(Powered by the EXMS86 driver by Mateusz Viste)
I’m very pleased to share an update on the 2MB EMS board! I recently received an email from Mateusz Viste, explaining that he’d just finished a driver that provides XMS using an EMS card, and on XT-class machines – something I never imagined could be done since, as far as I know, no commercial product ever offered this, and the EMS/XMS years were full of frustration for many.
“With EXMS86, software that depends on XMS memory can now run on classic systems like the IBM PC and XT,” writes Viste. And it just keeps getting better – “In addition to providing XMS support, EXMS86 can also repurpose your EMS page frame to create up to 64 KB of UMB, offering extra space to load TSRs and such”. Had this existed in 1989, it would have been a game‑changer!
Head over to EXMS86 (EMS-backed XMS) for details on how it works and to download the binaries an executable. I’ve also included a mirror of the downloads in the Lo-tech Wiki.