I think it is you who have completely missed that fact that I am NOT running AOS.
Yes, I did miss that. I still suggest using QSINIT, and it's RAMDISK (if you don't use ArcaOS)...
Dave is right, there are many versions and configurations of OS/2 floating around, so it's super easy to fork-off on that road, no biggie, easy miss, but you gave me the needed "push"

to re-visit the QSINIT utility.
I had previously installed it some time ago to investigate the functionality, but it was in it's early days and I didn't feel it offered much to warrant replacing the standard process.
So here is a bit of an update, and this will have specific info for those running HPFS386, because certain option available in the current latest version of QSINIT doesn't quite "play nice" with a HPFS386 machine...read on!
OK, so here is what I have done:
1) install QSINIT
2) add BASEDEV=HD4DISK.ADD to my CONFIG.SYS
3) add 'ramdisk Y: hpfs' to QSSETUP.CMD
...seemed like that's all that was required to get a plain-vanilla install. However, upon a re-boot I was greeted by numerous HPFS error messages pertaining to just that RAMDISK. I emailed dixie (QSINIT) author who confirmed this and explained that HPFS386 in particular has a problem with the RAMDISK in that it always thinks the volume is dirty because it always considers the volume to be a brand NEW volume.
Indeed, that required me adding the new 'Y' (my drive letter) to the CONFIG.SYS HPFS386.IFS line:
IFS=G:\IBM386FS\HPFS386.IFS /AUTOCHECK:FGY
Now with this auto-check in-place upon a re-boot there is a very quick CHKDSK that runs on the RAMDISK, because HPFS386 thinks it's NEW and therefore dirty and must be cleaned. The QSINIT dirty flag set utility does not help. But, this process is super quick and gives me a nice, nearly 5Gig ramdisk, plenty of storage.
Further on, I attempted to use the '/1' switch for HD4DISK.ADD, this however leads to a hard stop at bootup where the RAMDISK is not initialized and the device itself is only available as a DASD unit, the error message below is what I see:
HFS0109: The disk device driver for the 386 HPFS volume on drive Y: does not support memory above 16MB. The volume was mounted for DASD access only.
I do not understand the cause, but somehow the suggested '/1' parameter for use with HPFS formatted ramdisks does not work here. Playing with the 'useallmem' setting in HPFS386.INI does not help. Could be the size of my HPFS386 cache (only 64Meg), or it could be due to some difference between regular HPFS and HPFS386.
Anyways, I will let dixie know about this, maybe he is willing to debug further.