Hunk Clear?

Quake 3 loads on my screaming PII 266mhz machine from God... I have plenty of time to watch it load. At one point, it says something like: Clearing Hunk...hunk cleared. What does this mean exactly? I am guessing it is freeing up some of the RAM windows is using...but then, this is only a guess. And a quick sidenote for all you q3 players...anyone else use a voodoo card with 1.29h and have some wierd lockups when first trying to access a server? Any fixes? Thx. --OctDev