TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[lexluthermiester]

Does anyone have experience with Tiny XP vs. Micro XP as a benching platform? I got TinyXP Beast Edition II and MicroXP v0.86 from the eXperience Multi-boot CD. I'd set up both and test them against one another, but I'd rather save the time if someone has already done so.

Never heard of them. Sounds interesting though.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Does anyone have experience with Tiny XP vs. Micro XP as a benching platform? I got TinyXP Beast Edition II and MicroXP v0.86 from the eXperience Multi-boot CD. I'd set up both and test them against one another, but I'd rather save the time if someone has already done so.

TinyXP rev. 09 is the fastest. Come see me if you need a copy.

 

[lexluthermiester]

TinyXP rev. 09 is the fastest. Come see me if you need a copy.

I think I found it.

Tiny XP Rev 11 Multi Incl Tiny B II And Micro XP 086 E XPerience 2010 : eXPerience : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

eXPerience Presents... Windows TinyXP Rev11 - September 2010 ________________________________________________________________________ This CD includes 10...

archive.org

And this is Rev11

 

[Bones]

I think I found it.

Tiny XP Rev 11 Multi Incl Tiny B II And Micro XP 086 E XPerience 2010 : eXPerience : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

eXPerience Presents... Windows TinyXP Rev11 - September 2010 ________________________________________________________________________ This CD includes 10...

archive.org

And this is Rev11

Just an update. It was the motherboard.

My new board solved everything. I also tested the old CPU in it and it works.. So it seems my faulty board did not take my CPU out with it as well which is what worried me.

Anyway the new cpu was an sp85 (1 point lower lol), so I'm gonna return or sell that one and stick with my old sp86..

Thanks for all the help.

I have both, Tiny XP 9 and 11 and 9 is the better of the two.
11 isn't "Bad" and works well itself but has a little more that was left in vs what 9 has, meaning a few more processes have to be managed to get the most out of it... And it still comes up just a hair short of what 9 can do.
Either way you'll be fine though.

 

[Dinnercore]

I think I found it.

Tiny XP Rev 11 Multi Incl Tiny B II And Micro XP 086 E XPerience 2010 : eXPerience : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

eXPerience Presents... Windows TinyXP Rev11 - September 2010 ________________________________________________________________________ This CD includes 10...

archive.org

And this is Rev11

That is the one I got. But I would assume that Rev.11 includes too many updates as its the latest version and thus might be slower compared to Rev.9.

Anyhow, MicroXP still boasts even less RAM usage after clean install compared to TinyXP so I'll test them anyway.

I just struggle with XP once more, it refuses to install from CD and USB. Setup starts but then the Windows N upgrade error message shows, which usually indiciates a missing driver for e.g. AHCI but I run this board in IDE mode only...
Me and XP will not be friends it seems. I now added the drivers via nLite but still no luck. I'm a bit clueless whats going on, maybe its a DFI thing and I gotta try a different board. I remember from using a Gigabyte last year it was less of a struggle.

EDIT: Found an ominous 'USETHISFORXP.inf' deep in my various benchsetup folders. Adding this to the install worked, can even install it from USB in AHCI now. If only I had seen that 2 hours earlier.

EDIT2: Yeah no, now its crying about a Hal.dll missing. It is actually where it should be, the OS just can't seem to find it during boot. All files are there it just wont boot. I hate XP. Arch-Linux will atleast work after some effort, but XP just gives you the finger.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I have both, Tiny XP 9 and 11 and 9 is the better of the two.

Fair enough. Have never seen it before.

That is the one I got. But I would assume that Rev.11 includes too many updates as its the latest version and thus might be slower compared to Rev.9.

Assuming you keep it completely offline, having the latest updates would be of no consequence.

Me and XP will not be friends it seems.

We may have touched on this already, but have you given Integral Edition a try? It's my go-to XP version. It's not the lightest version out there but it's dead easy to use and has all of the basic drivers included.

 

[Dinnercore]

We may have touched on this already, but have you given Integral Edition a try? It's my go-to XP version. It's not the lightest version out there but it's dead easy to use and has all of the basic drivers included.

I would probably have less trouble with that, but I try to figure this out because I want to bench on this system and I need every last bit of possible optimisation. XP already helps a ton with RAM heavy benches like SuperPI and it also proves a tiny bit more stable, since it only takes a few MB active RAM to run. And I'd like to keep that number as low as possible.

I'll check the boot.ini and bcd for the error regarding a missing hal.dll and hope I can somehow find a good way to get these MicroXP builds running on SATA drives. It's just painful the first time through I hope, once I got the process written down I'll be fine.

 

[Retrorockit]

I'm looking at doing some tapemod (VID and BSEL) overclock projects. Many of them will be 200fsb, or 266fsb C2D to 333fsb. The problem is all of the under 333fsb CPUs don't support SSE4.
There will be a couple of 333fsb to 400fsb mods too with SSE4. But not many OEM motherboards support that speed.
So what would SSE3 be good for, and what won't it do?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Here's something Nostalgic for everyone.

Ah that Quantum Bigfoot drive noise.

 

[Dinnercore]

I got my XP versions up and running. Even if USB installs are very convienient, they are not worth the hassle. It was also a pain to integrate the optical drive on my testbench setup, but in the end that fixed most of the remaining headaches.

These tests were done with the exact same hardware settings with SuperPI 32M:

MicroXP: 12m 34.938s
TinyXP Rev.11: 12m 33.610s

Win7 control: 12m 31s

So if you don't run any tweaks, not even TinyXP is faster then Windows 7. BUT there are some tweaks you can run, that are just not possible with Windows 7. Partly due to RAM size limitation, partly due to the OS itself.

MicroXP with maxmem, in diagnostic mode and launching SPI from a tiny ramdisk: 12m 18.609s

Did not even include the OCX tweaker yet, as I forgot to set up another partition for copy waza. Also there is another small tool I saw Luumi use that I want to try too.

 

[stinger608]

I'm looking at doing some tapemod (VID and BSEL) overclock projects. Many of them will be 200fsb, or 266fsb C2D to 333fsb. The problem is all of the under 333fsb CPUs don't support SSE4.
There will be a couple of 333fsb to 400fsb mods too with SSE4. But not many OEM motherboards support that speed.
So what would SSE3 be good for, and what won't it do?

Dang, you bring up some good and interesting points man!!!!!

 

[lexluthermiester]

I got my XP versions up and running. Even if USB installs are very convienient, they are not worth the hassle. It was also a pain to integrate the optical drive on my testbench setup, but in the end that fixed most of the remaining headaches.

These tests were done with the exact same hardware settings with SuperPI 32M:

MicroXP: 12m 34.938s
TinyXP Rev.11: 12m 33.610s

Win7 control: 12m 31s

So if you don't run any tweaks, not even TinyXP is faster then Windows 7. BUT there are some tweaks you can run, that are just not possible with Windows 7. Partly due to RAM size limitation, partly due to the OS itself.

MicroXP with maxmem, in diagnostic mode and launching SPI from a tiny ramdisk: 12m 18.609s

Did not even include the OCX tweaker yet, as I forgot to set up another partition for copy waza. Also there is another small tool I saw Luumi use that I want to try too.

The takeaway I'm getting is that these micro-distros of XP don't really provide a performance boost so much as they are able to run on systems that have low amounts of RAM and drive space. Thinking I'm going to stick with Integral Edition.

 

[Dinnercore]

The takeaway I'm getting is that these micro-distros XP don't really provide a performance boost so much as they are able to run on system that have low amounts of RAM and drive space. Thinking I'm going to stick with Integral Edition.

Yeah I would also advise for 'normal retro use' to stick to full size versions. You need to really limit your hardware in terms of RAM and specs if you want to see an improvement in games:

Numbers at ~ 1:40

The specs of the system in the video include an AMD Athlon 1800+ with 768mb RAM.

 

[lexluthermiester]

The specs of the system in the video include an AMD Athlon 1800+ with 768mb RAM.

Oh yeah, that's WAY old hardware. The machines I run XP on are quad and hex core CPU's with a minimum of 3 GB of RAM. For an AthlonXP and 768MB of RAM, I would go with a Win9X kernel based OS. But that's just me.

 

[Trekkie4]

Here's something Nostalgic for everyone.

Ah that Quantum Bigfoot drive noise.

I personally prefer 3.5" Fireball Series!

Either way, thank you for sharing this clip. I got couple of Quantum drives myself and always find myself enjoying their ... unique sound

 

[seth1911]

I had a few days ago a GTX 460 2win from EVGA here to repair and forgot to make a pic, here it is, it is a card with 2 GF 104 Chips

 

[agent_x007]

I'm looking at doing some tapemod (VID and BSEL) overclock projects. Many of them will be 200fsb, or 266fsb C2D to 333fsb. The problem is all of the under 333fsb CPUs don't support SSE4.

Core 2 Duo E7xx0 series supports SSE4.1, and uses 1066MHz FSB.

 

[Mr.Scott]

The takeaway I'm getting is that these micro-distros XP don't really provide a performance boost so much as they are able to run on system that have low amounts of RAM and drive space. Thinking I'm going to stick with Integral Edition.

The Tiny's and Micro's are not recommended for daily usage. They are partially stripped for size and ram is all. They are mostly used in benchmarking applications, and even then, I usually strip those down even further.
Done properly, they are most definitely faster than a full bloat OS.

 

[stef]

I had a few days ago a GTX 460 2win from EVGA here to repair and forgot to make a pic, here it is, it is a card with 2 GF 104 Chips

View attachment 233498

Very nice example. Ticks all the right boxes.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I had a few days ago a GTX 460 2win from EVGA here to repair and forgot to make a pic, here it is, it is a card with 2 GF 104 Chips

View attachment 233498

That was a great card BITD. Still is for a solid amount of semi-retro computing. I imagine it'll still run most modern games on lowered settings in DX11.

 

[Retrorockit]

Core 2 Duo E7xx0 series supports SSE4.1, and uses 1066MHz FSB.

You're right they do. That get's me to 3.83GHz on tape and 333fsb. Thanks for that .Maybe the 4 core stuff got me confused.
I was looking to go past 4GHz on 333fsb and the 200fsb stuff including the E6500K don't have it. The older 65nm don't either.
But it gives me some nice options on a 400fsb systems. E8600@4GHZ, and E7600 up to 4.6GHz.
I want to hit 4GHz on a Dell Optiplex LGA775 computer and I'm going to lose SSE4 to do it. I guess that's what I was looking at.
But still how bad is SSE3? What would I be giving up to break the 4G barrier?

 

[QuietBob]

But still how bad is SSE3? What would I be giving up to break the 4G barrier?

Apart from some new software that needs SSE 4.1 I don't think you're going to lose any functionality. Not even Windows 10 requires it for installation. SSE 4.1 may be required by some benchmarks, though, or they may yield higher scores when utilizing it.

 

[Retrorockit]

Apart from some new software that needs SSE 4.1 I don't think you're going to lose any functionality. Not even Windows 10 requires it for installation. SSE 4.1 may be required by some benchmarks, though, or they may yield higher scores when utilizing it.

As usual I'll probably find out the hard way. Thanks for the repl;y.

Then there's this little gem. It's clear as mud to me. SSE4.2 fix for older CPUs.

Steam Community :: Guide :: SSE4.2 fix (help for old CPU without this instruction)

Guide for these who have old CPU without SSE4.2 instruction. Work on 100%...

steamcommunity.com

 

[Greenslade]

Yeah you might just need to reside yourself to modern Windows on that system.

Windows Intergral both the may and the September Editions , came up with the blue screen message about having to shut down because it could harm my PC. I think the problem was the PCIe Usb hub it did not want to install.Meanwhile i put the one Mr Scott recommend back on here.Rerun the Snappy Drivers everything instaled with no problem, even the PCIe usb hub.What i would like to say is the Intergral versions have to much new stuff in them which is not needed for me.Chromium-browse is not my cup of tea. My Pal is the best for XP.And the one Mr Scott recommend is the best one for meBasic is beat for meI have Windows7 on another drive in the PC.I was trying to get a dual boot with XP.But had no success.I suppose it is best to have them on separate drives.Here is my fav Aussie
YouTuber here he is with XP and my GTX960 all though he is using Haswell where as i am using Sandy Bridge.

good stuff as usual

 

[Mr.Scott]

Windows Intergral both the may and the September Editions , came up with the blue screen message about having to shut down because it could harm my PC. I think the problem was the PCIe Usb hub it did not want to install.Meanwhile i put the one Mr Scott recommend back on here.Rerun the Snappy Drivers everything instaled with no problem, even the PCIe usb hub.What i would like to say is the Intergral versions have to much new stuff in them which is not needed for me.Chromium-browse is not my cup of tea. My Pal is the best for XP.And the one Mr Scott recommend is the best one for meBasic is beat for meI have Windows7 on another drive in the PC.I was trying to get a dual boot with XP.But had no success.I suppose it is best to have them on separate drives.Here is my fav Aussie
YouTuber here he is with XP and my GTX960 all though he is using Haswell where as i am using Sandy Bridge.

good stuff as usual

Yup.
Old man don't know nuthin. Just talks to hear himself talk.

BTW, I acquired a VooDoo 4500 in PCI flavor the other day out of a box of junk. Good shape and here's a quick bench with a light overclock.