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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

What is base memory / conventional memory

Q . What is base memory or conventional memory ?

The original PC/XT type system was designed to use 1 M of

memory workspace sometimes called RAM . This !m of RAM is divided into

several section. Some of which have uses. DOS can read and write to entire

megabyte, but can manage the loading of program only in the portion of ram

space called conventional memory. which at time the first PC was introduced

was 512k. The other 512K was reserved for use by the system itself, including

the motherboard and adapter  boards plugged into system slot.

IBM decided sfter introducing the system that only 384K was

needs for these reserved uses, and the company began marketing PCs with

640K of user memory. Thus, 640K became the standard for memory that can

be used by dos for running programs, and is often termed the 640K memory

barrier. The remaining memory after 640K was reserved for use by the

graphics board, other adapters, and the mother board ROM BIOS.

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