With 3Gb physical ram installed, I installed the Knoppix CD with:

Knoppix26 toram myconfig=scan (previous install of config)

The result was an install of the CD toram in about 4 minutes. The " system guard" reported a total of 2.21GB of free ram.

A side issue in this experiment.

I had previously set up a USB HDD of 80GB with qtparted to have 4 primary partitions, 40MB ext2, 2GB linux swap, 2GB linux swap, 4GB ext2 and the remainder free.

The effect of this HDD was to supply a total of 4GB of swap to the knoppix CD install which was reported in " system guard" along with the memory figures.

I am booted in this mode at this time with the CD removed from the computer, the "C" drive powered down, the floppy drive powered down, and only one USB HDD powered up (external).

The 4GB partition contains a Knoppix DVD KNOPPIX file which permits the boot of the Knoppix 3.4 CeBit remaster ..toram... when the DVD is loaded in the CD/DVD reader. This provides 4GB of swap but only some 900MB of free memory. It loads in kernel 2.6.3 whereas the CD loads kernel 2.6.5. There are 4.9GB of program material provided in the DVD format (Limited by the legacy of inherent isolinux limits).

One experiment conducted with the system as loaded into ram involved transferring a 300MB file from desktop to a directory created called RAM1. The file transferred at 200MB/sec, thus confirming the true install ..toram..of all data.

My system is athlon1900+ having 3GB of 2100DDRAM.

Examining the characteristics of loading additional data into the memory via file transfer from external sources suggests that the new data drives the memory content already present in physical ram into the swap area (slower, due to USB interface in my system).
I invite comment on this apparent characteristic of memory management. Thus the new data appears in physical ram, and if enough is added, swap begins to build (slower).

I have just begun studying what might happen next, with Linux...anything!

Admittedly, using the "C" drive for swap and Knoppix loading would provide higher speed but this arrangement left my system in pristine condition while the experiment was performed.

I expect to try installing the USB HDD as "C" HDD and compare performance.