[Chu]

Memory is so dirt cheap these days there isn't much excuse not to upgrade to 1 gig on pretty much any system.

 

[Arainach]

A 900Mhz machine would take SDRAM; 1GB was largely unheard of in that era and large chips are near-impossible to find. The few that can be found are expensive.

 

[Basil101]

Win2k sounds good but try fluxbuntu first, runs very well on an old 300Mhz K6 with 128MB of RAM that I use.
Just out of interest where can you get win2k install media/licence?

 

[Chu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arainach /img/forum/go_quote.gif A 900Mhz machine would take SDRAM; 1GB was largely unheard of in that era and large chips are near-impossible to find. The few that can be found are expensive.

pc133 512mb, Desktop Laptop Components, Apple, Macintosh Computers items on eBay.com

512Mb sticks of name brand PC133 are about $30 a piece with shipping, and probably much cheaper if you want to win an actual auction, check pricewatch, or watch computer fs/ft forums. There is no reason you need 1Gb on a single stick.

 

[ilikemonkeys]

Please please please run Microsoft Bob! That would be so very cool.

 

[Csidinim]

got a p3 1Ghz running xp (didnt bother to strip it, just installed minimal programs) on 128 SDRAM. firefox and such are workable. even office 2007, if you can bear with longer load times.

 

[owkia]

I had Win2k running on a 233Mhz Pentium MMX with 96MB of RAM for years. I think it even had XP on it for short time...a very short time.

 

[Cata1yst]

You could run OS X on there with a little tweaking (though you are going to have to PM me if you want the details)

XP runs OK w/ 256mg of ram...but you want 512 for "snappy" performance

SDRAM is actually more expensive per meg than DDR2 if you believe it...its about 30-50$ for a 256/512 stick off the egg

Coming from a dual core, 3 gigs of OC'ed ram, and a Raid 0 array...i cant stand going back to my old PIII...im just spoiled

 

[owkia]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cata1yst /img/forum/go_quote.gif Coming from a dual core, 3 gigs of OC'ed ram, and a Raid 0 array...i cant stand going back to my old PIII...im just spoiled

Heh, I can't stand going from my C2D to a 2.8Ghz P4 with a gig of RAM.

 

[Arainach]

Quote:

You could run OS X on there with a little tweaking (though you are going to have to PM me if you want the details)

On a P3? It runs poor enough on a 900Mhz G4. On a 900Mhz Pentium..... *shudders*

 

[Chu]

A business I am connected with had a PC pretty much only to run Quickbooks and e-mail. It was a P3 700Mhz /w 768 megs of memory.

From bootup to data entry in quickbooks was sixteen minutes. Admittadly the antivirus program (McAfee Corporate) took 50% of the CPU during the loading process and it would probably have been twice as fast without it, but really these computers are mostly on the scrapheap for a reason.

I wouldn't even use it as a router. Electricity is expensive enough here that the difference vanishes in a year

EDIT : Small siderant. Quickbooks 3.1 released about ten years ago was incredibly spiffy on my Win98 box. Quickbooks 2007's core functionality is almost identical, except it takes 30 seconds to load even on my C2D system. Where is all the bloat coming from?

EDIT2 : Apparently the antivirus/firewall problem on older PCs is getting to be surprisngly common. I really wonder why a company out there hasn't implemented a "tripwire" approach (with a special high-speed whitelist for commonly accessed files so it doesn't have to munge the entire database on bootup) for antivirus with the full engine only to scan modified files. It would be incredibly fast on old special-purpose systems like the quickbooks box yet sitll have almost all the power of a modern anti-virus program. Someone needs to get into that market, hopefully nod.

 

[Check]

Another vote for windows 2k here. I ran that on my last machine until I got this core 2 and moved on to a 64bit OS. One of the saddest days of my life was seeing that XP splash screen (I do love this 64bit stability though).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Davesrose /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm just holding out for Vista to have some service packs so I can get 64bit memory optimizations, and improved multi-threading.

64bit memory optimizers? improved multi threading?
As far as I know it doesn't change the way it handles the memory when you are running 64bit, it can just address more of it. The speed at which memory is accessed and utilized has more to do with your chipset than your OS.

And multi threading is all based on the application. If the application is coded for multi threading then it will do it, otherwise no dice.

edit:
no love for windows ME?

 

[gritzcolin]

I vote for 2000 pro has most of the features that XP did pre service packs. Also even though it is unsupported and has tons of holes in it it is still more secure than 98 or ME.

 

[Cata1yst]

Im not a fan of running older generation windows OS's...the security and vulnerabilities in older OS' just dont bide well in my book

So if you decide to go with 2k (probably the most responsive OS that will load on your setup) keep a light AV, Firewall, and Spyware system on it...and avoid banking and online transactions if you are worried about that stuff.

 

[Harry Tuttle]

I run xp pro sp1 with xplite on a 728mhz with 256mb of ram and it's very fast, you just have to know what to remove and configure

although I have to say I see a lot more annoyances than advantages switching from 98se to xp