> it's quite a feat to fit this into 4 MB on a 386.
I had 2 different Librex 386SX laptops, with 4MB of RAM, on long-term loan from work around 1992. One was quite chunky, the 2nd was a slimline thing with an off-centre hinge.
I ran OS/2 2.0 on them both.
So I could run multiple DOS apps, and a WinOS2 VM containing Windows 3.0, meaning I could run Win16 apps as well. And native OS/2 apps, although I didn't have many.
Here's a pic of the original Librex:
https://books.google.im/books?id=tDwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27&redir_...
And the 2nd model:
https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/10gepdd/l...
TL;DR
A 386 with 4MB is small now but at the time this was a fairly serious workstation-level PC. At the time my work desktop was a 386DX but it had only 1MB of RAM.
In its time a 4MB 386 could run any one of multiple multitasking 32-bit protected-mode OSes, including OS/2 2.x, SCO Xenix, Coherent 3 or 4, DR Concurrent DOS/386, and so on.
This was a high-end bit of kit and with one of these OSes, or even with Quarterdeck DESQview, it could multitask half a dozen large and demanding DOS apps, or maybe a couple of the still fairly new Windows apps such as WinWord 1, or Excel 2.
nosioptar
today at 5:39 PM
That's a wonderful machine. I'd love to see that style of keyboard on new stuff.
Its wild to me to think of how much old computers could do relative to new. WordPerfect for DOS was always responsive and quick wheb I used it. I've seen ms word cludge up machines that should have plenty of power to run a word processor.
> I'd love to see that style of keyboard on new stuff.
OMG yes please. :-)
Yep, WP for DOS was quick. Rather clunky UI compared to MS Word for DOS, IMHO, but fast. A friend of mine used a simple method to demo its speed: on his cheap monochrome 286 home computer, he loaded the book he was working on -- one big file, a few hundred pages -- and just held down the cursor key to scroll through the whole thing. It kept the entire doc in RAM and the text just blurred as it zoomed through the entire book in under a minute.
Compared then (early 1990s) to Windows where a similar text took tens of minutes, as my faster computer struggled to load in pages of text from disk, render the fonts, etc.
In the late 1980s, Amstrad introduced new CP/M machines, the PCW range:
https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/PCW
They sold for over a decade and shifted about 8 million units. A CP/M computer, in the early Windows era.
Maybe it's time to do that again: a very low-spec machine, but with a crisp e-ink screen and a great premium-grade mechanical keyboard, shipping with a modern FOSS DOS, a compilation of free DOS apps, and some nice friendly graphical launcher. Wrapped up as an easy appliance that doesn't do Internet stuff at all, but makes it trivially easy to save your work on USB media or zap it to modern devices wirelessly.
Form factor of a big late-20th-century laptop, with a massive battery so it can double as a power bank for your phone or something.
My first Linux box was a 386SX with 3 megs of RAM (1 meg on the motherboard plus a 2 meg expansion.) It was a tight fit (SLS Linux, I think?) This would've been around 1992 or 93.
NoGravitas
today at 4:52 PM
I had a 386SX-16 running OS/2 from 2.1 to 3.0. It was usually fine, you could multitask several OS/2 and DOS applications or a WinOS2 session. It was very easy to get it swapping, though, and when it was swapping, it ground to a halt. It helped a lot putting 8MB on it, though 4 of those were on an ISA card and very slow.
Reminds me of my early-1990s home network server: a late-1980s IBM PS/2 Model 80, a 386 tower built with a moulded iron case. Super tough, fancy 32-bit IBM expansion bus. 4MB of RAM on the motherboard, another 4MB in an expansion slot.
I attached a couple of big SCSI drives and ran Windows NT 3.51 Server on it. When not logged in, it only used a couple of megs of RAM for the OS so file serving performance was tolerable -- and the hardware was literally bulletproof. I dropped one down a flight of stairs in my first job. The computer survived but it knocked lumps out of the concrete stairs on the way down.