Linux is generally considered the go-to OS for under powered computers
"Under-powered" is a moving target. It seems to apply best to computers that don't quite meet the specs of the current Windows, or perform very poorly with it. Anything without a prayer of running WinXP is much worse than under-powered, and modern Linux is a poor choice. An old linux2.4 distro would be a good option, or my personal favorite for truly pathetic hardware, OpenBSD.
[Dmitry] threw an antique 30-pin RAM SIMM at the problem. It’s wired up directly to the microcontroller...
Whoa. You can do that? I mean, it makes complete sense, but it never occurred to me... suddenly I might have a use for all those old free RAM sticks.
Depends on what you define as a distro. LFS and Gentoo run pretty fast on anything that will run OpenBSD. OpenBSD runs on underpowered stuff because it runs nothing by default. NetBSD is probably more portable though.
"Under-powered" is a moving target. It seems to apply best to computers that don't quite meet the specs of the current Windows, or perform very poorly with it. Anything without a prayer of running WinXP is much worse than under-powered, and modern Linux is a poor choice. An old linux2.4 distro would be a good option, or my personal favorite for truly pathetic hardware, OpenBSD.
[Dmitry] threw an antique 30-pin RAM SIMM at the problem. It’s wired up directly to the microcontroller...
Whoa. You can do that? I mean, it makes complete sense, but it never occurred to me... suddenly I might have a use for all those old free RAM sticks.