21 ms·

Usability of Old Computers

160 points by vkaku 3y ago

floppiplopp 3y ago
Yes, of course, why not run a system that literally draws hundreds of watts for a fraction of speed of any reasonably modern system? My tiny desktop has been too fast, too silent and uses too little power under full load. Screw that! It barely heats up the room, like that old P4 that I used to have 20 years ago.
vkaku 3y ago
A report of my experience after trying this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662929
jdblair 3y ago
I seriously expected minis and mainframes to be "old computers," not PCs from the 90s!
- vkaku 3y ago
  If I do this exercise 30 years from now it will get there.
- arp242 3y ago
  Not even that; the CPU they use is from 2004. Socket 478 wasn't introduced until 2001. And they're using a SATA SSD! Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago was 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as "old computers" in 2004. On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than from 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as Windows 10, macOS, or GNOME today, even though details between implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is essentially the same as a modern CPU, except slower. A C64, DOS, or old Unix machine was conceptually quite different to Windows XP, and the capabilities of these machines were radically different from a P4. "Age" and "old" is not really about years, but more about concepts. This reminds me, around the same time I got a Sun SPARCstation from the early 90s for free, and I was doing the guy a favour by taking it off his hands. With inflation and EU import tax the price of this machine must have been €15-€20k, easily. And I got it for free with keyboard and (huge!) monitor, and everything. I don't think anyone is giving away 10 year old high-end workstations today; they're perfectly functional (my i5 midrange laptop is 6 years old).
  - jdblair 3y ago
    ...and my own age!
  - ACS_Solver 3y ago
    > Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago was 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as "old computers" in 2004. > On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than from 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as Windows 10, macOS, or GNOME today, even though details between implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is essentially the same as a modern CPU, except slower. This is also my takeaway here. I'm pretty sure that someone who first used a computer with a typical 2023 setup, Win10 and all, would pretty easily figure out a typical 2004 PC with Windows XP, Internet Explorer or early Firefox, etc. But going back even ten years from 2004 is more different, you'd be on Windows 3.1, which looks quite different and requires familiarity with different workflows. 1984 is radically different as the typical machines were all CLI/TUI and required machine-specific knowledge to work on, you couldn't just figure it out by looking at it.
  - fortran77 3y ago
    I just sold a 2010 supermicro Mobo on eBay with a 6 core Xeon and 8GB of ECC memory. It sold for $1.99. And I had to list it twice.
    - vkaku 3y ago
      That's a steal!
- ChoHag 3y ago
  [dead]
baz00 3y ago
The key take home for me there is the simple replaceable software and data portability. This is something I am working on at the moment. I built a new windows PC recently and am moving to portable file formats and tools slowly. Nothing goes near it until it is portable. This may end up as a Linux desktop one day but I have 100gb of stuff to sift through.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > This may end up as a Linux desktop one day Based on your goals that's going to happen a lot sooner.
  - baz00 3y ago
    Yeah I got itchy fingers today and am currently playing with Rocky Linux desktop...
hiimsteveee 3y ago
not directly related, but I've been thinking about getting an old CRT monitor, launch https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term and start working
- gattilorenz 3y ago
  To… put some crt in your crt, so you can have phosphor persistence while your phospors persist? Why would you put a crt emulator on a crt?
  - hiimsteveee 3y ago
    Exactly, two levels of awesomeness
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    In fairness to the GP, the kind of CRT that would support a usable desktop session is light years away from the type of CRTs that cool-retro-term simulates. Though if I was going to do something like this then personally I’d rather have a second screen as a CRT and have that resolution dropped right down, rather than “putting some crt in your crt”
userbinator 3y ago
Mostly because the HTTPS protocols are getting outdated/changed and nothing working is kept on websites today for old computers. There's a patch that adds SHA256 algorithms to XP, which is the biggest obstacle. Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore. Are you sure you don't mean 1.1 or 1.0? In my experience 1.2 is still supported by the vast majority of sites. Also related: TLS 1.3 on Windows 3.11(!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512 I've been thinking about the idea of easily replaceable, minimal-dependency crypto modules along with an interface that shims them into existing OS implementations. In the meantime, my MITM proxy that I force everything on my network through will take care of HTTPS and upgrading to TLS 1.2/1.3.
- vkaku 3y ago
  I saw that, the work done to get WolfSSL to work is truly examplary on how to keep things going. Do post a link to that SHA256 patch. I suppose it is possible to compile and generate an unsigned 3rd party cryptographic services DLL (CAPICOM) if someone truly wants really old software to work everywhere. TLS needs to be re-vitalized in general for SMTP and other such protocols as well. The browsers mentioned in this thread: https://msfn.org/board/topic/178588-tls-13-in-winxp-sp3-possible/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/178588-tls-13-in-winxp-sp3-poss... have all stopped building for XP as of today. Happy to try new builds and let people know it goes.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Look for KB3055973.
    - vkaku 3y ago
      Thank you! It is part of POSReady on LegacyUpdate. I have installed it. :)
  - ormax3 3y ago
    - TLS 1.2 https://www.emailarchitect.net/eagetmail/sdk/html/object_tls12.htm https://www.emailarchitect.net/eagetmail/sdk/html/object_tls... - Root Certificates https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-revoked-certificates-for-windows-xp/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-re... - XP Browsers / Mail Clients https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser
throwaway14356 3y ago
just dl the youtube videos and use vlc.
- sambazi 3y ago
  mpv+ytdlp my friend
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    Thanks for pointing this out! Did not realize it was so simple and easy to download high quality video files and watch them full scrren with great performance and hardware acceleration (and no ads!) This is awesome!
    - throwaway14356 3y ago
      try find hardware crappy enough for it to not play HD, its more funny than it seems
    - atahanacar 3y ago
      You can even use sponsorblock scripts on mpv to skip sponsor segments.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      And if you have tons of storage, you can datahoard the videos that might disappear someday.
      - throwaway14356 3y ago
        the small "conventional" formats are surprisingly watchable. It depends a lot what it is. I had a 3 hour lecture without slides that didn't lose anything relevant at 75 mb. It was not 100% essential to the archive, if it was 1 gb it wouldn't have made the cut.
- forgotpwd16 3y ago
  For YT can just force mp4 rather vp9 with h264ify or another extension.
Joel_Mckay 3y ago
If people had integrity DRM/Activation would eventually expire with the publisher EOL, and default to an unlocked state for data/media/format migration. There is nothing worse than getting legacy IT issues elevated to a forensic recovery operation. I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope since XP and 7. =)
- jimnotgym 3y ago
  > I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope since XP and 7. =) I think it is worth discussing the counter arguement. My team supported Windows from XP to Windows 10. I continued to be staggered at the backwards compatibility of it. I remember having an ERP client that was written in VB6, and nobody thought it would run on 7, but it did. Everyone assumed it was obvious it wouldn't run on 10...but it did... with less RAM usage and it was a bit snappier. Same with the ancient copies of WordPerfect and Photoshop (old enough that they came in a box). I had a mixed fleet of machines from very old to very new and Windows 10 ran on all of them. I bet it would run on this guys P4 just fine. That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current commercial OS that will run on 30 year old hardware! Before we criticise MS too much, let us compare that to other commercial providers...like Apple for instance. How much of your 1990's software runs on the last gen Intel Macs even? Answer is...none, isn't it?
  - thfuran 3y ago
    >That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current commercial OS that will run on 30 year old hardware! Not anymore. Windows 11 won't run on my ~4 year old laptop.
    - jimnotgym 3y ago
      Windows 10 is still current in any real sense of the word. You can 'downgrade' anything to Windows 10 if you want.
    - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
      Yeah, a lot of users installed the early Win11 fine, than lost legacy desktop registry flag support, and the missing TPM overlay screen spam this year. If you game, than YMMV on the current MS OS. Now I have to figure out how to get Steams Cuphead to run under Linux. =)
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore." This has not been true for me. In fact, using a TLS proxy I have tried to force TLSv1.3 for all sites and a large number, possibly even the majority, still use TLSv1.2 and will not accept TLSv1.3. If using old software/computers, one approach for dealing with changes in TLS is to use a present-day TLS forward proxy, bound to localhost address or running on a relatively recent computer on the LAN if necessary. This way, one does not need to do any encryption using the old software/computer. The proxy converts HTTP to HTTPS.
Borg3 3y ago
Oh well, he does it for fun. I do it daily, running Win2003 and last PaleMoon browser that works on WinXP. Why? Because I really like XP/2003. Sure, I could run Firefox 52 ESR, but it looks like junk and its slow. Palemoon on warm cache starts right away (around 200ms probably). Luicky, most of web sites I care still runnining fine, but dark clouds are on horizon. I cannot belive that rendering "mainstream" web pages eats more RAM than playing first Stalker game!! What the hell happened? Everything gets bloated. UIs are terrible and yet people are using it, just mumbling to themselfs.. For shitty webpages I have VM running Linux and using of course latest crappy firefox. But hey, some newest firefox starts to lag terrible when rendered over X server. Thank you Mozilla for putting even more bloat to Firefox.. Okey, I vented abit :) Time to play some TRS2004 instead...
- deleted 3y ago
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- walteweiss 3y ago
  Joking or not, that ‘stuck in time’ story is so terrifying! I have my worries with bloatware as well, but I solve that with Linux or FreeBSD, minimalistic DE and other modern ways. Attempts to freeze time for some mediocre event (be it some Windows version of the past or good-ol’-days) scares me so so very much! My personal hell would be living that very life you praised.
  - Borg3 3y ago
    I yet to have to find my new great OS. Im 100% sure it wont be Windows. I have an eyes on some minimalistic Linux distro. But who knows, maybe Haiku will grow enough, before I will be forced to make a switch. As for staying in past, im not that much afraid for SW part. I have all toys mirrored. What worries me is the HW part. Those scrapyards where I get pretty decent HW will eventually run dry. And we know what new HW is...
    - shrubble 3y ago
      You could have a look at Plan9 which has a small community of enthusiasts.
layer8 3y ago
> The most important thing I learned was that old computers are still fast — and quite usable as a daily driver. User percieved latency has not improved with much faster hardware (throughput). We need to start paying attention here when writing software.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 3y ago
At some point, the efficiency of new hardware completely outweighs the benefits of keeping old hardware running. Obviously there's a valid need to preserve hardware for historical purposes, but for any other reason I think it's a false economy. The CPU on a Raspberry Pi 4 is nearly three times faster than a 3.2GHz Pentium 4. A Raspberry Pi draws no more than 10W (excluding USB devices), but the Pentium 4 has a TDP of 100W. We could draw a parallel with incandescent vs LED lightbulbs, but I think that would be too kind to the old computer - an old motherboard and a discrete GPU will add substantially to the idle power consumption.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  The problem is that, while the RasPi may be 3x as fast, it doesn't necessarily have the software ecosystem you want. If all you have is a closed-source Win32 program that barely runs on XP, at best, you can emulate the P4, thus likely eating up much if not all the RasPi's performance increase, and diving deep into the realms of undocumented behaviour and incompatibilities. I'm surprised we don't see more moonshot efforts into improving decompilation/reverse-engineering toolkits. There's a huge and obvious need for "I have this software, the developer's dead/bankrupt/disinterested, can you get me something close enough to human-readable C that I could compile it against winelib and get it running on a more modern machine?"
- prmoustache 3y ago
  OTOH you can get a complete computer with a pentium 4 or core 2 duo / athlon64 complete with keyboard, mouse and sometimes even screen for free or pennies because people want to offload that big tower and a 19" screen they don't use anymore while a 80€ Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't get you anywhere. Discounting storage[1], you'd have to buy a keyboard, mouse, screen and usb power supply and possibly a case to have a comparable raspberry PI 4[2]. I see PI 400 being sold at 130€ with a mouse these days. [1] because you would also want to upgrade said vintage computer with an SSD anyway [2] and in the second hand market raspberry pi 4 aren't going much cheaper, you just usually get an additionnal case and/or sdcard for the price of a single new board.
- dijit 3y ago
  yet at some point we tend to throw efficiency at the wall for raw compute. it was exceedingly uncommon for PC's in the Pentium 4 era to ship with anything higher than a 200W PSU. Yet today it is not uncommon to hear of 850W PSU's. Of course such PSU's are undoubtedly more efficient at doing the conversion. What I mean is that the argument of (power) efficiency doesn't hold when we actually end up using significant more power anyway. Also, to play devils advocate a bit, that's a 20yo PC: how many times would you have upgraded in 20 years- and what is the carbon cost of all of those upgrades? Some PC manufacturing is pretty bad for the environment. I'd guess once every 3-5 years? According to "8 Billion Trees": > the Carbon Footprint of a Computer? A desktop computer emits 778 kgs of CO2e annually. Of this, 85% results from emissions during manufacture and shipping, and 15% results from electricity consumption when in use. https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-footprint-of-a-laptop/#:~:text=What%20Is%20the%20Carbon%20Footprint%20of%20a%20Computer%3F,electricity%20consumption%20when%20in%20use https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-foot.... So you have to really ask yourself: when is that upfront cost paid for by the inefficiency of energy use (which can be sourced sustainably unlike many parts of PC manufacture)? 20 years? Sure, but it's still very questionable at 10 years. If only we didn't force people to upgrade their computers by making more and more features non-optional and slowing down the computing experience for the sake of producing features easier for developers. --- EDIT: I can't stop thinking abut this; I think I've been nerd sniped: I can't find good data on this though, it seems like a new laptop costs the planet 422.5kgs of CO2e on average. The actual running cost of the Pentium 4 (mobo, ram, etc) itself is somewhere around 40w for this generation (not including peripherals, discrete GPU or screen) - it does not have speedstep so can't power down. a high end dGPU from the era runs about the the same as the entire PC. so let's double that 40w. -- we ignore peripherals and screens as those could be the same for both new and old PC's. 80w used roughly for 8hrs per day? That comes to about 292kW a year roughly. In the US energy generation costs 0.3712kgs CO2e per kWh; so something like 109kgs of CO2e for running this PC for a year. Meaning even if your energy efficiency of a new PC doubled (using 40w instead of 80w) it would take nearly 5 years to offset the carbon cost of a new PC. Not discounting that energy production can be carbon neutral. That said, currently: The most efficient x86 computer will consume 10W to 25W at idle.
kvetching 3y ago
The last I used a Windows XP PC, I've found it's near impossible to browse the internet. Most websites require a modern browser. Modern browsers don't work with XP.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Try http://kmeleonbrowser.org http://kmeleonbrowser.org or similar. From https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-browsers-for-windows-xp/ https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-browsers-for-windows-xp...
  - lproven 3y ago
    I tried it. https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_win_xp_in_23/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_w... The best by a long way I found was MyPal; that worked with every site I tried and can run a modern ad-blocker and so on. Chrome360 is close but it's crashy and parts remain in Chinese whatever I did.
28304283409234 3y ago
You know you’re ancient when you find it odd to see a 1GB video card be labelled as “old”.
- vkaku 3y ago
  It was a fun video experiment, I wanted to actually see if a low-power semi-modern PCIe card (2.0 x16) with HDMI would actually work on a slot 478 motherboard with PCIe 1.0 x16. It works rather well and can run OpenCL 1.2 applications. Apparently CUDA v6.5 can run on Windows XP 32-bit as well. I intend to try this on a GeForce 730 I have saved from before (PCIe 3.0 x16). Incidentally, the first Graphics Card I had was a 32MB RIVA TNT2. Do not have that working card anymore. :-)
  - vkaku 3y ago
    Correction: Geforce (GT) 730 is PCIe 2.0 (Fermi or Kepler). Mine is Kepler. It works fine, I can CUDA+ run a few other things quite well.
diarrhea 3y ago
I don’t understand how checksums help for HTTP sites. If an attacker controls file delivery such that checksums are desirable, they might very well also control those checksums and their display. At that point one might get those checksums out of band, on a modern device via HTTPS. But if a second device is needed it could also, at the cost of some more effort, be used to just download those assets directly, then transfer locally.
- vbernat 3y ago
  Checksums are GPG-signed. This helps because it's easier to be secure (not a protocol) and you can accept third-party mirrors.
  - earthboundkid 3y ago
    How do you distribute the GPG keys?
    - vkaku 3y ago
      How are certificates distributed to computers before the TLS session begins? How does a user trust an untrusted certificate and it's chain, say from Let's Encrypt? You only distribute public keys to the end user - and private key signed hashes that can be verified by those public keys. The user is given an option to trust a key for a new repo, when it's not in their list of trusted keys. The installation already comes with a list of trusted keys when it begins. If you trust it, then you run it - just like you should be trusting the root certificates in your system to really benefit from TLS, even. That includes Government, Telco and Company issued certificates. :-)
      - earthboundkid 3y ago
        > How are certificates distributed to computers before the TLS session begins? How does a user trust an untrusted certificate and it's chain, say from Let's Encrypt? A handful of root certificates are baked into every OS and carefully guarded at every level to make sure they’re never given to someone who doesn’t have possession of a domain. Are you proposing to do this for GPG checksums? What would that look like?
sbrorson 3y ago
This is a relevant article to me since I also make 20yo (or older) computers run legacy stuff ... but not for fun. Factories and labs frequently have machines or instruments which are controlled by a computer. They are run off control cards which are inserted into ISA or PCI slots in the computer and are commanded by the legacy software through old, proprietary drivers. Examples are cards from National Instruments or Galil. Such equipment can cost tens of thousands of dollars (or more) when new. Also, decades-old software written by long-gone engineers at the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody understands how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is plenty of incentive to keep the old systems running and running and running. Unfortunately, old computers sometimes break. That's where I come in -- I do a side consulting business with a colleague where we refurbish the old computers -- replace parts as necessary, install old versions of the O/S, replace mechanical hard drives with SSDs, and do whatever else is needed to keep the computers running for the next few decades. I know we're not alone out there since we're aware of other small businesses which provide a similar service. It's an important thing since -- as many point out here -- modern software companies don't make backwards compatibility a priority, but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades.
- buhfur 3y ago
  [dead]
- TacticalCoder 3y ago
  > ... but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades. for PCs it's obviously not a problem (there are just so many parts out there for just about everything and anything) but what about these proprietary expensive ISA (or PCI) cards you mention? Are replacement available for decades too? Or are they easy to find second hand at reasonable prices?
  - behringer 3y ago
    You take them to someone who can do component level repairs. And the basic hardware is more difficult than just the parts and these nuances can make certain parts expensive and rare. You have to know all kinks of things like irqs, dos commands, memory layout, jumper settings, just an insane amount of stuff compared to modern plug and play equipment.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> a Pentium 4 Prescott RK80546PG0881M > ... and running a 32-bit Linux Server Out of curiosity and I don't even remember: wouldn't that CPU already support 64-bit Linux?
- bombcar 3y ago
  It should, but it's early enough you might have to custom-compile to fully utilize it. Also 32bit (or 32bit with weird memory features like EM64T) may be significantly faster because of the smaller memory access sizes. Or weird hybrids with 32bit addressing and 64bit extensions.
- happycube 3y ago
  I think Socket 478 Prescott was 32-bit only, except for a very few S-specs that were sold (mostly?) to Lenovo.
rbanffy 3y ago
I came here for an analysis of the usability of Apple //s and TRS-80's, or about doing useful things like text editing on CP/M machines. I'm disappointed.
- vkaku 3y ago
  Well, that article is for others to write. :-) I see lot of people already write about Apple II, and I seem to follow one who is working on getting Fujinet to those. https://www.tindie.com/products/masteries/fujinet-for-apple-ii-sdcard-and-internet-interface/ https://www.tindie.com/products/masteries/fujinet-for-apple-...
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Fujinet is an excellent way to make an old computer useful.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 3y ago
  The easiest thing to do with a really old computer is get it an Ethernet card of some form (they almost always had them and they're not terribly hard to actually build) or a serial port, and connect it to a modern Linux computer as a dumb terminal. Many people prefer those old computers and their (adjusted for inflation) $200 keyboards. Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should best be forgotten. PCjr.
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    > Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should best be forgotten. PCjr. But, hey, it had a wireless keyboard!
speedgoose 3y ago
> With so much effort, technology and money being invested on the frontend side, why do we still have so many websites that fail to work? Because it’s not worth it. I don’t know many people excited about debugging websites on museum hardware to please the potential one user, that could use a more modern device when it fails anyway. As a hobby why not, but it makes no sense in a professional context.
- vkaku 3y ago
  Your CPU instructions follow an architecture written almost 40 years ago and JavaScript is itself 27 years old. They are actually museum worthy. The point of having any standard is to exactly prevent people from debugging things every few days. Despite this, many modern websites hardly follow any sort of compatibility despite using a polyfill library. So these professionals are either not doing a very good job or this argument is a non argument. :-)
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    The instruction set of the CPU I use to reply to this comment is from 2018. It has been a long and constant evolution from the CPU architectures of the 70s to what it uses today. JavaScript is old and kept improving too. It does a lot more and much faster than the first version of JavaScript developed in about a week. Standards are very useful, but we can't keep using old things forever. We stopped using HTTP 0.9 or TLS 1.0 for example. Spending time to support unused obsolete hardware may be fun, but good luck to get funding for that activity.
    - vkaku 3y ago
      1. What computer are you using? You do know that a lot of software developers do not take active advantage of instructions right? Mostly because developers aren't as aware of floating point rounding modes or availability of co-processors or even vector units. If it's a computer that uses an instruction set you made in 2018, well, kudos - but that is not a large set of people out there. 2. I don't think it's hard to add HTTP 0.9 support at all, maybe I will add it to https://github.com/guilt/phttpd https://github.com/guilt/phttpd. I will not bemoan TLS or SSL dying at all. As protocols used for system update - they've caused more problems than they have solved. The protocols will break once again when agencies end up factoring large numbers in the near future. There is a need for privacy but there is no need to break system updates in the name of increasing security - it does not work that way. 3. Keep breaking things enough and you'll find all your customers moving away from you. Good luck explaining to them why your software breaks day after day. You might be able to fool them for some time. 4. I do not need funding to fix obsolete things, a lot of people are already doing it - some are getting paid for it too. :-)
BirAdam 3y ago
On the browser front, mypal will work with most websites. There are some exceptions, but it’ll run the web version of Slack.
jvanderbot 3y ago
Why can't I get a small mobo for old processors? Everything should have shrunk substantially in the last 30 years.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Because designing a new motherboard is an expensive and painful process, so it's usually reserved for new processors. The SBC market is full of things that are small and new. But old processors are often run in old equipment, which has lots of space. And if you're running a new-old board, you often want bulky connectors anyway.
- timbit42 3y ago
  Like this? https://www.homebrew8088.com/ https://www.homebrew8088.com/
  - musicale 3y ago
    That looks like a cool project!
MaxBarraclough 3y ago
I'm surprised they went with Windows rather than with one of the ultra-lightweight GNU/Linux distros intended for use on antique computers. Puppy Linux, or something similar. Windows XP is presumably full of security vulnerabilities.
- musicale 3y ago
  I can't imagine connecting a Windows XP machine to the internet and/or running any network-connected software such as a web browser or email client. It would be interesting to see how long it takes for a brand new (but "fully patched") Windows XP machine to be taken over by malware after connecting to the internet. Bonus if it's behind a stateful firewall that blocks incoming traffic by default.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    It would be interesting to see how long it takes for a brand new (but "fully patched") Windows XP machine to be taken over by malware after connecting to the internet. The answer is "forever", if you're behind a NAT.
    - musicale 3y ago
      What if you use a web browser?
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  I tried Linuxes on old PCs in the late oughts. Yet they were usable only for a narrow sliver of technical users. Puppy also ran as root and had a super janky collection of inconsistent apps.
  - MaxBarraclough 3y ago
    Perhaps Xubuntu [0] or Lubuntu [1] would be better go-to lightweight distros. These days with the web having taken over much of what people use desktop computers for, I think Xubuntu + Firefox should go a long way even for a non-technical user. Admittedly I have little experience helping non-technical people use desktop Linux. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu
textfiles 3y ago
TEXTFILES.COM is http only - your reading material needs are assured.
obscura 3y ago
> The most important thing I learned was that old computers are still fast — and quite usable as a daily driver. I have to point out that your build isn't entirely an old computer. Having an SSD makes a major difference. If you were to use an IDE HDD or even an old SATA, you'd probably think differently. Nevertheless, an interesting exercise.
johnklos 3y ago
There's a vast gap between what we can run and what we're told we should run. Why not run on old hardware, with software that works for you? Because of electricity? As others have pointed out, the environmental cost of manufacture is greater than the difference in performance per energy unit for even systems that are ten years old, and in some cases, older. We're literally sending hardware to landfills because companies like Microsoft want to make more money (which, incidentally, is why I think Microsoft is the cause of the Dark Ages of Computing and why Bill Gates will eventually be remembered as someone who caused more waste and held back progress more than anyone in this time period). I run servers, and even though many of the servers I run are using modern hardware (ARM, Apple ARM, AMD Ryzen), I still run a fleet of AMD AM1 Athlon hardware. They serve DNS, web, firewall, SFTP, NAT, email and so on in all sorts of environments. Why? Because to NAT and firewall a gigabit of traffic you don't need more than a quad core, 2 GHz CPU, and because using all four cores at 100% still takes less than 20 watts for the whole system. I'm even building one in to a 1U case right now to go to colo because the colo power budget is 100 watts or less, and I also have four 10 TB drives and a RAID controller to add. But even these 2014 systems, unlike Intel CPUs of the time, can take 32 gigs of ECC memory, so they're still very usable. So much software has artificial barriers. You need AVX. You ned AVX2. You need SSE4.2. You need FMA3. But why? Do you REALLY need them, or are you fine running certain software a little slower? After all, you're not going to use your 2014 AMD Athlon to transcode to h.265 often. It makes me sad that so much hardware goes to landfill because of completely ridiculous reasons. Add FUD that people share about how just writing zeros over a drive is somehow not good enough, and you have the problem of people literally destroying hardware rather than recycling. It's not a good way to run a planet.
vel0city 3y ago
"See, old computers really were pretty snappy!" Most of the desktops I saw people using in 2004 had like 256-512MB of RAM, total. They've got 512MB of just graphics memory. And then on top of that its a GPU from 2010, so this isn't "an early 2000s machine" to assess what performance would have been like. Try running on a SiS graphics adapter on-board with 256MB of RAM, and I imagine their results would have been a bit different. And then they've got a 480GB SSD? That's an absolute monster of a drive for 2004, practically nothing would have come close to the latency and throughput available on that drive. Even a 32GB SSD in 2004. I always see people remark "wow look how snappy old computers were" when they're essentially built like $10,000 machines if you were to actually have those specs at that time.
- vkaku 3y ago
  The overall memory usage is still much lower than 512MB when running the older Office XP suite - and when using Remote Desktop. In contrast, I tried running Opera 36 and my system started swapping already. That has nothing to do with hardware. While there is a point about I/O being expensive, and I did mention that they get removed over time when chips get faster, it still points to the fact that software that is not bloated runs better. Period.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Still you're comparing snappiness of software designed for hardware seven years older than your processor (during some of the most rapid gains in performance YoY) and 13 years older than your GPU, with IO 1,000x faster than what it was targeted for. Your CPU is over 10x faster than the hardware Office XP was targeted for. The graphics card is probably at least 1,000x faster than what Office XP was intended for. Most people think of Office 2007 as a massively bloated and sluggish piece of software. And the experience of it running on the hardware they were running in 2007, it probably was. Is it still slow and sluggish on a modern Intel/AMD CPU with an NVMe SSD? Go run Office XP on a PII 400MHz with integrated graphics. Tell me how responsive and fast the experience is. It's a bloated mess compared to Office 95, so much extra fluff you don't need. And I mean, why are you even expending all this waste of a GUI with true colors? So much bloat. So much waste. Imagine how much more efficient it could be if it was just drawing 80 columns.

160 points by vkaku 3y ago

Yes, of course, why not run a system that literally draws hundreds of watts for a fraction of speed of any reasonably modern system? My tiny desktop has been too fast, too silent and uses too little power under full load. Screw that! It barely heats up the room, like that old P4 that I used to have 20 years ago.

vkaku 3y ago

A report of my experience after trying this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662929

jdblair 3y ago

I seriously expected minis and mainframes to be "old computers," not PCs from the 90s!

vkaku 3y ago
If I do this exercise 30 years from now it will get there.
arp242 3y ago
Not even that; the CPU they use is from 2004. Socket 478 wasn't introduced until 2001. And they're using a SATA SSD! Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago was 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as "old computers" in 2004. On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than from 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as Windows 10, macOS, or GNOME today, even though details between implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is essentially the same as a modern CPU, except slower. A C64, DOS, or old Unix machine was conceptually quite different to Windows XP, and the capabilities of these machines were radically different from a P4. "Age" and "old" is not really about years, but more about concepts. This reminds me, around the same time I got a Sun SPARCstation from the early 90s for free, and I was doing the guy a favour by taking it off his hands. With inflation and EU import tax the price of this machine must have been €15-€20k, easily. And I got it for free with keyboard and (huge!) monitor, and everything. I don't think anyone is giving away 10 year old high-end workstations today; they're perfectly functional (my i5 midrange laptop is 6 years old).
- jdblair 3y ago
  ...and my own age!
- ACS_Solver 3y ago
  > Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago was 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as "old computers" in 2004. > On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than from 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as Windows 10, macOS, or GNOME today, even though details between implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is essentially the same as a modern CPU, except slower. This is also my takeaway here. I'm pretty sure that someone who first used a computer with a typical 2023 setup, Win10 and all, would pretty easily figure out a typical 2004 PC with Windows XP, Internet Explorer or early Firefox, etc. But going back even ten years from 2004 is more different, you'd be on Windows 3.1, which looks quite different and requires familiarity with different workflows. 1984 is radically different as the typical machines were all CLI/TUI and required machine-specific knowledge to work on, you couldn't just figure it out by looking at it.
- fortran77 3y ago
  I just sold a 2010 supermicro Mobo on eBay with a 6 core Xeon and 8GB of ECC memory. It sold for $1.99. And I had to list it twice.
  - vkaku 3y ago
    That's a steal!
ChoHag 3y ago
[dead]

baz00 3y ago

The key take home for me there is the simple replaceable software and data portability. This is something I am working on at the moment. I built a new windows PC recently and am moving to portable file formats and tools slowly. Nothing goes near it until it is portable. This may end up as a Linux desktop one day but I have 100gb of stuff to sift through.

thelastparadise 3y ago
> This may end up as a Linux desktop one day Based on your goals that's going to happen a lot sooner.
- baz00 3y ago
  Yeah I got itchy fingers today and am currently playing with Rocky Linux desktop...

hiimsteveee 3y ago

not directly related, but I've been thinking about getting an old CRT monitor, launch https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term and start working

gattilorenz 3y ago
To… put some crt in your crt, so you can have phosphor persistence while your phospors persist? Why would you put a crt emulator on a crt?
- hiimsteveee 3y ago
  Exactly, two levels of awesomeness
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  In fairness to the GP, the kind of CRT that would support a usable desktop session is light years away from the type of CRTs that cool-retro-term simulates. Though if I was going to do something like this then personally I’d rather have a second screen as a CRT and have that resolution dropped right down, rather than “putting some crt in your crt”

userbinator 3y ago

Mostly because the HTTPS protocols are getting outdated/changed and nothing working is kept on websites today for old computers. There's a patch that adds SHA256 algorithms to XP, which is the biggest obstacle. Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore. Are you sure you don't mean 1.1 or 1.0? In my experience 1.2 is still supported by the vast majority of sites. Also related: TLS 1.3 on Windows 3.11(!) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512 I've been thinking about the idea of easily replaceable, minimal-dependency crypto modules along with an interface that shims them into existing OS implementations. In the meantime, my MITM proxy that I force everything on my network through will take care of HTTPS and upgrading to TLS 1.2/1.3.

vkaku 3y ago
I saw that, the work done to get WolfSSL to work is truly examplary on how to keep things going. Do post a link to that SHA256 patch. I suppose it is possible to compile and generate an unsigned 3rd party cryptographic services DLL (CAPICOM) if someone truly wants really old software to work everywhere. TLS needs to be re-vitalized in general for SMTP and other such protocols as well. The browsers mentioned in this thread: https://msfn.org/board/topic/178588-tls-13-in-winxp-sp3-possible/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/178588-tls-13-in-winxp-sp3-poss... have all stopped building for XP as of today. Happy to try new builds and let people know it goes.
- userbinator 3y ago
  Look for KB3055973.
  - vkaku 3y ago
    Thank you! It is part of POSReady on LegacyUpdate. I have installed it. :)
- ormax3 3y ago
  - TLS 1.2 https://www.emailarchitect.net/eagetmail/sdk/html/object_tls12.htm https://www.emailarchitect.net/eagetmail/sdk/html/object_tls... - Root Certificates https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-revoked-certificates-for-windows-xp/ https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-re... - XP Browsers / Mail Clients https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser

throwaway14356 3y ago

just dl the youtube videos and use vlc.

sambazi 3y ago
mpv+ytdlp my friend
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out! Did not realize it was so simple and easy to download high quality video files and watch them full scrren with great performance and hardware acceleration (and no ads!) This is awesome!
  - throwaway14356 3y ago
    try find hardware crappy enough for it to not play HD, its more funny than it seems
  - atahanacar 3y ago
    You can even use sponsorblock scripts on mpv to skip sponsor segments.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    And if you have tons of storage, you can datahoard the videos that might disappear someday.
    - throwaway14356 3y ago
      the small "conventional" formats are surprisingly watchable. It depends a lot what it is. I had a 3 hour lecture without slides that didn't lose anything relevant at 75 mb. It was not 100% essential to the archive, if it was 1 gb it wouldn't have made the cut.
forgotpwd16 3y ago
For YT can just force mp4 rather vp9 with h264ify or another extension.

Joel_Mckay 3y ago

If people had integrity DRM/Activation would eventually expire with the publisher EOL, and default to an unlocked state for data/media/format migration. There is nothing worse than getting legacy IT issues elevated to a forensic recovery operation. I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope since XP and 7. =)

jimnotgym 3y ago
> I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope since XP and 7. =) I think it is worth discussing the counter arguement. My team supported Windows from XP to Windows 10. I continued to be staggered at the backwards compatibility of it. I remember having an ERP client that was written in VB6, and nobody thought it would run on 7, but it did. Everyone assumed it was obvious it wouldn't run on 10...but it did... with less RAM usage and it was a bit snappier. Same with the ancient copies of WordPerfect and Photoshop (old enough that they came in a box). I had a mixed fleet of machines from very old to very new and Windows 10 ran on all of them. I bet it would run on this guys P4 just fine. That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current commercial OS that will run on 30 year old hardware! Before we criticise MS too much, let us compare that to other commercial providers...like Apple for instance. How much of your 1990's software runs on the last gen Intel Macs even? Answer is...none, isn't it?
- thfuran 3y ago
  >That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current commercial OS that will run on 30 year old hardware! Not anymore. Windows 11 won't run on my ~4 year old laptop.
  - jimnotgym 3y ago
    Windows 10 is still current in any real sense of the word. You can 'downgrade' anything to Windows 10 if you want.
  - Joel_Mckay 3y ago
    Yeah, a lot of users installed the early Win11 fine, than lost legacy desktop registry flag support, and the missing TPM overlay screen spam this year. If you game, than YMMV on the current MS OS. Now I have to figure out how to get Steams Cuphead to run under Linux. =)

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore." This has not been true for me. In fact, using a TLS proxy I have tried to force TLSv1.3 for all sites and a large number, possibly even the majority, still use TLSv1.2 and will not accept TLSv1.3. If using old software/computers, one approach for dealing with changes in TLS is to use a present-day TLS forward proxy, bound to localhost address or running on a relatively recent computer on the LAN if necessary. This way, one does not need to do any encryption using the old software/computer. The proxy converts HTTP to HTTPS.

Borg3 3y ago

Oh well, he does it for fun. I do it daily, running Win2003 and last PaleMoon browser that works on WinXP. Why? Because I really like XP/2003. Sure, I could run Firefox 52 ESR, but it looks like junk and its slow. Palemoon on warm cache starts right away (around 200ms probably). Luicky, most of web sites I care still runnining fine, but dark clouds are on horizon. I cannot belive that rendering "mainstream" web pages eats more RAM than playing first Stalker game!! What the hell happened? Everything gets bloated. UIs are terrible and yet people are using it, just mumbling to themselfs.. For shitty webpages I have VM running Linux and using of course latest crappy firefox. But hey, some newest firefox starts to lag terrible when rendered over X server. Thank you Mozilla for putting even more bloat to Firefox.. Okey, I vented abit :) Time to play some TRS2004 instead...

deleted 3y ago
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walteweiss 3y ago
Joking or not, that ‘stuck in time’ story is so terrifying! I have my worries with bloatware as well, but I solve that with Linux or FreeBSD, minimalistic DE and other modern ways. Attempts to freeze time for some mediocre event (be it some Windows version of the past or good-ol’-days) scares me so so very much! My personal hell would be living that very life you praised.
- Borg3 3y ago
  I yet to have to find my new great OS. Im 100% sure it wont be Windows. I have an eyes on some minimalistic Linux distro. But who knows, maybe Haiku will grow enough, before I will be forced to make a switch. As for staying in past, im not that much afraid for SW part. I have all toys mirrored. What worries me is the HW part. Those scrapyards where I get pretty decent HW will eventually run dry. And we know what new HW is...
  - shrubble 3y ago
    You could have a look at Plan9 which has a small community of enthusiasts.

layer8 3y ago

> The most important thing I learned was that old computers are still fast — and quite usable as a daily driver. User percieved latency has not improved with much faster hardware (throughput). We need to start paying attention here when writing software.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jdietrich 3y ago

At some point, the efficiency of new hardware completely outweighs the benefits of keeping old hardware running. Obviously there's a valid need to preserve hardware for historical purposes, but for any other reason I think it's a false economy. The CPU on a Raspberry Pi 4 is nearly three times faster than a 3.2GHz Pentium 4. A Raspberry Pi draws no more than 10W (excluding USB devices), but the Pentium 4 has a TDP of 100W. We could draw a parallel with incandescent vs LED lightbulbs, but I think that would be too kind to the old computer - an old motherboard and a discrete GPU will add substantially to the idle power consumption.

hakfoo 3y ago
The problem is that, while the RasPi may be 3x as fast, it doesn't necessarily have the software ecosystem you want. If all you have is a closed-source Win32 program that barely runs on XP, at best, you can emulate the P4, thus likely eating up much if not all the RasPi's performance increase, and diving deep into the realms of undocumented behaviour and incompatibilities. I'm surprised we don't see more moonshot efforts into improving decompilation/reverse-engineering toolkits. There's a huge and obvious need for "I have this software, the developer's dead/bankrupt/disinterested, can you get me something close enough to human-readable C that I could compile it against winelib and get it running on a more modern machine?"
prmoustache 3y ago
OTOH you can get a complete computer with a pentium 4 or core 2 duo / athlon64 complete with keyboard, mouse and sometimes even screen for free or pennies because people want to offload that big tower and a 19" screen they don't use anymore while a 80€ Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't get you anywhere. Discounting storage[1], you'd have to buy a keyboard, mouse, screen and usb power supply and possibly a case to have a comparable raspberry PI 4[2]. I see PI 400 being sold at 130€ with a mouse these days. [1] because you would also want to upgrade said vintage computer with an SSD anyway [2] and in the second hand market raspberry pi 4 aren't going much cheaper, you just usually get an additionnal case and/or sdcard for the price of a single new board.
dijit 3y ago
yet at some point we tend to throw efficiency at the wall for raw compute. it was exceedingly uncommon for PC's in the Pentium 4 era to ship with anything higher than a 200W PSU. Yet today it is not uncommon to hear of 850W PSU's. Of course such PSU's are undoubtedly more efficient at doing the conversion. What I mean is that the argument of (power) efficiency doesn't hold when we actually end up using significant more power anyway. Also, to play devils advocate a bit, that's a 20yo PC: how many times would you have upgraded in 20 years- and what is the carbon cost of all of those upgrades? Some PC manufacturing is pretty bad for the environment. I'd guess once every 3-5 years? According to "8 Billion Trees": > the Carbon Footprint of a Computer? A desktop computer emits 778 kgs of CO2e annually. Of this, 85% results from emissions during manufacture and shipping, and 15% results from electricity consumption when in use. https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-footprint-of-a-laptop/#:~:text=What%20Is%20the%20Carbon%20Footprint%20of%20a%20Computer%3F,electricity%20consumption%20when%20in%20use https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-foot.... So you have to really ask yourself: when is that upfront cost paid for by the inefficiency of energy use (which can be sourced sustainably unlike many parts of PC manufacture)? 20 years? Sure, but it's still very questionable at 10 years. If only we didn't force people to upgrade their computers by making more and more features non-optional and slowing down the computing experience for the sake of producing features easier for developers. --- EDIT: I can't stop thinking abut this; I think I've been nerd sniped: I can't find good data on this though, it seems like a new laptop costs the planet 422.5kgs of CO2e on average. The actual running cost of the Pentium 4 (mobo, ram, etc) itself is somewhere around 40w for this generation (not including peripherals, discrete GPU or screen) - it does not have speedstep so can't power down. a high end dGPU from the era runs about the the same as the entire PC. so let's double that 40w. -- we ignore peripherals and screens as those could be the same for both new and old PC's. 80w used roughly for 8hrs per day? That comes to about 292kW a year roughly. In the US energy generation costs 0.3712kgs CO2e per kWh; so something like 109kgs of CO2e for running this PC for a year. Meaning even if your energy efficiency of a new PC doubled (using 40w instead of 80w) it would take nearly 5 years to offset the carbon cost of a new PC. Not discounting that energy production can be carbon neutral. That said, currently: The most efficient x86 computer will consume 10W to 25W at idle.

kvetching 3y ago

The last I used a Windows XP PC, I've found it's near impossible to browse the internet. Most websites require a modern browser. Modern browsers don't work with XP.

bombcar 3y ago
Try http://kmeleonbrowser.org http://kmeleonbrowser.org or similar. From https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-browsers-for-windows-xp/ https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-browsers-for-windows-xp...
- lproven 3y ago
  I tried it. https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_win_xp_in_23/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_w... The best by a long way I found was MyPal; that worked with every site I tried and can run a modern ad-blocker and so on. Chrome360 is close but it's crashy and parts remain in Chinese whatever I did.

28304283409234 3y ago

You know you’re ancient when you find it odd to see a 1GB video card be labelled as “old”.

vkaku 3y ago
It was a fun video experiment, I wanted to actually see if a low-power semi-modern PCIe card (2.0 x16) with HDMI would actually work on a slot 478 motherboard with PCIe 1.0 x16. It works rather well and can run OpenCL 1.2 applications. Apparently CUDA v6.5 can run on Windows XP 32-bit as well. I intend to try this on a GeForce 730 I have saved from before (PCIe 3.0 x16). Incidentally, the first Graphics Card I had was a 32MB RIVA TNT2. Do not have that working card anymore. :-)
- vkaku 3y ago
  Correction: Geforce (GT) 730 is PCIe 2.0 (Fermi or Kepler). Mine is Kepler. It works fine, I can CUDA+ run a few other things quite well.

diarrhea 3y ago

I don’t understand how checksums help for HTTP sites. If an attacker controls file delivery such that checksums are desirable, they might very well also control those checksums and their display. At that point one might get those checksums out of band, on a modern device via HTTPS. But if a second device is needed it could also, at the cost of some more effort, be used to just download those assets directly, then transfer locally.

vbernat 3y ago
Checksums are GPG-signed. This helps because it's easier to be secure (not a protocol) and you can accept third-party mirrors.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  How do you distribute the GPG keys?
  - vkaku 3y ago
    How are certificates distributed to computers before the TLS session begins? How does a user trust an untrusted certificate and it's chain, say from Let's Encrypt? You only distribute public keys to the end user - and private key signed hashes that can be verified by those public keys. The user is given an option to trust a key for a new repo, when it's not in their list of trusted keys. The installation already comes with a list of trusted keys when it begins. If you trust it, then you run it - just like you should be trusting the root certificates in your system to really benefit from TLS, even. That includes Government, Telco and Company issued certificates. :-)
    - earthboundkid 3y ago
      > How are certificates distributed to computers before the TLS session begins? How does a user trust an untrusted certificate and it's chain, say from Let's Encrypt? A handful of root certificates are baked into every OS and carefully guarded at every level to make sure they’re never given to someone who doesn’t have possession of a domain. Are you proposing to do this for GPG checksums? What would that look like?

sbrorson 3y ago

This is a relevant article to me since I also make 20yo (or older) computers run legacy stuff ... but not for fun. Factories and labs frequently have machines or instruments which are controlled by a computer. They are run off control cards which are inserted into ISA or PCI slots in the computer and are commanded by the legacy software through old, proprietary drivers. Examples are cards from National Instruments or Galil. Such equipment can cost tens of thousands of dollars (or more) when new. Also, decades-old software written by long-gone engineers at the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody understands how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is plenty of incentive to keep the old systems running and running and running. Unfortunately, old computers sometimes break. That's where I come in -- I do a side consulting business with a colleague where we refurbish the old computers -- replace parts as necessary, install old versions of the O/S, replace mechanical hard drives with SSDs, and do whatever else is needed to keep the computers running for the next few decades. I know we're not alone out there since we're aware of other small businesses which provide a similar service. It's an important thing since -- as many point out here -- modern software companies don't make backwards compatibility a priority, but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades.

buhfur 3y ago
[dead]
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> ... but factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades. for PCs it's obviously not a problem (there are just so many parts out there for just about everything and anything) but what about these proprietary expensive ISA (or PCI) cards you mention? Are replacement available for decades too? Or are they easy to find second hand at reasonable prices?
- behringer 3y ago
  You take them to someone who can do component level repairs. And the basic hardware is more difficult than just the parts and these nuances can make certain parts expensive and rare. You have to know all kinks of things like irqs, dos commands, memory layout, jumper settings, just an insane amount of stuff compared to modern plug and play equipment.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> a Pentium 4 Prescott RK80546PG0881M > ... and running a 32-bit Linux Server Out of curiosity and I don't even remember: wouldn't that CPU already support 64-bit Linux?

bombcar 3y ago
It should, but it's early enough you might have to custom-compile to fully utilize it. Also 32bit (or 32bit with weird memory features like EM64T) may be significantly faster because of the smaller memory access sizes. Or weird hybrids with 32bit addressing and 64bit extensions.
happycube 3y ago
I think Socket 478 Prescott was 32-bit only, except for a very few S-specs that were sold (mostly?) to Lenovo.

rbanffy 3y ago

I came here for an analysis of the usability of Apple //s and TRS-80's, or about doing useful things like text editing on CP/M machines. I'm disappointed.

vkaku 3y ago
Well, that article is for others to write. :-) I see lot of people already write about Apple II, and I seem to follow one who is working on getting Fujinet to those. https://www.tindie.com/products/masteries/fujinet-for-apple-ii-sdcard-and-internet-interface/ https://www.tindie.com/products/masteries/fujinet-for-apple-...
- rbanffy 3y ago
  Fujinet is an excellent way to make an old computer useful.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 3y ago
The easiest thing to do with a really old computer is get it an Ethernet card of some form (they almost always had them and they're not terribly hard to actually build) or a serial port, and connect it to a modern Linux computer as a dumb terminal. Many people prefer those old computers and their (adjusted for inflation) $200 keyboards. Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should best be forgotten. PCjr.
- rbanffy 3y ago
  > Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should best be forgotten. PCjr. But, hey, it had a wireless keyboard!

speedgoose 3y ago

> With so much effort, technology and money being invested on the frontend side, why do we still have so many websites that fail to work? Because it’s not worth it. I don’t know many people excited about debugging websites on museum hardware to please the potential one user, that could use a more modern device when it fails anyway. As a hobby why not, but it makes no sense in a professional context.

vkaku 3y ago
Your CPU instructions follow an architecture written almost 40 years ago and JavaScript is itself 27 years old. They are actually museum worthy. The point of having any standard is to exactly prevent people from debugging things every few days. Despite this, many modern websites hardly follow any sort of compatibility despite using a polyfill library. So these professionals are either not doing a very good job or this argument is a non argument. :-)
- speedgoose 3y ago
  The instruction set of the CPU I use to reply to this comment is from 2018. It has been a long and constant evolution from the CPU architectures of the 70s to what it uses today. JavaScript is old and kept improving too. It does a lot more and much faster than the first version of JavaScript developed in about a week. Standards are very useful, but we can't keep using old things forever. We stopped using HTTP 0.9 or TLS 1.0 for example. Spending time to support unused obsolete hardware may be fun, but good luck to get funding for that activity.
  - vkaku 3y ago
    1. What computer are you using? You do know that a lot of software developers do not take active advantage of instructions right? Mostly because developers aren't as aware of floating point rounding modes or availability of co-processors or even vector units. If it's a computer that uses an instruction set you made in 2018, well, kudos - but that is not a large set of people out there. 2. I don't think it's hard to add HTTP 0.9 support at all, maybe I will add it to https://github.com/guilt/phttpd https://github.com/guilt/phttpd. I will not bemoan TLS or SSL dying at all. As protocols used for system update - they've caused more problems than they have solved. The protocols will break once again when agencies end up factoring large numbers in the near future. There is a need for privacy but there is no need to break system updates in the name of increasing security - it does not work that way. 3. Keep breaking things enough and you'll find all your customers moving away from you. Good luck explaining to them why your software breaks day after day. You might be able to fool them for some time. 4. I do not need funding to fix obsolete things, a lot of people are already doing it - some are getting paid for it too. :-)

BirAdam 3y ago

On the browser front, mypal will work with most websites. There are some exceptions, but it’ll run the web version of Slack.

jvanderbot 3y ago

Why can't I get a small mobo for old processors? Everything should have shrunk substantially in the last 30 years.

bombcar 3y ago
Because designing a new motherboard is an expensive and painful process, so it's usually reserved for new processors. The SBC market is full of things that are small and new. But old processors are often run in old equipment, which has lots of space. And if you're running a new-old board, you often want bulky connectors anyway.
timbit42 3y ago
Like this? https://www.homebrew8088.com/ https://www.homebrew8088.com/
- musicale 3y ago
  That looks like a cool project!

MaxBarraclough 3y ago

I'm surprised they went with Windows rather than with one of the ultra-lightweight GNU/Linux distros intended for use on antique computers. Puppy Linux, or something similar. Windows XP is presumably full of security vulnerabilities.

musicale 3y ago
I can't imagine connecting a Windows XP machine to the internet and/or running any network-connected software such as a web browser or email client. It would be interesting to see how long it takes for a brand new (but "fully patched") Windows XP machine to be taken over by malware after connecting to the internet. Bonus if it's behind a stateful firewall that blocks incoming traffic by default.
- userbinator 3y ago
  It would be interesting to see how long it takes for a brand new (but "fully patched") Windows XP machine to be taken over by malware after connecting to the internet. The answer is "forever", if you're behind a NAT.
  - musicale 3y ago
    What if you use a web browser?
paulryanrogers 3y ago
I tried Linuxes on old PCs in the late oughts. Yet they were usable only for a narrow sliver of technical users. Puppy also ran as root and had a super janky collection of inconsistent apps.
- MaxBarraclough 3y ago
  Perhaps Xubuntu [0] or Lubuntu [1] would be better go-to lightweight distros. These days with the web having taken over much of what people use desktop computers for, I think Xubuntu + Firefox should go a long way even for a non-technical user. Admittedly I have little experience helping non-technical people use desktop Linux. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu

textfiles 3y ago

TEXTFILES.COM is http only - your reading material needs are assured.

obscura 3y ago

> The most important thing I learned was that old computers are still fast — and quite usable as a daily driver. I have to point out that your build isn't entirely an old computer. Having an SSD makes a major difference. If you were to use an IDE HDD or even an old SATA, you'd probably think differently. Nevertheless, an interesting exercise.

johnklos 3y ago

There's a vast gap between what we can run and what we're told we should run. Why not run on old hardware, with software that works for you? Because of electricity? As others have pointed out, the environmental cost of manufacture is greater than the difference in performance per energy unit for even systems that are ten years old, and in some cases, older. We're literally sending hardware to landfills because companies like Microsoft want to make more money (which, incidentally, is why I think Microsoft is the cause of the Dark Ages of Computing and why Bill Gates will eventually be remembered as someone who caused more waste and held back progress more than anyone in this time period). I run servers, and even though many of the servers I run are using modern hardware (ARM, Apple ARM, AMD Ryzen), I still run a fleet of AMD AM1 Athlon hardware. They serve DNS, web, firewall, SFTP, NAT, email and so on in all sorts of environments. Why? Because to NAT and firewall a gigabit of traffic you don't need more than a quad core, 2 GHz CPU, and because using all four cores at 100% still takes less than 20 watts for the whole system. I'm even building one in to a 1U case right now to go to colo because the colo power budget is 100 watts or less, and I also have four 10 TB drives and a RAID controller to add. But even these 2014 systems, unlike Intel CPUs of the time, can take 32 gigs of ECC memory, so they're still very usable. So much software has artificial barriers. You need AVX. You ned AVX2. You need SSE4.2. You need FMA3. But why? Do you REALLY need them, or are you fine running certain software a little slower? After all, you're not going to use your 2014 AMD Athlon to transcode to h.265 often. It makes me sad that so much hardware goes to landfill because of completely ridiculous reasons. Add FUD that people share about how just writing zeros over a drive is somehow not good enough, and you have the problem of people literally destroying hardware rather than recycling. It's not a good way to run a planet.

vel0city 3y ago

"See, old computers really were pretty snappy!" Most of the desktops I saw people using in 2004 had like 256-512MB of RAM, total. They've got 512MB of just graphics memory. And then on top of that its a GPU from 2010, so this isn't "an early 2000s machine" to assess what performance would have been like. Try running on a SiS graphics adapter on-board with 256MB of RAM, and I imagine their results would have been a bit different. And then they've got a 480GB SSD? That's an absolute monster of a drive for 2004, practically nothing would have come close to the latency and throughput available on that drive. Even a 32GB SSD in 2004. I always see people remark "wow look how snappy old computers were" when they're essentially built like $10,000 machines if you were to actually have those specs at that time.

vkaku 3y ago
The overall memory usage is still much lower than 512MB when running the older Office XP suite - and when using Remote Desktop. In contrast, I tried running Opera 36 and my system started swapping already. That has nothing to do with hardware. While there is a point about I/O being expensive, and I did mention that they get removed over time when chips get faster, it still points to the fact that software that is not bloated runs better. Period.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Still you're comparing snappiness of software designed for hardware seven years older than your processor (during some of the most rapid gains in performance YoY) and 13 years older than your GPU, with IO 1,000x faster than what it was targeted for. Your CPU is over 10x faster than the hardware Office XP was targeted for. The graphics card is probably at least 1,000x faster than what Office XP was intended for. Most people think of Office 2007 as a massively bloated and sluggish piece of software. And the experience of it running on the hardware they were running in 2007, it probably was. Is it still slow and sluggish on a modern Intel/AMD CPU with an NVMe SSD? Go run Office XP on a PII 400MHz with integrated graphics. Tell me how responsive and fast the experience is. It's a bloated mess compared to Office 95, so much extra fluff you don't need. And I mean, why are you even expending all this waste of a GUI with true colors? So much bloat. So much waste. Imagine how much more efficient it could be if it was just drawing 80 columns.