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Re: Ancient History

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On 25/08/2026 05:41, rbowman wrote:
> In my OCD quest to rejuvenate old machines I finally dug out the tower
> buried under other junk out in the shed. Turns out it's a Compaq Presario
> 4550. It has a 233 MHz AMD K6 that was AMDs challenge to the Pentium II.
> It was pin compatible and could be used in a Socket 7 board. It has 48 MB
> of RAM (no, that's not a typo) and a 4 GB HDD. For your computing
> convenient, it has a 56K modem. There are 2 USB ports although I think it
> expects the mouse and keyboard to be plugged into the PS2 ports.
> 
> Two distros that claim to run in 48 MB are Tiny Core and Slax. slax
> specifies text only unless you have more RAM. Tiny Core isn't very
> specific.
> 
> I think I'll let that sleeping dog slumber on although I might see if it
> boots at all.
> 
> Now for the real puzzle. I was a fairly decent machine in 1997 and came
> with Windows 95. Windows 95 claimed a minimum of 4 MB, recommended 8 MB,
> and if you had 16 MB or more didn't bother creating a swap file. What the
> flaming hell has happened to us?  Even by Windows 98 24 MB was
> recommended. Now you can barely run a pared down Linux in 48 MB and I
> doubt it's a very appealing UX.
> 
We used to run SCO Unix headless on machines just like that. That had a 
TCP stack available.

Eventually Linux was just 'better'.


You probably want a very old distro to install on it


-- 
"Nature does not give up the winter because people dislike the cold."

― Confucius

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Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-25 04:41 +0000
  Re: Ancient History c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-08-25 03:15 -0400
    Re: Ancient History John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2026-08-25 08:19 -0700
      Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 19:57 +0100
        Re: Ancient History c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-08-26 04:25 -0400
          Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-26 09:33 +0100
          Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-26 18:20 +0000
            Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-26 21:27 +0100
              Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-27 01:13 +0000
  Re: Ancient History "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-08-25 11:41 +0200
    Re: Ancient History Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 11:53 +0100
      Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 12:54 +0100
        Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-25 19:25 +0000
      Re: Ancient History "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-08-25 14:23 +0200
        Re: Ancient History c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-08-26 03:28 -0400
          Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-26 09:12 +0100
            Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-26 18:26 +0000
          Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-26 18:23 +0000
            Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-26 21:29 +0100
    Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 12:31 +0100
      Re: Ancient History Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2026-08-25 07:53 -0400
      Re: Ancient History Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2026-08-25 18:26 +0000
        Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-25 19:37 +0000
    Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-25 19:16 +0000
      Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 20:21 +0100
        Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-26 04:40 +0000
  Re: Ancient History The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-08-25 12:30 +0100
    Re: Ancient History c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-08-26 02:49 -0400
  Re: Ancient History "Mr. Chang Man-wai" <toylet.toylet@gmail.com> - 2026-08-25 20:07 +0800
  Re: Ancient History Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2026-08-25 11:20 -0400
    Re: Ancient History Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2026-08-25 17:44 +0000
    Re: Ancient History Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-08-25 21:55 +0000
  Re: Ancient History not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2026-08-27 08:59 +1000
    Re: Ancient History rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-08-27 01:20 +0000

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