The system requirements for the EMS Magic TSR (version 2.1) are:

• 80386 or better CPU^*
• XMS 2.0 or better (HIMEM.SYS)
• Operating system compatible with MS-DOS 5.0, including, but not limited to:
  • FreeDOS 1.0
  • DR-DOS 7.0
  • PC-DOS 6.3, 7.0
  • MS-DOS 5.0, 6.x
  • Windows 9x (95, 98, Me)
  • Windows NTx (NT 3.5, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista^**)

Resident conventional/upper memory, EMS 4.0 emulator (default):

• 6352 bytes for the program code
• 65536 bytes for the page frame, if allocated
• 14 bytes per handle for the handle table, rounded up to the next multiple of 16 (default is 64 handles, which is 896 bytes)
• 18 bytes per handle for the save table, rounded up to the next multiple of 16 (default is 4 saves, which is 80 bytes)
• In addition, one free XMS handle is required, as well as a matching amount of free XMS memory for the amount of EMS memory you want to emulate.

Resident conventional/upper memory, EMS 3.2 emulator (/EMS32):

• Same as the requirements for the EMS 4.0 emulator, except only 2672 bytes are needed for the program code

Resident conventional/upper memory, XMS fix only (/XMS3 /NOEMS):

• 832 bytes for the program code

The requirements for the Windows installer are:

• Windows NT 4.0 or better
• 2 MB free hard drive space

^*Although EMS Magic is a real-mode program, it uses 32-bit registers which are only found in 386 or later CPUs. It was possible to run previous versions of EMS Magic on 286 systems with a 386 opcode trapping TSR such as EMU386. Starting with version 2.1, this no longer works. A native 286 version of EMS Magic is currently under development.

^**Only the 32-bit versions of Windows (x86) support MS-DOS emulation (NTVDM). Windows Vista x86 will run EMS Magic; however, the limitations of WDDM prevent graphical or full-screen DOS programs from running when using Vista graphics drivers. This is a limitation of Windows Vista itself and not EMS Magic. The workaround for this is to install XP graphics drivers on the Vista system.