swapper cpu time on 286 Xenix

[Dave Hammond]

We have a few 286 machines running SCO 2.2.1, all of which exhibit
amazingly high TIME values for 'swapper' on a ps table.  On average,
the time seems to increment by 5,000 minutes per day, or so (ie the
TIME value, for a machine running 1 week without reboot, is ~35000:00).
These machines have 4+ MB of RAM, run from 1 to 4 users, and run
average load programs (vi, cc, make, cu, compress ...).

Are these machines actually "swapping", or does the swapper just use
a hunk of cpu time?  If they are swapping, I can't believe its from
lack of core -- so what [if any] tuning can be done to improve performance?

--
Dave Hammond
daveh at marob.masa.com