PE> one thing I am curious about, is that (if I recall correctly), it was
PE> possible to create absolutely ginormous executables (e.g. the gnu
PE> compiler was 1 meg or something UNDER DOS).  Although I can understand
PE> that dos extenders blow away all the limits of DOS, I would have
PE> though that DOS itself would have refused to load the executable,
PE> before the DOS extender can get underway???

There are various ways around that problem. The most obvious one is that
used by the modern EXE compressors. That still results in a single EXE
which DOS thinks of as a normal EXE. But that allows the uncompress code
to be run which looks after uncompressing the code which is run.

You dont even have to have DOS load the whole EXE anyway. You can have
overlays in the EXE which are used as required for example. Giving a
very big EXE which isnt loaded in one hit.

The DOS extender approach isnt that different really, that approach
allows the DOS extender itself to get loaded and run by DOS and it looks
after getting the code itself loaded.

--- PQWK202