From: sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu (Charles W. Sandmann)
Subject: Re: memory consumption under WIN3.1
To: kuku AT acds DOT physik DOT rwth-aachen DOT de (Christoph Kukulies)
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1993 17:45:15 -0600 (CDT)
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu (DJGPP Mailing List)

This is a byproduct of the way the ld image builds V1.10 and earlier images.
The data is placed starting at 4Mb intervals.   Thus the smallest image out
there will take around 4.2Mb minimum.  If you have a good virtualizing DPMI
(OS/2 for example) the image will only take up the memory actually modified
and it's no big deal (I quite often only see 128K or so used by old images
under OS/2).

If you have a mediocre DPMI, then the only choices are buy more memory (or live
with paging), or to use a COFF linker to decrease the memory footprint.  V1.11
will come with a COFF linker to solve this problem.  So, you can relink for 
optimal efficiency using DPMI, or use old binary images with a memory hit.

Note that DPMI images come with a fixed stack, which is roughly 4Mb (the
wasted space) using the old a.out format or 256K (by default, changeable)
with the COFF linker.  Nothing comes free...