*BSD News Article 51559


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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
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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>
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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