Dec 27, 2020 12:05:46 AM Frantisek Rysanek <frantisek.rysa...@post.cz>:
> On 26 Dec 2020 at 22:40, Jon Brase wrote: >> > 40 MB of RAM in Windows95 - that's something I once had in a Pentium > 75 MHz :-) Possibly the same model of machine, given that both RAM and CPU match, and 40 MiB is a rather idiosyncratic amount of RAM (add opposed to a power of two). Mine's an AST, forget the exact model number and can't check right now. > > Linux on 40 MB of RAM... there was a time this was perfectly okay, > including a GUI. I believe something like RedHat 6.2 or Debian 3-4 > would fly on that setup. Currently it's running Debian 4, with a repository mirror served from my main desktop. I've run the numbers, and 6 should be able to run too, but it's actually the installer that constrains things. Debian 6 doesn't have drivers for older PATA stacks in the initrd for the install medium, and needs more memory than 40 MiB before it gets to the point in the installer where it can load additional drivers, so it can't mount swap early enough and fails to install. Debian 4 is able to recognize the HDD from the get-go, and can thus use swap to get around memory limitations. I think an in-place upgrade 4 -> 5 -> 6 should let me get Debian 6 onto the machine, and that project is planned after the migration to new storage. > I haven't seen a harddisk of that era for a decade or so, and I don't > recall testing one with hddtest - but based on the average seek times > quoted in the old days (12 to 16 ms), and based on the audio > impression I recall, I'd say that the hard drives of that era would > exceed 25 totally random IOps. Modern 7200rpm desktop SATA drives > during the last 15 years can typically achieve some 75 random IOps. > About 60 IOps for laptop drives. And those numbers do not grow > significantly during the years, with new disk drive generations. OK, if modern SATA gets 75, then 25 isn't too concerning. I was worried it might be more like an order of magnitude (or two) difference. > > and I'd like to say that you consistently respond in a way that makes > me believe that you know your trade, when it comes to partitioning > and the various size boundaries - you have my thumbs up :-) > Thanks! _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
