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High Memory Area (HMA)

HMA is the first 65,520 bytes (64KB less 16 bytes) of extended memory. It is speciall because it is an only part of extended memory that can be used by the PC while operating in real mode.

MS-DOS loads portion of its code in it , so other application can use area below 640KB.

A software driver called an A20 handler must be run to allow the processor to access the HMA.

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