building an *OLD* PC will drive you nuts

  • Thread starter Thread starter pedro1492
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pedro1492

I needed to test something with old gcc, which meant using version 3.x
of RHEL. I downloaded Centos 3.9, but you neeed a ten-year old PC to
run it!
I have a mainboard with Intel 965+ICH8, but required some BIOS fiddling
to get the installer to see the CD drive. Next problem, graphics card.
Most of the stuff RHEL3 supported was from the AGP era. The generic ati
driver will fire up later cards, although with limitations, like few
choices of resolution. Next hassle is ethernet card. It is really
finicky about those. I had to try 4 different cards from junkbox before
it would recognise one. And of course, it doesn't support the audio chip,
but I do not need that.
After all that it finally runs pretty well for a Core 2 with DDR2 667.
 
I needed to test something with old gcc, which meant using version 3.x
of RHEL. I downloaded Centos 3.9, but you neeed a ten-year old PC to
run it!
I have a mainboard with Intel 965+ICH8, but required some BIOS fiddling
to get the installer to see the CD drive. Next problem, graphics card.
Most of the stuff RHEL3 supported was from the AGP era. The generic ati
driver will fire up later cards, although with limitations, like few
choices of resolution. Next hassle is ethernet card. It is really
finicky about those. I had to try 4 different cards from junkbox before
it would recognise one. And of course, it doesn't support the audio chip,
but I do not need that.
After all that it finally runs pretty well for a Core 2 with DDR2 667.
Click to expand...

If I use VPC2007 on WinXP, I get:

1) Tulip Ethernet
2) 440BX chipset
3) Processor shines through (behaves like Core2).
4) Ancient graphics emulation.

An old OS should run fine in there.

The only problem with VirtualBox, as a substitute, is some of
the emulated hardware there might be more modern.

Where VPC2007 is weak now, is running new OSes. I can't run Win8 there.
And Ubuntu runs a bit slow, due to the lack of accelerated graphics
support. VirtualBox would do a better job on that end.

I happen to have some old PCs I kept here, like a Tualatin on
a 440BX motherboard with AGP, so I can actually test old
OSes if necessary. Doing it with virtual machines is a lot
easier, because I don't even have to get out of my chair :-)

Paul
 
I have a mainboard with Intel 965+ICH8, but required some BIOS fiddling
to get the installer to see the CD drive. Next problem, graphics card.
Most of the stuff RHEL3 supported was from the AGP era. The generic ati
driver will fire up later cards, although with limitations, like few
choices of resolution. Next hassle is ethernet card. It is really
finicky about those. I had to try 4 different cards from junkbox before
it would recognise one. And of course, it doesn't support the audio chip,
but I do not need that.
After all that it finally runs pretty well for a Core 2 with DDR2 667.
Click to expand...

Nice to have some old backup hardware around, provided it'll still
take on today's bus architecture/support chipsets (including an "old"
Core 2). A PCI video, of course is among excellent things to have
around - Matrox boards were excellent. DVD/CD can be iffy w/ my
HIREMS DOS stuff, pre-NIX version. Hard to get around that, as
they're mechanical, gum up and eventually develop weird appetites for
eating discs and stuff. Not sure about a network board - usually
leave that stuff off (pick it up later) in the "generic" Winderz'
WallyWiorld. Do know, tho, that the interrupts gradually shifted up
into higher-numbered ports from a makings and scheme of things with
older netwerk boards.
 
I have a mainboard with Intel 965+ICH8, but required some BIOS fiddling
to get the installer to see the CD drive. Next problem, graphics card.
Most of the stuff RHEL3 supported was from the AGP era. The generic ati
driver will fire up later cards, although with limitations, like few
choices of resolution. Next hassle is ethernet card. It is really
finicky about those. I had to try 4 different cards from junkbox before
it would recognise one. And of course, it doesn't support the audio chip,
but I do not need that.
After all that it finally runs pretty well for a Core 2 with DDR2 667.
Click to expand...

If you had time, try Linux! It possibly runs better than WinXP in your
old PC! :)

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I needed to test something with old gcc, which meant using version 3.x

of RHEL. I downloaded Centos 3.9, but you neeed a ten-year old PC to

run it!

I have a mainboard with Intel 965+ICH8, but required some BIOS fiddling

to get the installer to see the CD drive. Next problem, graphics card.

Most of the stuff RHEL3 supported was from the AGP era. The generic ati

driver will fire up later cards, although with limitations, like few

choices of resolution.
Click to expand...

You can still get the ATI linux driver version 8.28.8
It will work on the X11 that is in RHEL3.x. Anything older you are
faeces out of luck.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/linux-radeon-prer200
 
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