The skinny: many programs refuse to run on my computer, claiming that I have not enough RAM. One particularly obstinate program claims that I have 0 bytes of RAM, and need 0 more bytes to run it. Does anyone know how to fool my program?
(My computer has ~20 gigs of HD space, and 256K RAM, and Windows 98.)
What OS was the game designed to run on?
If it’s old DOS software, it’s probably trying to use Expanded Memory (EMS). You need to run EMM386.EXE to emulate EMS before most of this old software will work.
Without more info, it’s hard to be sure, though.
A lot of older games (i.e., those designed for win3.1 or earlier) try to get all their memory from the first 640k, which is a historical constraint. I don’t really know how to get around that in a modern OS; you may be out of luck.
Please tell me you mean 256 Megs of ram… 'Cuz 256k really isn’t enough. 
More usefully, grab QEMM386* from The DOS Page.
It will allow you to free up 640k of conventional memory, which should be enough for most really old games. I used to use it with W95 when I wanted to run Duke Nukem.
If that doesn’t work, see if you can find yourself a DOS 6 boot disk, and just boot from the floppy when you want to play old games. No linky, sorry.
*Mods, note that Quarterdeck has released QEMM386 into the public domain. “Be Free!”
Previous responses are right on track, DOS only recognized the first 640K of RAM, and later operating systems where designed to utilize upper memory. Most likely, certain drivers of your existing system load into the lower memory section, preventing the DOS game the amount of memory it needs.
Check this link for one possible solution.
If that doesn’t work for you, you may need to create a DOS boot disk and boot your computer from the floppy drive. If you will need mouse or CDROM support, that may require fiddling with the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS file, as well as loading old DOS drivers. Seach Google with things like:
“DOS games” memory
“Boot Disk” games
and such for even more information.
Good Luck.
Damn. Yup, I meant 256MB. And my new computer will have 1GB. Bwahahahah. And thanks for your help, everyone.
At the DOS prompt, just type: MEM
Youll see lots of cool info.
Keep in mind there are two types of DOS windows in Win98. If you boot in DOS mode, then you are really in DOS (MS-DOS 7.0 I think is how it identifies itself). If you click on the DOS prompt, you are in a windows program which emulates a DOS window, but you are still in Windows (press alt and enter at the same time and you can even turn the DOS screen into a window). Some programs behave very strangely in the DOS prompt window but will run OK in DOS 7.0. You can click on the checkbox that says always run in DOS mode (or something like that) and then if you click on the program it will ask you if you want to restart in DOS mode, which also forces all other programs to exit before it shuts down the computer and restarts it in DOS 7.
If running the program in DOS instead of windows still doesn’t work, you can create a DOS boot menu in your autoexec and config files, or you can just use a boot disk as was previously suggested.
If you want to do this often (create an environment in which you can run old DOS games and other old DOS applications that don’t behave nicely in your modern PC OS), and you’re willing to make the investment, get VirtualPC from Connectix. This will let you launch a separate, self-contained PC environment that runs within a separate window, and you can install and utilize DOS 5.0 or 3.3 as one of your PC environments. No rebooting from the A drive or rebooting in MSDOS mode necessary. (You can have Opera open and browsing SDMB in a different window the whole time).
That may be more than you need or want, but it also lets you set up other PC OS environments (Linux, Windows 3.11, Win2K Server with IIS, etc) that you might have intermittent need for but don’t want to use as your primary OS.
You’ll get a mild speed hit at worst, mostly in graphics (not CPU, it uses your real one which should be backwards-compatible with older processors; it’s also pretty zippy with file access and memory management).