What is the memory hole at 15M-16M?

Updated: 06/30/2020 by Computer Hope
Computer memory aka RAM

Often, in the computer's BIOS setup under the Advanced Chipset Features, there is an option for Memory Hole at 15M-16M, with the available options of Disabled and Enabled. This setting allows users to enable or disable the 1 MB of memory required by some ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) expansion cards.

Enabling this feature decreases your memory by 1 MB and allow the few ISA cards that require this memory to work on your computer. However, with some motherboards, enabling this feature could also disable all memory above 15 MB and cause other significant issues. Because ISA cards are rarely used today and because many motherboards don't even have an ISA slot on them, we recommend keeping this option at the default setting of Disabled.