The base segment of physical memory that legacy DOS operating systems could directly access for running applications. Because the original PC architecture reserved the upper 384 kilobytes for hardware mapping, software was strictly limited to this 640-kilobyte boundary. Managing and freeing up this space was a constant struggle for system administrators before protected mode operating systems became standard.
Heard on the job
The new network driver takes up too much conventional memory, so the database application refuses to load.
Also heard as
- base memory