Thanks guys, I will take a look at the links and also the suggesrions about icons (although still puzzles me that if this is "normal" behaviour, why didmthey make them this big to begin with...).
Kolla, I assume if you never even tried them you have lots of ram? :laugh1:
Most of these old games were made to run directly from floppy disk (without the operating system being loaded), so originally they probably only required 1MB of ram. By running them through WHDLoad you're talking about (first) loading the entire operating system (which can consume a lot of memory depending on the version, screen resolution and number of colors, etc.), on top of whatever the requirements of the game are.
All of the previous suggestions are good: add more memory, boot from the shell, use simpler icons, use a custom launcher, etc. You can also try reducing the requirements of Workbench (for example: lower resolution, 2 color screen, remove everything from WBStartup).
RAM is cheap. Just buy more.
