, and the rest will depend on EMS (and XMS) usage as far as I remember.
During VCPI init, EMM386 tells the VCPI "client" which pages in the first 4 MB
are already in use, maybe this is what the SBINIT error message is referring to?

So other possible solutions MIGHT be (apart from NOEMS / FRAME=NONE) to
exclude some areas from UMB area or EMS / XMS pool or allocate less than
4 MB from it or do allocations starting at the top of the memory (which can
make things slow if you have an old motherboard and only the first 64 MB are
cacheable area...). Would those ideas make any sense? Or am I completely messing
up things here?

Confusing greetings, Eric ;-).



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