My one abiding memory of this situation was `dwcfgmg.sys` (Dos and Windows Configuration Manager?) which was the DOS driver for ISA plug n' play devices. I was

My one abiding memory of this situation was `dwcfgmg.sys` (Dos and Windows Configuration Manager?) which was the DOS driver for ISA plug n' play devices. I was at that nexus between the "old" world of MS-DOS games where you had to program IRQ and DMA settings for your sound card, and the "new" world of graphical environments and plug n' play. So as you say, even with 8MB in XMS (or sometimes EMS, depending on the game I think, using EMM 386), the 640k boundary was an issue and I too had the joys of paring down my `autoexec.bat` and `config.sys` But no `dwcfgmg.sys` and my "plug n' play" soundcard wouldn't work. It was a small driver, but the games of the day seemed to demand the entire 640k at startup or they just wouldn't work :( So often it was no sound, or no game at all. Oh what I would've given to trade that for manual soundcard configuration.