# Best version of Windows for MMX?



## sonnytiger (Jul 12, 2011)

I've got a beautiful old Pentium MMX 233 MHz with 250MB of RAM, what version of window would be most period appropriate?


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## sonnytiger (Jul 12, 2011)

im thinking windows 98 se


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## cheesy999 (Jul 12, 2011)

period appropriate, windows 98, however i installed windows 7 on an nvidia riva powered pc last week, gave up when i couldn't find networking drivers


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## PHaS3 (Jul 12, 2011)

You could try force Windows 7... but 2000 or XP will work well on there.


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## cheesy999 (Jul 12, 2011)

PHaS3 said:


> You could try force Windows 7... but 2000 or XP will work well on there.



i'd still go for windows 98 or 95 if i was him, anything else is going to be really slow, and don't forget if he goes to windows 95 he gets to use the best program of all time 'windows fax'


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## EiSFX (Jul 12, 2011)

Me personally i have an old computer with thoes same specs and have windows 98 SE on it i have tried win XP and win 7 both of them ran really slow but win 98 SE runs nice and smooth so i would go with Win 98 SE


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## bostonbuddy (Jul 12, 2011)

3.1 or XP Pro


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 12, 2011)

Pentium Pro: Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 C
Pentium II: Windows 95 C or Windows 98 SE
Pentium III: Windows 2000, 98 SE, ME
Pentium 4: XP

95 C is very hard but you should be able to get your hands on B.

Windows 95 B uses about 5-6 MiB of RAM whereas Windows 98 SE uses around 30-32 MiB of RAM.

If the computer has USB ports, I'd highly recommend going with Windows 98 SE because Windows 95 support of USB is sketchy at best.

Windows 95 supports up to IE 5.5.  Windows 98 supports IE 6 and even older .NET Frameworks.


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## sonnytiger (Jul 12, 2011)

win 95 is a pain in th ass to install so i think i will go with win 98 se


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## HalfAHertz (Jul 12, 2011)

why don't you try a modern OS like Mint with Xfce or LXDE? It should run acceptably well.


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## Red_Machine (Jul 12, 2011)

He wants it for a legacy gaming rig.  Linux is no good for that.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 12, 2011)

sonnytiger said:


> win 95 is a pain in th ass to install so i think i will go with win 98 se


They're virtually the same. 

If the computer has any ISA slots, I'd definitely go with Win 95.


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## Red_Machine (Jul 12, 2011)

I installed Windows 95c on a Pentium 1 laptop yesterday.  Was damn easy.  It had all the drivers built-in.


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

I liked 98 se, but for that 233mhz i would use 95. What size drive?


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## brandonwh64 (Jul 12, 2011)

Windows 95C FREE DOWNLOAD


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## Red_Machine (Jul 12, 2011)

Mindweaver said:


> I liked 98 se, but for that 233mhz i would use 95. What size drive?



98SE would be absolutely fine on that.  Plus it's a LOT better supported, even with Windows Update and the like.


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

Red_Machine said:


> 98SE would be absolutely fine on that.  Plus it's a LOT better supported, even with Windows Update and the like.



Yea, I know 233mhz is fine for 98se. I was thinking more along the lines of the rest of the hardware and driver support for the 233mhz. I bought a p 233mhz 32mb ram and a 3gb hard drive and put 95 because that was the latest and greatest at the time when that processor first came out (also my first year of college ). I remember when I bought my first pII 400mhz, 128mb ram 2x 6gb hd's and 98 didn't come out until 3 or 4 months after the pII 400mhz processer came out.


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## cheesy999 (Jul 12, 2011)

Mindweaver said:


> first pII 400mhz, 128mb ram 2x 6gb hd's and 98 didn't come out until 3 or 4 months after the pII 400mhz processer came out.



i bet you thought that PC was really powerfull at the time


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

cheesy999 said:


> i bet you thought that PC was really powerfull at the time



Hell yea i built that one to last.. hehehe Most pc's were just coming out with 64mb.. I put 128mb. hehehe and i bought a monster 2 8mb daughter graphics card. You had to have a 2d video card installed then add in the monster 2 8mb card.. It wasn't until i bought a monster voodoo card that i had 2d and 3d on the same card... hehehe it had 2mb 2d and 4mb 3d.


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## remixedcat (Jul 12, 2011)

try ReactOS on it... it's a windows clean room reverse engineered clone. I ran it on a VM with 128MB RAM allocated in VMware and it worked. Please report on how good it works.


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## trickson (Jul 12, 2011)

I am thinking like win 95 .


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

remixedcat said:


> try ReactOS on it... it's a windows clean room reverse engineered clone. I ran it on a VM with 128MB RAM allocated in VMware and it worked. Please report on how good it works.



I wouldn't use ReactOS on that p 233.. ReactOS uses parts from Wine. It uses some of Wine's technology to implement the WIN32 API. You could try it, but it might run like a dog...


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## Mussels (Jul 12, 2011)

windows 2000 for sure. everything that runs on XP runs on 2K, but with a hell of a lot less resources needed.


win 2K on its own can run on 64MB of ram, FYI.


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## Completely Bonkers (Jul 12, 2011)

If it can run W98 it can run W2K0.  I would do W2K0 since it has NTFS and a much better kernel.  I ran a laptop with w2k0 and 256MB for many years, and it could handle Office 2K3 fine.


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

Mussels said:


> windows 2000 for sure. everything that runs on XP runs on 2K, but with a hell of a lot less resources needed.
> 
> 
> win 2K on its own can run on 64MB of ram, FYI.



That would be worth trying.. but i'm assuming he only has 95, 98 and XP. If he has a copy then sure i'd try it. Hell I still have plenty of boxes running 2000 now. All of my single core cpu's are still running 2000 and a couple dual cores. But still I would put 95 on it and be done with it. You can run 2000 with 64mb, but i wouldn't run it with less than 512mb if i were going to be running multiple apps at once.  I say try them all if you have the time... and see which one he likes... I still don't know what he is going to use that box for?


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## Mussels (Jul 12, 2011)

mindweaver: if he goes 98, then he's stuck with 98 compatible apps. those are hard to find.

2K is the branching point - he gets NTFS, he gets modern app compatibility should he want/need it.

while 95 will 'work' - short of the built in apps, he wont be able to DO anything on it, unless he has access to really, really old programs.


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## Mindweaver (Jul 12, 2011)

Mussels said:


> mindweaver: if he goes 98, then he's stuck with 98 compatible apps. those are hard to find.
> 
> 2K is the branching point - he gets NTFS, he gets modern app compatibility should he want/need it.
> 
> while 95 will 'work' - short of the built in apps, he wont be able to DO anything on it, unless he has access to really, really old programs.



Oh don't get me wrong i agree with you* running new programs*.. I dont' know what programs he is going to be using.. but I do believe he is going to run very old games.. That is the only reason I say 95, because it's simple and dos 6.22 runs fine on it.. Now if he wants to use newer programs then I say I wouldn't bother trying to get it to work. Sure you can get it to work, but who wants to wait all day for shit to load.. hehehe you know? 

*EDIT: that has IDE 33mhz at best.. I'll be back later.. i need to get on the treadmill.. hehehe*


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## EiSFX (Jul 12, 2011)

i do suggest if you do choose Win 98 SE i would get the unofficial service pack 2.1a heres a link
http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html


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## remixedcat (Jul 13, 2011)

Mindweaver said:


> I wouldn't use ReactOS on that p 233.. ReactOS uses parts from Wine. It uses some of Wine's technology to implement the WIN32 API. You could try it, but it might run like a dog...



I know, however I wanted them to give it a try to let us know how it goes...


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## Drone (Jul 13, 2011)

I remember I've had Pentium *200* MHz with *24* MB RAM *2*MB igp and *8* GB hard drive. Windows 98 SE worked as smooth as button.


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## remixedcat (Jul 13, 2011)

I hadda Cyrix (yes remember them???) processor @ 333Mhz with 32MB RAM and 1MB IGP and 2X 4GB HD and it ran W98 well.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 13, 2011)

Oh, FYI, I have a Gateway bundle of Pentium MMX games and they were designed for/came with Windows 95.  The games are more important than the OS (would not use Windows 3.1 on them because some of them are probably 32-bit) though because if they don't use the MMX instruction, they don't benefit from it.


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## sonnytiger (Jul 13, 2011)

I think i will try react OS I have always wanted to try it, but unfortunately I am out of CDs currently .


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## sonnytiger (Jul 13, 2011)

Mindweaver said:


> Oh don't get me wrong i agree with you* running new programs*.. I dont' know what programs he is going to be using.. but I do believe he is going to run very old games.. That is the only reason I say 95, because it's simple and dos 6.22 runs fine on it.. Now if he wants to use newer programs then I say I wouldn't bother trying to get it to work. Sure you can get it to work, but who wants to wait all day for shit to load.. hehehe you know?
> 
> *EDIT: that has IDE 33mhz at best.. I'll be back later.. i need to get on the treadmill.. hehehe*



I definitely dont want to run newer program on it, I have an Athlon XP for that, but I wthink I will use one of my older ones (Penitium-S) for games and I will try fiddling around with linux or ReactOS on the MMX.


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## FreedomEclipse (Jul 13, 2011)

Mussels said:


> windows 2000 for sure. everything that runs on XP runs on 2K, but with a hell of a lot less resources needed.
> 
> 
> win 2K on its own can run on 64MB of ram, FYI.



I can vouch for this. I spent a full 12hr shift playing Unreal tournament with about 2gigs of maps and mods on shitty IBM thinkpad that was picked up out of the trash.

cant remember the hardware specs but it definitely wasnt a super computer. probably Pentium1 or 2, 166-233mhz, 64Mb ram. 4gb hard drive. and think what must have been a 2Mb trident or S3 graphics card. couldnt run the game in 3d so i played it in software mode and it still lagged like a motherf**ker when zooming in with the sniper rifle for big maps.

Best 12hr shift i ever had. 

single manned site. all i had to do was check in with HQ every few hours to let them know i was still alive. and i pretty much had the whole building to myself.


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## remixedcat (Jul 14, 2011)

sonnytiger said:


> I think i will try react OS I have always wanted to try it, but unfortunately I am out of CDs currently .



when you do please post your findings!!!


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## TC-man (Jul 14, 2011)

I also vote for Windows 98se or Windows 2000. No online activation! And they works the best for older Pentium I, II and III class PCs. But for games I would just chose Windows 98se because the best compatibility with older games. Just make sure you reformat the harddrive to fat32, since Windows 98 does not work with NTFS.

And what games do you want to play on your old game PC? Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Sim City 2000, Theme Park, Sydicate, Populous, C&C Red Alert, Dungeon Keeper, Disc World and so on?


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## sonnytiger (Jul 15, 2011)

TC-man said:


> I also vote for Windows 98se or Windows 2000. No online activation! And they works the best for older Pentium I, II and III class PCs. But for games I would just chose Windows 98se because the best compatibility with older games. Just make sure you reformat the harddrive to fat32, since Windows 98 does not work with NTFS.
> 
> And what games do you want to play on your old game PC? Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Sim City 2000, Theme Park, Sydicate, Populous, C&C Red Alert, Dungeon Keeper, Disc World and so on?



I have an old P-S 133MHz for duke, but yeah i will play sim city 2000 (favorite!) on it. and other old games like fallout 1. These all work on my main machine but it just feels more authentic playing on an oldie ya know?


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