Yeah not sure either as have never played with on of these directly… its somewhat remotely possible that a BeOS system chopped down for a single system and use might be that small I suppose since it wouldn’t have to include drivers for other stuff.
Are we certain that it is not BeIA or is that still a possibility… or perhaps a hybrid. BeIA fit on a 24MB flash rom I wonder how big the contents of those installers are uncompressed. If it is or not would have a pretty decent bearing on how what the issues could be with the machine.