Answering msg from andrew clarke to rowan crowe,
on Monday June 05 1995 at 02:25

 >> Depending on how Watcom allocates memory, it could be as
 >> simple as asking DOS to allocate 1Mb, and noting the amount of
 >> free memory it returns when the call fails,

 ac> Would such a call fail immediately, or would DOS actually attempt to
 ac> allocate the memory and report a failure after had realised it had ran
 ac> out, or is my brain really made of baked beans?

    Fails immediately, well as immediately as being unable to find a
contiguous block of 1Mb in size.

 ac> I'm wondering what effect such a massive memory allocation attempt
 ac> would have on OS/2's "on-demand" virtual memory when
performed in DOS
 ac> emulation mode.

    There is no harm done as it's *real mode* under 1Mb memory only,
nothing to do with XMS or EMS. It's impossible to allocate 1Mb of memory
when you only have 1Mb of memory in your address space. ;)

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