no, very surpisingly it runs with little or no swapping ( I use fvwm2 as my
window manager). I ran X on a 386 with 4M recently, and it thrashed like hell.
8Mb was fine though.

I think it was something to do with the way this X is compiled...no unnessary 
stuff, it seems a lot more compact. It was the X dist. for NetBsd/Sun3 on the
netbsd site.

As for finding a new machine, sure I could look, but this was free, and I want
to use it for something...... I could of course build a 386/486 box, but where
is the fun in that ! :-)

Thanks for all your help !

ALan

On Wed, 31 Jan 2001, Andy Ball wrote:
> Hello Alan!
> 
>   AP> Got a sun3 given to me a week or so ago and got NetBSD
>     > and Xwindows working on it after some hassle. It is an
>     > unexpanded beast (4Mb) with no local disk (yet, I have
>     > the box and cables etc..).
> 
> Doesn't it thrash the disk horribly trying to run X (or
> X Window, never 'Xwindows' ;-) ?  I'd welcome the input of
> people more experienced with NetBSD than I am, but my gut
> feeling would be to run it without X.
> 
>   AP> I was wondering how NetBSD shapes upto the world of
>     > AX25, as I would like to use this machine as an AX25
>     > sort of router for HAM packet radio.
> 
> I can't comment on NetBSD's AX25 support, but if this
> machine is going to be left on all the time (and if you're
> paying the electricity bill :-) you might like to think
> about finding a 3/80 or something.  It's slightly faster,
> more expandable and seems to use less power (I only have the
> processor card power consumption figures though).
> 
> 73, Andy KB9YLW