SUMMARY: Is 4 MB Enough for Interactive?

[Tim Evans]

I want to say thanks to all those who responded to my posting
asking opinions on whether 4 MB was sufficient RAM in which
to run Interactive 386ix on a '386-25.  First, the list of
those who responded:


mustang.dell.com!jrh (James Howard)
dixie.com!jgd (John G. DeArmond)
iecc.cambridge.ma.us!johnl (John R. Levine)
Dick Dunn <aplcen!ico.isc.com!rcd>
mwtech!martin (Martin Weitzel)
dobie!fmiller (Fred Miller)
cpcahil at virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill)
Doug Pintar <aplcen!ico.isc.com!dougp>
pcg at cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
peter at ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)

The majority opinion (by a wide margin) was that, for a single-user system,
in a non-networked environment and *not* running X, 4MB is sufficient.

Other opinions include:

o	From James (who works for Dell!)

>Some creative kernel tuning on a single user system could probably
>help out enough to make 4MB real usable.

o	From John

>I doubt that you'd like the machine very much with 4 meg, as it would
>be swapping quite a bit.  Even in 2.0.2, the machine ran much better 
>with 8 meg.  On 2.2, we occasionally swap while unbatching news.  It is
>particularly bad if you load TCP/IP.

One the other hand, as Conor points out:

>For less than $200 go for an extra 4MB and run with 8MB.  you will
>be MUCH more comfortable, especially if you plan to compile stuff.

Also, I want to say thanks to Piercarlo and Peter, who engaged in
a fascinating colloquy on swapping, i/o, System V, Release 2, 3,
and 4.  It's too long to include, and it was posted anyway, so
you've already seen it.

To add my own last thoughts, I'm pretty sure I'll go with 8 MB,
not for the very good reasons people have raised, but because
I anticipate going on from Interactive's 3.2 to Interactive's
4.0 when it comes out.  That $195 upgrade I read about in the
paper seems to good to resist.
-- 
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Tim Evans	2201 Brookhaven Ct, Fallston, MD 21047