Question

[Manic Velocity]

I have a friend that says it is possible to run Mac OSX on 64 mb of RAM. I know that OSX requires a minimum of 128 mb of RAM to run relatively well. He said that OSX has it's own built-in virtual memory function.

Is this true? Could I run OSX on my 350 MHz / 64 Mb RAM iMac? I have virtual memory turned up to 200 Mb and my computer still runs quite poorly. I'm saving up for a new iMac LCD, but until then I want to have OSX. I'm the only person I know that is still running OS9. I can't even run OS 9.2 because the software on my CD burner isn't compatible with it. And I'd hate to spend my iMac LCD fund on RAM.

Any suggestions?

[Dr-NiKoN]

I used to have OS X running on a rev. a iMac.
The GUI was really slow, but the file/web-server++ that was running on it worked just fine.

So, the RAM requirment is probably just there because the GUI gets extremely slow with all the swapping.

nikon

[griffman]

I have a buddy that did this on a 64mb G3 Powerbook, of all things! The good news is that the virtual memory in OS X is light years ahead of that in OS 9; even when in use, you won't hear the tremendous hard drive activity you do in OS 9.

The bad news is that it's still a very slow setup with only 64mb of RAM. If you're planning on a new iMac anyway, I'd probably save the cash and stay in OS 9 for just a bit longer.

-rob.

[Manic Velocity]

Any idea as to how slow OS X would run? Should I back up all my files before upgrading to OS X? I have a Castlewood ORB drive and two 2.2 gb disks. I tried backing up a folder holding 29 files. The folder size was about 30 mb and it took about an hour to backup three files. I'd hate to spend what could be a week backing up all my personal files. Any idea as to why my ORB drive is going so slow?

I apologize for all the questions. I guess what I'm really trying to ask is, if I only have 64 mb of ram on OS 9, will upgrading to OS X do more harm than good?