> I have seen X Run on a 386DX/33 w/ 8mb RAM and it was acceptable. No
> speed demon, but certianly useable.
>
> I could see an XT/286 possibly running X, if the server, even, were
> running on another machine. This would require some sort of networked X
> server... Where EVERYTHING is kept in RAM on a BigLinux box, and ONLY the
> info being displayed to the screen is transmitted over the network to an
> ELKS machine. The ELKS machine would be a truely dumb X Terminal--not
> keeping any fonts, window parameters, etc, in memory at all. Display only
> what it's given over the network.
I've been wondering about this also. Any x terminal has limits on how
many resources it can handle, so what is the minimum amount that is required?
If an x command references a resource which has been dropped can't it just
re-request it? So in the limit couldn't it re-request it every time it
needs it?
What if a "shim" could be written on the client-side to pre-chew the
x protocol and slim it down somehow - represent more complex graphics
in terms of plain old line segments, replace all fonts with one of 2 or 3
choices guaranteed to be on the server, convert images to the number
of colors supported by the server, that sort of thing? I mean what else
is there besides vector graphics, raster graphics, text, and event traffic?
My context (and main reason for lurking on this list) is that I have some
386 touchscreens with 2 megs RAM each that I want to eventually make
useful. VNC would do, actually, and is much lighter-weight, as soon as
I can figure out how to boot Linux and run SVNC in 2 megs. :-) I'm also
thinking of doing an OS-less version of VNC, in which case a small TCP/IP
implementation would be very useful. A web browser would also do, but I
have tried arachne and it is too slow. A BBS graphics protocol like RIP
might also work but that is a strange crowd to deal with. I guess there were
once simpler Unix graphics standards like Tektronics, and mwm(?) or
something like that but these are fading into obscurity. I've never
seen clients for these but I have seen terminal programs that had Tek
graphics support so it must be pretty simple.
--
_______ KB7PWD @ KC7Y.AZ.US.NOAM [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(_ | |_) Shawn T. Rutledge on the web: http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud
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