> > This still may be hw problem, but aybe it is not.
> > My machine is 486DX2/80, 128kb level 2 cache (stolen from one 386 :-),
> > 20MB ram (16M+4M). It compiles kernel about 32 minutes.
> >
> > When I removed 4MB SIMM, compilation time went down to 22 minutes. I
> > thought that it is hardware problem, but I wanted to investigate it more.
> > So I put memory back and limited memory to 16M (mem=16M). Compile time
> > stayed at about 22 minutes.
>
> Your 486 hardware caches only 16Mb of RAM. See if you can add more
> tag ram. If not you may have to get a newer board.
>
> > So I suspect linux tfor having problems with too much memory.
>
> I suspect your mainboard
>
MB is propably the cause... but anyway why doesn't Linux support
non-cached ram... too complex and/or not worth it? ('swapping' to
non-cached ram should still be quite a bit faster than swapping to harddisk)