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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!fang.dsto.defence.gov.au!foxhound.dsto.gov.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mathworks.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!rhawkins From: rhawkins@iastate.edu (Rick Hawkins) Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Extremely low memory system Date: 17 Sep 1995 01:22:55 GMT Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa USA Lines: 31 Message-ID: <43ft9f$50t@news.iastate.edu> References: <43a1u6$572@tuba.cit.cornell.edu> <43bru9$g3p@n.ruf.uni-freiburg.de> <43cakc$2j7@sixpack.wustl.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: pv3439.vincent.iastate.edu Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.misc:61236 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:6371 In article <43cakc$2j7@sixpack.wustl.edu>, Matt Lundberg <ml@sixpack.wustl.edu> wrote: >I can second that. I tried to get a system up with only 2M of RAM, >although this machine had a 386DX with 387. It was essentially >useless. I just wanted it to connect with ppp to my terminal servers >at school, but the protocols all timed out before pppd could >establish the link. >This was after compiling a "special" kernel, which was missing >floppy and msdos support. It had provision for ext2 filesystem >only, although minix may have been a better choice. The kernel >code was only about 480K uncompressed, but the machine was still >hopeless. >An additional 2M made the machine quite usable. Leading to my question: We're about to experiment with turning old machines that are replaced into xterminals. The current guess is to install linux & xfree86 o them; i don't think we have anything short of 4M386's (acutally, 486's may fall out for this use). The only duty of such a thing would be to serve as an xhost over telnet through the univeristy network (which isn't overloaded). Are we doomed? is this enough? Will paginging do us in? -- R E HAWKINS rhawkins@iastate.edu