Baslinux mailing list

["Anthony J. Albert" <albert AT polaris.umpi.maine.edu>]

On 14 Jan 2004 at 15:59, James Miller wrote:
>On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:
>> How much RAM?  I saw an account of somebody who ran Slackware
>> with Xvesa in 4mb RAM.  He moved the HD to different system,
>> installed everything there and then moved the HD back into
>> the laptop.
>>
>Ok, here's a challenge (I'm supposed to be spending less time on computer
>stuff and more on school work, so don't tell my wife . . .).  I've got a
>really neat little 386 SX 25 with 4MB RAM that I'd really like to put to
>some use.  It's got an old onboard 256 KB video (Trident?).  Technically,
>I should not be able to run BL2 on it, since it has no math coprocessor.
>But let's say I installed BL1 there, then the xvesa binary.  Could I then
>use it to get an xsession from my more up to date machine that runs
>Debian?  Shall I give it a whirl?  Pointers on how?
>
>James

Yep, BasicLinux 1.x will run fine on this machine in CLI mode.  You'll 
really want to put some more memory in it if at all possible, to bring 
it up to at least 8MB-20MB if you're going to do anything involving X.  
I've got a similar machine, and I was able to get it to start X, using 
BL1.7, and the X packages, but with only 4MB of RAM, doing anything 
more than using "xcalc" makes it swap.  It'll help to turn off a few of 
the virtual consoles, as well.

However, 640x480x16 or 320x200x256 will probably be all that you can 
get it to do for a display, with that little video RAM.  It would be 
nice if you can replace the on-board video with a 512KB or 1MB video 
card.

With those caveats, you can set this machine up as an X terminal.  
You'll probably want to check out the low-memory Linux documentation, 
the X-terminal documentation, as well as the LTSP (Linux Terminal 
Server Project) documentation, too.

Anthony Albert
===========================================================
Anthony J. Albert                     albert AT umpi.maine.edu
Systems and Software Support Specialist          Postmaster
Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle
        "This is only temporary, unless it works."
                        --- Red Green