China DOS Union

On a Novell diskless workstation, I made a boot disk like this: there is a config.sys file. Its contents are as follows:device=himem.sys
device=emm386.exe noems
files=80
buffers=80

But when loading the tp-link3239d network card driver (for novell), it hangs. After repeated testing I found it is because emm386.exe is loaded. If this file is not loaded, it can log in to the server smoothly. Question: what is the emm386 loaded by DOS used for? Is it okay not to load it?

DOS has to rely on emm386 to manage extended memory. Of course there is other software with similar functions too, such as umbpci, etc. You can try adding parameters.

Then how do I add parameters? Newbie question.

Generally there are the ram and noems parameters. noems means providing upper memory, but not using expanded memory...
ram provides both... You can specify the size of the memory area used by emm386, for example:
device＝emm386.exe 8192 meaning letting emm386 manage 8 MB of memory......
You can also specify a particular memory address range for emm386, for example:
device＝emm386.exe frame＝d000

Not loading EMM386.EXE is also fine. If there is no problem using it, then just use it without worry. It's just that there will be a bit less available memory; in terms of stability, it's actually a bit better.

I think that 4k Himem.sys
is rather suspicious,
try replacing it with the original Win98 one!