UMB.DOC Using UMB.SYS to Activate DOS Upper Memory Blocks Microsoft with MS-DOS 5.0 and its associated HIMEM.SYS has defined a standard mechanism for loading T&SRs and loadable drivers into the free memory address space between 640K and 1 Megabyte. These free memory areas are called UMBs (Upper Memory Blocks). UMB.SYS supports the standard UMB protocol as defined in the Microsoft XMS specification. This is useful if you are debugging a program that uses UMBs or if you wish to use other load high utilities than the ones supplied by Nu-Mega Technologies, Inc. (DOS 5 LH and DEVICEHIGH for example.) To activate these UMBs with a NU-MEGA driver (S-ICE.EXE, BC.SYS or NU-MEGA.SYS) you must use an additional driver named UMB.SYS. This driver has no parameters and must be placed after HIMEM.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS file. The following example using Soft-ICE as the driver shows the order that the EMM driver, HIMEM.SYS and UMB.SYS must be placed in your CONFIG.SYS: DEVICE = S-ICE.EXE DEVICE = HIMEM.SYS /M:1 DEVICE = UMB.SYS Notes: 1. The order is critical. 2. The /M:1 parameter should be used with DOS 5. Defining UMBs Before using UMB.SYS you must direct the Nu-Mega EMM driver to place memory in the holes between 640K and 1 megabyte. For S-ICE.EXE and NUMEGA.SYS you must first run EMMSETUP.EXE (use the syntax EMMSETUP S-ICE.EXE or EMMSETUP NUMEGA.SYS to be sure the correct memory manager is changed). For BC.SYS you must run BCSETUP.EXE. In each case you must choose to have high memory support and you must make sure that there are one or more H's in the memory page map. See the manual for the specific product in question for details. Using UMB.SYS with DOS 5 If you are using MS-DOS 5.X then UMB.SYS allows you to load device drivers and T&SRs high using the DOS built-in commands; LH & DEVICEHIGH. You should put the command: dos = high;umb as the first line in your CONFIG.SYS. See the DOS 5 documentation for details.