Ancient History

From	rbowman <bowman@montana.com>
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.misc
Subject	Ancient History
Date	2026-08-25 04:41 +0000
Message-ID	<nf4koiF5rktU44@mid.individual.net> (permalink)

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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.

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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 "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 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

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