Hi! On Mar 25 2020 at 01:28, andrew fabbro wrote: > On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 8:52 PM <mich...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > >> Just a thought, some of us have old computers that we want to run freedos >> on. Running Linux on a Pentium 4 and trying to run Dosbox on top of that is >> going to be pretty have for that machine. Some people aren't grabbing a >> multi core modern computer when they use freedos. Some of us want to use >> old computers, 386 anyone? >> Linux won't run on a 286 or XT by the way. Modern Linux distributions, >> don't expect them to work with less than a 1 Ghz processor with at least 1 >> gig of ram. Even the popular arm processors that run Linux, Raspberry Pi 3 >> and Pi 4, run at over 1 ghz. Freedos is an OS that works on any ancient PC >> including dinosaurs like the veritable 8086. Just saying ;-) >> > Maybe you meant "venerable 8086" :-) > > It's true that Linux wants a 386 at a minimum, but it hardly needs 1Gz or > 1GB or RAM. Sure if you want a GUI but then DOS isn't going to meet your > needs either. You can run some Linux distros or various *BSD distros on > tiny amounts of RAM. Debian Wheezy only requires 64MB: > https://www.debian.org/releases/wheezy/amd64/ch03s04.html.en > > Likewise, OpenBSD will run on x86 with as little as 64MB of RAM. 128-256 > is more reasonable if you want to do anything outside the kernel.
Only 64 MB? My 386SX only had 2 MB. If I remember correctly, because it might have been 4 MB. My 486 waiting in the cellar has 8 MB. It is a true ISA machine, first lot of 486s: Intel 80486DX-50, running the bus speed also at 50 MHz, like the CPU. So the CPU/bus ratio was 1:1, like it had always been before. If I remember correctly, this was the problem of getting CPU speeds up, which is why the later introduced DX2, 66 MHz and 50 MHz, is partly slower than the original DX @50 MHz, because the DX2 uses a 2:1 ratio on the bus. Because for I/O throughput data had to be shifted from the CPU to the memory to the ISA IDE adapter card and back, the 50 MHz bus was an advantage. Afaik there is no Linux that will run with only 8 MB of RAM. Not even Windows NT will work with that amount of RAM, but NT 3.x needs 16 MB, NT 4 needs 32 MB. This is where DOS+Windows 3.x excells! A. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
