With RAM starved machines running OS9, you can reclaim much of what the system takes by keeping a lean system folder. It takes a little practice, but you can eliminate much of the stuff that Apple gives you.

For example, my OS 9 was taking about 50 megs. After carefull optimization I got it down to 27 megs. This is minor if you have plenty of RAM, but if you only have 128, it can make a big difference. -pix