Is it about time for later Pentiums to be considered vintage?

[computerdude92]

I feel that any "OEM beige" computer has to be called vintage. It's such a dated aesthetic, LOL!

I used to have a few beige Gateway P4's and a Micron Millennia P4. They were dated 2001 and 2002, with Willamette CPUs for the Gateways and a Northwood for the Micron.

Besides, early Pentium 4s were sold along Pentium IIIs from the same PC manufacturers at the time, and plus - doesn't Socket 423 look super dated like Socket 370? Another point is that the sluggish Willamette Pentium 4s are equivalent to at least late PIII speeds, like the last Coppermines. So i'd say those early P4 models are just as vintage, especially compared with the Tualatin PIII, which was made at the exact same time as the Willamette P4 (2001)

 

[twolazy]

Depends on your needs. Industrial systems still use it when legacy peripherals are needed (e.g. Show me a Core i7 motherboard with ISA slots and integrated IDE and floppy controller). Runs Debian Bullseye 32 bit just fine. So "obsolescent" perhaps, but also top of the 32-bit CPU line, I'd say.

Speaking of, I have an FX series motherboard that runs an 8350fx no prob, minus the ISA slot. Even has serial! Its sitting in my garage server rack right now. I consider it about par with an 3-4th gen i7 quad core w/ hyperthreading. Runs Debian 32 no prob but I run 64 since it has 16gb ram.

Motherboard is an Asrock 980-de3

 

[compaqportableplus]

The company I was working for at the time bought a couple P4-M-based Dell Latitude C640s to evaluate, and they were so bad we didn't bother buying any more of them

My Pentium 4m-based Dell laptops have been great performers in my experience. Considering these laptops came into existence not long after I did (or before if you count the 8000), I definitely didn't have any "back in the day" but I have compared my Inspiron 8000 (PIII Mobile, Coppermine), 8100 (PIIIM, Tualatin) and 8200 (P4M, Northwood) and the 8200 does not disappoint at all compared to the PIII-based 8000 and 8100.

Running Windows XP, the P4M based 8200 is extremely snappy. For 2002 standards and the information I've gathered, this was a damn good performing laptop for its day. Even by today's standards it doesn't feel slow at all until you go onto the modern internet (which is to be expected).

I think the Nortwood Pentium 4 was quite good and not quite deserving of the bad reputation of the other variants. Intel tried something new with the P4 and it clearly didn't quite go the way they planned, but that doesn't mean every P4 was garbage.

I used to actually think all P4 computers were junk and avoided them, until I actually got a couple decent ones and used them. I have no reason to hate an old PC that gives good performance, and all of the P4 systems I have in use at the moment do. When it comes to this era, Dells are my primary interest. They are built well, easy to service and reliable.

In fact, I'm typing this post on a P4M-based Dell Latitude C840! This is the Latitude equivalent of the Inspiron 8200 mentioned above (literally the same machine on the inside). I love typing on these, because they have awesome keyboards. This laptop actually gets around on this forum pretty well (running Windows XP and FireFox 52 with 1.5GB of RAM).

 

[twolazy]

And I still have my C400 , that I used during this whole trend. Upgraded the external cdrom to dvdrw. Been a great workhorse. Right now has usb wifi, cardbus 2.0 USB controller, and a docking station with a sound blaster live in it (have to love docking stations with PCI slots)! I agree with the whole P3 mobile being faster then p4. Crap I still have the machine I tried to replace it with, the Dell inspiron 1100. Wasn't happy with it. What a piece of $h!t. Only good thing I can say about it, is this... the battery still works (because I barely used it)! Even if you gotta reinsert the cdrom drive 20x till it will boot. Had the machines since new...

 

[Patrick.B (TTR)]

if you google, in average generally speaking... " items between 20 and 100 years of age is "generally accepted" as Vintage, over 100 years is considered antique. "
So 2022 -20 = 2002 thru 1902 =Vintage. If you prefer 25 years vintage rule used for automobiles DMV plate rule then 2022-25 = 1997 thru 1902.

Personally, I like my vintage to stand at Pre 1990. but that is my standard...

Pentium vintage? well, they are getting there, but personally, that era was a blur of experiences, few related to "computer obscession" for me, so my interest in it is minimal. what is worth collecting or repairing or recreating is in the eye of the beholder. I don't think there is any "good or bad" answer, but you will find people with the same opinion when they find themselves in the same age group.

 

[mR_Slug]

Slight correction, not 1902, it's now 1922 for antique.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Motherboard is an Asrock 980-de3

Funny you should mention that. My daily driver here is an Asrock 980-USB3. Runs a quad-core AM3 CPU. Rock-stable after a few years of service, although the CPU fan is getting to be a bit noisy. Dunno whether to upgrade to a later motherboard/CPU combo and keep on using this one. Probably just replace the fan--this thing does what I need.

 

[Unknown_K]

Funny you should mention that. My daily driver here is an Asrock 980-USB3. Runs a quad-core AM3 CPU. Rock-stable after a few years of service, although the CPU fan is getting to be a bit noisy. Dunno whether to upgrade to a later motherboard/CPU combo and keep on using this one. Probably just replace the fan--this thing does what I need.

You can probably just clean and lube the fan, or buy something like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353170138737

You might have RAM clearance issues if the slots are close to the CPU and you using gaming RAM with huge heatsinks but for normal RAM its fine.

My daily driver is a Lenovo LGA 1150 based i5-4570 (quad core) machine I snagged locally for $10 a couple years ago which just needed a HD. Quiet and reliable and probably 40% more IPC then anything AM3 related. Funny how something others consider scrap makes a decent home computer these days.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

My Pentium 4m-based Dell laptops have been great performers in my experience. Considering these laptops came into existence not long after I did (or before if you count the 8000), I definitely didn't have any "back in the day" but I have compared my Inspiron 8000 (PIII Mobile, Coppermine), 8100 (PIIIM, Tualatin) and 8200 (P4M, Northwood) and the 8200 does not disappoint at all compared to the PIII-based 8000 and 8100.

Hey, the friend I gave the C640 to was thrilled with it, thought it was the best thing ever. (Certainly better than the old Acer it replaced.) And if you desperately needed the fastest laptop you could get in that form factor in the roughly six month window there was between it coming out and the Pentium M laptops debuting, sure, it was a choice. But in the broad historical scope the P4-M was a loser. The Pentium M was faster running at 2/3rds the clock speed and drew less power, there's a reason that basically all "premium" laptop lines switched to it completely in 2003, leaving the Mobile Pentium 4 variants for their budget lines.

Basically, sure, this works:

And is pretty amazing compared to a DC-3 just a few years older, but once you've flown this:

You can never go back.

I guess the one place this analogy breaks down is unlike the 707 compared to the DC-7 the Pentium M also gets better gas mileage than its predecessor...

 

[Chuck(G)]

You can probably just clean and lube the fan, or buy something like this:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353170138737

Oh, I've got an Ultra XWind 120mm fan still in blister pack in my parts crib. Hunk o' Copper; right now, all I need to do is give the case a rap with my knuckles at power-up and things quiet down.

For what I do, even double the speed probably wouldn't be noticeable. It does lack a real parallel port, however, but supports legacy floppy and IDE.

I run 64-bit Debian, have two WQHD screens and things work fine. I don't game. Right now, when I'm doing design work, the box still thinks faster than I do. I can remember when grousing about how long it took our VAX to compile the 4.2BSD kernel, a friend who worked for Cray said that he simply compiled everything--it only took a few seconds. Now, I'm in that category and it only took 40 years...

Funny how something others consider scrap makes a decent home computer these days.

As much junk as I get rid of, I can't pass up a good discard. Case in point--20 years ago, at the local community college, I spied a couple of old Atlas upright mic stands. They were being discarded because some idiot had borked the retention assemblies (basically a plastic split cylinder). (you can get replacements for about $30 today, but I'm a cheapskate). So they sat in a corner of my shop, un-repaired and unloved. Yesterday, I looked at one and said "That would make a great stand for my Foredom tool".
The plastic retention bit was easy to fabricate from a short piece of schedule 80 1/2" PVC--just turn it down a bit in the lathe and cut a split in it. On the top, grabbed some scrap 1/2" copper plumbing and made a horizontal "L" to hang the motor. Looks and works great.

 

[Caluser2000]

Currently I'm recycling a few of those forehead mounted inspection light LEDs for use as driving lamps on my 1998 Suzuki FX650W motorcycle. A real easy job to be quite honest.

 

[VERAULT]

As far as I'm concerned PII and PIII based systems are what I would refer to as "borderline" vintage systems (or "tweener" systems, whatever term you wish to use) though I'm still happy to consider them a part of my collection. The one I have (a Dell Inspiron 3800, PIII) is over 20 years old and by some folks' definition certainly old enough to be considered vintage.

I am with you on the Dell part. I have a Dell Latitude CPXj (basically almost the exaxt same machine as an inspiron 3800 with a different bios) I use with Linux for making apple II floppy disks. Its a fantastic machine. I still have two battery packs that hold a good charge as well as a couple floppy drives and cd/dvd drives for it (and a second HDD caddy). I dont collect laptops because of the inability to repair them for the most part and the fact that LCD's die but this unit is just a work horse. The power regulator board died but I was able to find a used one on ebay so its still going.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I have a Dell Latitude CPXj (basically the same as an inspiron 3800)

Hah! I had both a 3800 and a CPx myself. The Inspiron 3800 was first, I bought it for pennies on the dollar in late 2000 after the startup I was working for at the time blew up, and the CPx was a junk-pile rescue a few years later. The junk-pile rescue came with a full-on PCI-slot docking station, which was interesting because the 3800 would fit it and was able to run the port-extension parts, but a BIOS warning would pop up and say it was an unsupported device and the PCI slots wouldn't work. I guess PCI slots were for the business version only. (Said startup I bought the 3800 from was getting Inspirons to save a couple hundred bucks.)

(Was curious if it might be possible to cross-flash the BIOSes or some other hack to effectively turn the 3800 into a CPx, but I didn't want to brick it.)

They were good laptops, other than the 3800 came with a lousy keyboard that I had to replace after a couple years. (It was a well known problem with the machine that may have only affected certain production runs? The CPx's keyboard was fine, I don't know if it was technically a different part but it looked identical.) Finally gave them away at a charity rummage sale in 2012, I hope the kids who spent $10 of their hard-earned money on the pair had fun learning Linux on them.

 

[TH2002]

I am with you on the Dell part. I have a Dell Latitude CPXj (basically almost the exaxt same machine as an inspiron 3800 with a different bios) I use with Linux for making apple II floppy disks. Its a fantastic machine. I still have two battery packs that hold a good charge as well as a couple floppy drives and cd/dvd drives for it (and a second HDD caddy). I dont collect laptops because of the inability to repair them for the most part and the fact that LCD's die but this unit is just a work horse. The power regulator board died but I was able to find a used one on ebay so its still going.

Laptops are mostly what I collect. Truth be told the Toshiba Satellite 4xx series and Tecra 5xx series are actually very easy to repair and my 420CDT (not only the first vintage laptop I ever bought, but remains one of, if not my favorite computer in my collection) is very reliable. Only thing I've ever had to replace is the LCD inverter board, but doing so wasn't difficult at all, it's easy to take apart and just generally an excellent machine. My Inspiron 3800 was a good purchase as well, battery also still holds a good charge and it's a great borderline system.

I nicknamed that Toshiba "Ol' Reliable" because I love it so much, maybe that makes me weird.

 

[VERAULT]

I never said they were difficult to repair. Finding replacement parts make laptop collecting something I will not get into (I mean I have about laptop/portables... but in a collection as large as mine.. thats nothing.

 

[Caluser2000]

I never said they were difficult to repair. Finding replacement parts make laptop collecting something I will not get into (I mean I have about laptop/portables... but in a collection as large as mine.. thats nothing.

You posted "inability to repair" them in post #72 Officer Petty. LCD panels can be easy to source new as well for a lot of models.

I've fitted different manufactures LCD panels from one laptop(Samsung) to a totally different manufactures (HP/Compaq) laptop. As long as the LCD panel is the same size and has the same connects it is quite a trivial task even ifd you have to modify the surrounding steel frame.

 

[VERAULT]

You posted "inability to repair" them in post #72 Officer Petty. LCD panels can be easy to source new as well for a lot of models.

Look the lurking instigator showed up..

Yeah and I already explained because of the inability to find replacement parts.. Trying to get a rise for no reason. Man thats borring. Im bored with you.. Im going to go fix a mower. Next time have something better. Bush League...

 

[Moondog]

Some of the early P4's are turning 20 years old. IDE drives, floppy drives and CD rom drives are old kit. AGP? I'd consider anything under P4 pre-XP being vintage.

 

[VERAULT]

Throw'em in the bin...

 

[Caluser2000]

Throw'em in the bin...

You look a bit off colour ol bean.

Just updated from LMDE4 to LMDE5 with out issues at all and it it still fine for the "Modern Internet". Boots to the desktop in under a minute.