I do remember sitting at the kitchen table, grounding precautions everywhere, painstakingly adding chips to fill out the memory board. Then a new version of DOS came along with support for Expanded Memory. Spent much time editing boot files to get the "LoadHigh" stuff in the right order.
Oh yes, I had to have several boot disks in order to configure expanded and extended memory in just the right way to satisfy certain programs. I liked DOS, actually. You could configure your own settings, but it took a little effort. Then along came windows, which did everything for you instead. It’s like being replaced by a computer or something.