[torusle]

It wasn't that bad. You had different memory models back then. If you wanted to keep things easy you just compiled for a memory model in which each pointer was either 16 bit (for code/data smaller than 64kb) or a memory model with far pointers (access to all the memory).

There have been mixed memory models and you could go crazy with near and far to break out of the limits of the easy memory models.

Most of the time it was just a mater of picking a suitable memory model for your code and forget about near/far though. Not so different than today.

[a_e_k]

Yep. The "tiny" model gave you a single 64KB segment shared by both code and data. And the "small" model was the one where there was one 64KB segment each for code and data.

IIRC, with the tiny model you could often compile those to .COM files where MS-DOS would pick a free segment, load the file to the 0x100 offset, set all the segment registers to it, set the stack pointer to 0x0, and jump to the start at 0x100. Super simple (not even an executable header)!