Ah, yes, and I also remember what a relief it was when the newer generation of games (starting with Doom IIRC) used "DOS extenders" to switch the CPU into protected mode and be able to use 16 MB or more without any fiddling...

Another anecdote from around that time (or a bit later): some friends were alarmed that their PC was not booting Windows as usual. Turns out they had forgotten a bootable CD in the CD-ROM drive, which was showing some cryptic text mode menu on startup. Easy fix: remove CD, restart, works...