On 23 May 2007 15:00:13 -0700,
wrote:

now I have another question: How much RAM do windows 95 and 98 use
just by themselves with absolutely nothing running?


It doesn't necessarily matter. Once OS has loaded, some of
it can be swapped out to virtual memory to make room for the
image viewing code and image itself... and it would never be
swapped back into main memory since this is a single-purpose
system.

Win98 as a default installation is too large a memory
footprint for a system with only 16MB memory unless you are
content with a lot more swapping of virtual memory. Use
98Lite to improve that, with less of the OS installed and
running it will use less memory.

Win95... been too long since I used it, I think it needed a
little under 2MB just to run and would run on an 8MB system
fine before considering the application, which would leave
at least 8MB for the image viewer app plus image, or using
paging (slight delay when first starting the image viewing
app) would leave 16-2= 14MB for the app plus image.

IMO a lot of whether it will work ok for your needs could
have to do with other factors like whether the system
supports ATA33, supports a drive that isn't really old so
it's faster (but then is a higher capacity requiring bios
support from the old system OR an ATA(nnn) PCI controller
card for the capacity support).