>>QEMM386 I think allowed remapping even that hole area into extended mem, but extended memory was accessed via DOS extenders (encountered FPDos in extended and normal mode, spelunked around but was horrified of their C interface (Watcom compiler?)
>
>Forgot that one. I was the QEMM guru for a while. Didn't make any money on it, just a few dinners...

Similar here: When I was really good with it, prices of RAM were low enough that typical machine had 8 or more MB of RAM, making the addition of 384 additional MB a nice-to-have. When I learned the stuff, adding 384MB to the extended 3MB of a 4GB machine was welcome.
Began to teach me where to invest my time learning ;-)