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From: byang@wiliki.eng.hawaii.edu (Bojiang Yang)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Memory requirements
Message-ID: <13180@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 24 May 91 01:14:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: uhccux.13180
References: <42583@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
Reply-To: byang@wiliki.UUCP (BY)
Organization: University of Hawaii, College of Engineering
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In article <42583@netnews.upenn.edu> theall@rm105serve.sas.upenn.edu (George A. Theall) writes:
>
>  Is there a method to figure out, for a given DOS version, how much
>memory COMMAND.COM requires to be able to spawn programs? I have
>written a utility to gobble up of memory. Under DOS 3.30, leaving less
>than 20K generates the infamous "Memory allocation error, Cannot load
>COMMAND, system halted" message. Under PC DOS 4.01 though the magic
>number is more like 29K. I presume this is because I'm not leaving
>enough for the transient portion of COMMAND.COM. But how to figure
>out how much is "enough"?

I'm not sure what you mean by "transient portion", hope this helps:
1. At DOS prompt, run CHKDSK, write down the amount of memory available,
2. Run COMMAND.COM, now you have one more layer of COMMAND.COM in
   memory,
3. run CHKDSK again, write down the amount the memory available.

The difference between the two numbers ( the amount of memory used by
that extra layer of COMMAND.COM) might be what you want to know.