XP on ancient computer

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cppm
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XP on ancient computer

Post by cppm »

http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm

It is possible to run NT based OS's on really quite sparse hardware, this is, however quite an extreme example...
GreatLord
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Post by GreatLord »

yes it is, see NT 4.0 it run fine on i486
elhoir
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Post by elhoir »

will we be able to run ros on those pcs?
cppm
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Post by cppm »

Well, this appears to have been a custom rig, but theoretically there should be no restriction on running RoS on these specs.

Mind you, run might not be the right way of describing it, perhaps crawl
Guennie1568
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Post by Guennie1568 »

That's a interesting and funny test of OS installing and "running ". I never had tested so slowly PCs with WinXP.
Guennie1568
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etko
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Post by etko »

My personal record is nLited WinXP pro on PII 233 MHZ, 32 MB RAM, 1 GB HDD, two monitors :), nvRiva TNT Ultra64 + Matrox Mystique.

Fscking slow as hell. On 32 MB RAM HUGE swapping having prefetch enabled or disabled. 256 MB ram makes thing more responsive but you can still see windows drawing. Two monitors affect performance immeasurably.

Observation from high-end systems. PCI GFX card for second/third monitor tends to break things considerably when windows spans the screen split, I guess PCI/PCIe/AGP transfer is at work.

Even on Athlon 64 with PCIe and 2 GB RAM, you can see windows drawing when using PCI Matrox Mystique, but it doesn't affect performance of the computer at all.

Memory affect performance most. Fragmentation is second. Lesson learned windows internal defragmenter sucks badly, NTFS too on memory low system.
elhoir
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Post by elhoir »

we are talking about running ROS on those pcs, not WinXP ;)
etko
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Post by etko »

Yeah, but no testing done, ROS barfs on each my old computer.
inclusivedisjunction
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Post by inclusivedisjunction »

I really wish I still had some old 486 boxes around. The slowest I've got are some Pentium 200s. If I could get a spare 20 GB hard drive, I'd try to get Vista on one (previous personal best was PIII 600 Mhz and 256 MB of RAM).
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Post by elhoir »

a friend made it run on a laptop Pentium III 600 MHZ with 64 Mb RAM

and i have been running it for a while in a Pentium II 300 MHz with 384 Mb RAM
psyco001
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Post by psyco001 »

hmm i think i should crawl in my hardware chest.
i've a few old boards one of them is an old i286 20MHz, one i386 40MHz and one i486 66MHz

i only should find a HDD that is big enough for ros
inclusivedisjunction
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Post by inclusivedisjunction »

psyco001 wrote:hmm i think i should crawl in my hardware chest.
i've a few old boards one of them is an old i286 20MHz, one i386 40MHz and one i486 66MHz

i only should find a HDD that is big enough for ros
You can forget about the 286; that's a 16-bit processor.
Carlo Bramix
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Post by Carlo Bramix »

I have a fully working 486DX at 33 MHz, Cirrus Logic ISA VGA with 1MB and VESA extensions in its bios and a 255 MB harddisk, but I cannot test ReactOS on it because that PC cannot boot from CD-ROM.
It must boot from floppy or harddisk first...

Sincerely,

Carlo Bramini.
inclusivedisjunction
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Post by inclusivedisjunction »

Carlo Bramix wrote:I have a fully working 486DX at 33 MHz, Cirrus Logic ISA VGA with 1MB and VESA extensions in its bios and a 255 MB harddisk, but I cannot test ReactOS on it because that PC cannot boot from CD-ROM.
It must boot from floppy or harddisk first...

Sincerely,

Carlo Bramini.
Try the "Smart Boot Manager"

http://linux.simple.be/tools/sbm

You boot it from the floppy, and then it can boot the CD drive.
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Jaix
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Post by Jaix »

Carlo Bramix wrote:I have a fully working 486DX at 33 MHz, Cirrus Logic ISA VGA with 1MB and VESA extensions in its bios and a 255 MB harddisk, but I cannot test ReactOS on it because that PC cannot boot from CD-ROM.
It must boot from floppy or harddisk first...
You'll need at least 23M ram in your computer for ReactOS to boot, unless someone stripps it down first.
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