I recall it working fine on my 286...then again, I had 640K of RAM...(and 4DOS swapped to disk...or extended memory...can't remember).

SquallStrife wrote:

I was convinced that MS-DOS 6.22 needed a 286 or higher to function.

Nope they all run fine on 8088 already. But as you noted, for such low end machines 3.3 uses less memory.

Try messing with the FILES and BUFFERS in CONFIG.SYS. I've noted that altering these values will actually change how much memory DOS eats up. I believe the smallest amount of memory I've been able to get DOS 6.22 down to is about 16 KB, where it's 49 KB in your photo. Then again, that was also on a machine with UMBs present so that could've been a part of it... *shrugs*

With MS-DOS 5 and 6 you can get low conventional memory use by loading parts of DOS into the HMA (DOS=HIGH in CONFIG.SYS), but you need at least a 286 and HIMEM.SYS for that.

For HMA you need more than 1 MB RAM.