TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Jetster]

 

[68Olds]

Bob, please time your builds from power on to usable desktop. That should be fun to see.

 

[QuietBob]

The red-green tag team looking strong!



Now, which benchmarks should I use?

@Jetster Yeah, but can it run... Wait. Hey!

Bob, please time your builds from power on to usable desktop

Will do I'm still looking for a 20 GB 5,400 rpm drive, but they're kinda hard to come by. Using one would probably extend boot times by a stretch. For now I'm using the slowest laptop drive I had on hand.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yeah my old faithful 12 y.o. dual core gateway m-series laptop would be funny not sure what it shows core 2 and threads 2 or 4 ?
Yep core 2 threads 2 lol
I always get a kick out of looking at my q9550 showing core 4 threads 4 lol

 

[framebuffer]

GeForce 6800 LE 128MB

Now I need to see how many pipelines it can re-enable correctly
would already be happy with with 12 / 5 / 12!

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I take a look at this thread to remind myself the good old days of 90s and 2000s. Things seems so much fun and simpler.

 

[Apocalypsee]

GeForce 6800 LE 128MB

Now I need to see how many pipelines it can re-enable correctly
would already be happy with with 12 / 5 / 12!

So pretty! I used to have Gainward 6800LE fully unlocked 16 pipes, ah the good old days....Had to RMA because its dead prematurely, and the replacement card also unlock 16 pipes

 

[framebuffer]

So pretty! I used to have Gainward 6800LE fully unlocked 16 pipes, ah the good old days....Had to RMA because its dead prematurely, and the replacement card also unlock 16 pipes

Do you remember how much you were able to clock the RAM and what was the rated speed of the modules? Mine seems to have 2.2ns modules, (454MHz), looks too good to be true, no?

 

[Apocalypsee]

Do you remember how much you were able to clock the RAM and what was the rated speed of the modules? Mine seems to have 2.2ns modules, (454MHz), looks too good to be true, no?

I can't remember, I'll try to find any screenshots if any but so far nothing. The only I remember it was 2.2ns too

 

[Fouquin]

Been saving chips from gold scrap lots recently. One of my favorites is this 3.4GHz Northwood P4.

Arrived in pretty terrible condition, but no broken pins.



Got the pins straightened out, got it into a board and was having all kinds of issues. I had just picked up a Thermalright XC-90 and didn't realize the massive socket pressure that cooler imparts was causing the system to wig out.

So I delid the 3.4 (and a sacrificial 2.4 C0 for comparison because I was uncertain if the 3.4 was a remarked Gallatin core due to the 30-cap package.)



Overall after delid, cleanup, a small bit of foam relief around the core, and a copper shim to keep a little bit of socket pressure, she works like a charm. Will definitely drop back to 3.9GHz for this config where it's happy at 1.65v, but I wanted to see where it went with 1.7v and if it'd pass all the tests (it did!)

Intel Pentium 4 @ 3978.52 MHz - CPU-Z VALIDATOR

[wnfuzj] Validated Dump by Fouquin (2020-12-16 11:56:58) - MB: Asus P4P800-E - RAM: 2048 MB

valid.x86.fr

 

[QuietBob]

Officially presenting the (almost) slowest AMD desktop capable of running 64-bit Win7 with Aero Glass UI
In line with the official minimum specs, sporting the weakest 64-bit CPU, the weakest integrated graphics with DX9 support from NVidia, and 2 GB single channel DDR1 memory at 133 MHz:



The IGP is evidently the weakest component here. GPU-Z seems to misreport its bus width, and consequently the memory bandwidth - should be 64-bit at 2.1 GB/s.
The mainboard won't let me pick a lower RAM clock. I'm not even sure if there were any s754 ones supporting 100 MHz DDR1.

The build is currently running off a 120 GB 5,400 rpm SATA laptop drive. Just how long did this monster take to install the system from a pendrive?



This was using a fully updated ISO, save for about a dozen extra updates. The actual installation time was a bit shorter, maybe by 10 minutes? I was being busy with other things, so I didn't immediately respond to all the prompts. In spite of the above warning, I should be picking a 20 GB 5,400 rpm EIDE HDD next week, for an even slower experience

Been saving chips from gold scrap lots recently. One of my favorites is this 3.4GHz Northwood P4.

The fastest Northwood, nice find! You did an awesome job straightening those pins

No Athlon 64 1500+?

Wasn't planning a server build

 

[Jetster]

I take a look at this thread to remind myself the good old days of 90s and 2000s. Things seems so much fun and simpler.

And boot times were way longer, IRQ conflicts, and dip switch settings

 

[Fouquin]

sporting the weakest 64-bit CPU

No Athlon 64 1500+?

The fastest Northwood, nice find! You did an awesome job straightening those pins

Thanks! It's a lovely chip. There wasn't much else to save in the lot it came in, so I'm glad I could get something.

 

[Valantar]

Have to love how this thread is now being used to cover games (and hardware for running those games) that were barely two years old when the thread was started

 

[lexluthermiester]

Have to love how this thread is now being used to cover games (and hardware for running those games) that were barely two years old when the thread was started

Right? 421pages later...

 

[Valantar]

Right? 421pages later...

And 10515 posts (well, 10516 with this one). That's 2.595 posts every single day for the 4052 days this thread has been in existence. Probably not that evenly spread, but still...

 

[QuietBob]

Some CPU benchmarks for your inner nerd R20 took sweet 3 hours and 15 mins. More to come:

Bob, please time your builds from power on to usable desktop.

Currently at 1'45". Fully updated Win7 with MSE.

And boot times were way longer, IRQ conflicts, and dip switch settings

Party pooper

 

[68Olds]

I am surprised at that boot time, it's much faster than I expected. The 2Gb minimum is better than the Vista 'claimed' minimum, which was only 512Mb. Had a friend's Vista notebook that took 8 minutes to desktop (512Mb). lol I put 2Gb in it for him & boot time came close to your min spec's time.

 

[Valantar]

I take a look at this thread to remind myself the good old days of 90s and 2000s. Things seems so much fun and simpler.

Fun? Definitely. But I don't know about simpler.... These days you can reasonably build a PC including the OS install in maybe an hour, and it'll come with essentially every driver you need and "just work". I definitely don't miss the days of installing DOS to install a CD ROM driver to Install Windows to spend hours installing drivers. Oh, and then there's stability.

Don't get me wrong, I love 90s and early 2000s computing, but there wasn't much simplicity involved.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

And boot times were way longer, IRQ conflicts, and dip switch settings

Fun? Definitely. But I don't know about simpler.... These days you can reasonably build a PC including the OS install in maybe an hour, and it'll come with essentially every driver you need and "just work". I definitely don't miss the days of installing DOS to install a CD ROM driver to Install Windows to spend hours installing drivers. Oh, and then there's stability.

Don't get me wrong, I love 90s and early 2000s computing, but there wasn't much simplicity involved.

Those are true. I know I might look at the past with rose tinted glasses as I made that comment I was also talking about how I felt about the world then such how the internet is actually a smaller place and social media have not fully grown as massive as it as now. It is those presocial media times I missed, there is distinct separation of the internet and real life unlike today where I am pretty much tied to phone and net 24/7. Unlike then where I have to get home get to sit in front of my fat crt screen, log in the net with 56kbps until I was lucky enough to have a dsl internet and just read those rather rudimentary tech website versus today with mostly text and a few images. I can log into IRC or Msn chat to talk with my friends or like minded people then and when I am done I am disconnected from the internet. As much as I love technology, I just feel rather exhausted and unhappy getting to connected with social media nowadays and there is no escaping as my peers only communicate with whatapp.

Yeah the old day is rather highly inconvenient with those master slave settings for hdd, driver install by floppy and jumper setting for motherboard and cards, crappy internet speeds and etc. I would not want to those much now but given with standards for those days in my eyes then I was rather contented and had fun learning new things despite how much more rudimentary hardware was then. Had fun exploring tech like zipdrive, microdrive and mp3 players. Things feels like worlds apart now compared to then. I remember taking the train without people staring at phones, now phones everywhere. The tech and idealist me is actually happy to see how high tech things like that is now in everybody hands though. Personally it drains me, so sometimes I just took a walk without my phone or with it off. Any this just my random mind ramblings. I do hope good hardware and software remains archieve for people to remember how thing progress and changed.

 

[Valantar]

Those are true. I know I might look at the past with rose tinted glasses as I made that comment I was also talking about how I felt about the world then such how the internet is actually a smaller place and social media have not fully grown as massive as it as now. It is those presocial media times I missed, there is distinct separation of the internet and real life unlike today where I am pretty much tied to phone and net 24/7. Unlike then where I have to get home get to sit in front of my fat crt screen, log in the net with 56kbps until I was lucky enough to have a dsl internet and just read those rather rudimentary tech website versus today with mostly text and a few images. I can log into IRC or Msn chat to talk with my friends or like minded people then and when I am done I am disconnected from the internet. As much as I love technology, I just feel rather exhausted and unhappy getting to connected with social media nowadays and there is no escaping as my peers only communicate with whatapp.

Yeah the old day is rather highly inconvenient with those master slave settings for hdd, driver install by floppy and jumper setting for motherboard and cards, crappy internet speeds and etc. I would not want to those much now but given with standards for those days in my eyes then I was rather contented and had fun learning new things despite how much more rudimentary hardware was then. Had fun exploring tech like zipdrive, microdrive and mp3 players. Things feels like worlds apart now compared to then. I remember taking the train without people staring at phones, now phones everywhere. The tech and idealist me is actually happy to see how high tech things like that is now in everybody hands though. Personally it drains me, so sometimes I just took a walk without my phone or with it off. Any this just my random mind ramblings. I do hope good hardware and software remains archieve for people to remember how thing progress and changed.

Oh, I definitely see that. And I do agree that it can be seen as a sort of simplicity, not simplicity of operations, but simplicity of capability and usage. To me it's a bit akin to the idea of those "e-ink typewriters" that some writers use to avoid distractions and focus on one thing, as typing is literally all they can do. The sheer overwhelming capability of modern computers and their ubiquity (including smartphones, of course) does make for a very overwhelming and confusing world in many ways. But that's the nature of all technology; as it enhances some of our capabilities or affords us new ones, others are simultaneously reduced. Just like holding an axe makes cutting down trees a lot easier, but makes handshakes or brushing your hair rather difficult, having always-on, always-there, always-connected computers enables communication and data sharing on a scale never before dreamt of, but also reduces a lot of our ability to step back, focus and relax. There's always a trade-off, and as a (global) society we have yet to acclimate to these new gizmos sufficiently to really figure out just how much of their capabilities we are actually comfortable with long-term.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Some CPU benchmarks for your inner nerd R20 took sweet 3 hours and 15 mins. More to come:
View attachment 179968View attachment 179969View attachment 179970View attachment 179971View attachment 179972


Currently at 1'45". Fully updated Win7 with MSE.


Party pooper

You should find the following interesting!

A Pentium 4 matched up with 16GB DDR3 RAM and an RX580 8GB running Windows 10? Seriously Phil?

"Gaming performance was quite bad...." PhilsComputerLabs Dec2020, understatement of the year!!

 

[Apocalypsee]

You should find the following interesting!

A Pentium 4 matched up with 16GB DDR3 RAM and an RX580 8GB running Windows 10? Seriously Phil?

"Gaming performance was quite bad...." PhilsComputerLabs Dec2020, understatement of the year!!

Pentium 4 was good for game and operating system of its era. If you put it on modern operating system and games its going to fail HARD. I still remember moving from s478 Pentium 4 2GHz Northwood core that's being overclocked to 3GHz to bottom-of-barrel Sempron 2500+ Palermo core s754 with measly 1.4GHz clock and beats it in EVERYTHING; 3DMark, PCmark, whatever CPU benchies I can throw at. That's how bad it really was.

 

[framebuffer]

I see and increasing amount of contents regarding new OS/Games running on old hardware which all have the same (and easily predictable) outcome.
Personally I don't like them and also don't understand the fun, but I guess for some audience they are interesting, maybe for nowadays teenagers?

I'm curious about others opinion here, what do you think?

 

[Apocalypsee]

I see and increasing amount of contents regarding new OS/Games running on old hardware which all have the same (and easily predictable) outcome.
Personally I don't like them and also don't understand the fun, but I guess for some audience they are interesting, maybe for nowadays teenagers?

I'm curious about others opinion here, what do you think?

Don't like them either. I would run period correct OS for the hardware intended. Perhaps its just for testing, some people are curious so it could generate views on YouTube. Same goes running old OS on new platform (XP on Ryzen, DOS on Ryzen etc.) for me I don't find it interesting.