Should Pentium II/III Systems Have a Forum?

[VERAULT]

indeed. so it goes.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

dirt cheap? nope.. no they werent. but I guess that all depends on the status of your disposable income at the time.

My (no former) brother-in-law bought 4 of them for a 4x SLI build for $20 each in ~2003? He also later gave me a voodoo 5 in a box of old junk(which I later threw away. Like an idiot.) At the time I thought he was silly because I literally did not understand that different graphics cards from different eras did things that modern cards don't.

You can buy a surplus bluray burner (which is also a dvd burner) for dirt cheap now. I still burn lots of disks just for file transferring. I will add an optical drive until its not plausible.

SAME! I've got onboard drives in both my modern xeon systems. All my vintage systems get them, whether needed or not. Only my HTPC(which may as well be in data center for how little it gets touched) lacks one. I'm actually very annoyed you can't fit Windows 10 on a 4.3gb DVD anymore. I still prefer booting from a CD than a thumb drive.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Wherever we decide to draw the line on vintage, someone younger than us will eventually be redrawing it. Such is life...

I think that's kind of the point of this discussion.

 

[Unknown_K]

My (no former) brother-in-law bought 4 of them for a 4x SLI build for $20 each in ~2003? He also later gave me a voodoo 5 in a box of old junk(which I later threw away. Like an idiot.) At the time I thought he was silly because I literally did not understand that different graphics cards from different eras did things that modern cards don't.


SAME! I've got onboard drives in both my modern xeon systems. All my vintage systems get them, whether needed or not. Only my HTPC(which may as well be in data center for how little it gets touched) lacks one. I'm actually very annoyed you can't fit Windows 10 on a 4.3gb DVD anymore. I still prefer booting from a CD than a thumb drive.

There are 8.5GB dual layer DVD recordable discs out there, I use them.

 

[krebizfan]

I have always had bad luck with dual layer DVD recordables so I have gone with either lots of single layer or the occasional Blu Ray if I have a large storage requirement.

I can readily ignore threads about machines that I have no knowledge of and no interest in. I don't think a vintage site should be used for machines that are still supported by the manufacturer.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

There are 8.5GB dual layer DVD recordable discs out there

I have always had bad luck with dual layer DVD recordables

^^

It doesn't help that dual-layer media is and always has been expensive for what it is. Back when I was regularly storing stuff on DVD media, the cost to size ratio didn't justify it. Not counting M Discs I haven't actually bought fresh DVD media in ages...

so I have gone with either lots of single layer or the occasional Blu Ray if I have a large storage requirement.

Have you tried burning large ISOs to blue rays and booting off of them? Just curious if this even works.

 

[Plasma]

I think that's kind of the point of this discussion.

The argument was made that the definition of vintage computing should be technology-based. My position is that it can only be defined by time.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

The argument was made that the definition of vintage computing should be technology-based. My position is that it can only be defined by time.

Pentium IVs shipped as early as 2000, P3s in 1999. That's still 23 years. What's your cutoff?

 

[Plasma]

Personally I would put it between 20 and 25. And yes, that means Pentium 4 and Athlon XPs could be included.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Works for me.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

At the time I thought he was silly because I literally did not understand that different graphics cards from different eras did things that modern cards don't.

Here's the thing about that: there were certainly a number of "interesting" 3D APIs in the 1990s, before everything ended up getting consolidated under the Direct3D/OpenGL umbrellas, but precious few of them have any significant number of programs that use them. GLIDE was pretty much the last proprietary API standing and 3Dfx was officially dead and buried by February 2001. I mean, sure, I guess that truly rabid connoisseurs persist in finding reasons to collect and treasure, say, different vintages of NVIDIA GeForce cards because only cards of generation Y have super-double-secret antialiasing technology or whatever, and if that really floats your boat then, sure, more power to you, but... I dunno, I guess at a certain point my eyes thoroughly glaze over.

To expand a bit more on that:

Yeah but progress is not linear.
...
About definition of retro, vintage, etc. It's all about the POV, but some lines must be drawn so people have an ubiquitous meaning behind the term. It either means something technical, or something human, like the age passed. I'm definitely not for the latter option. If you're a young person, doesn't mean a game from 2012 is automatically retro.

I think I pretty much agree with the sentiment here, IE, this is why I threw out that "end of history" comment. To me the definition of a "Vintage" computer to some extent hinges on it being a machine that fundamentally "feels" different than a run-of-the-mill modern desktop computer, and by that I don't mean the icons are different colors or the CPU a little slower, I mean it needs to embody to at least some degree different user interaction or operational paradigms. And, personally, to me this line was pretty much crossed the day most people stopped starting windows from a DOS prompt, and thoroughly obliterated the day Windows XP eliminated the split between "consumer" and "professional" OSes. I say this in spite of having been mostly a user of other operating systems even before the first milestone on this list, because, well, even if you're talking about Linux or something instead there's a fuzzy line somewhere in the 1990s, strongly correlatating with the introduction/popularity of Intel P6 CPUs, such that the main difference between a Pentium II from 1997 and a 32 bit Core Duo from 2006 is just speed, assuming you shove enough RAM in the former; they're both fundamentally the "same thing". Or at least they're a lot closer to the same thing than what you'd see if you compared a 1997 Pentium II to a 386 from 1988, or that 386 to a TRS-80 from 1979.

In car collecting you'll see various categories chucked around like "Collector", "Classic", "Antique", "Vintage", "Brass Era", etc; there's not a ton of agreement about what those words actually mean, of course. Some insurance companies just call any car over 20 years old a "classic", an "antique" might be 45 years old, etc, while other organizations like collector clubs might have *very* specific meanings for those terms, like a "Vintage" car is strictly something between 1919 and 1930, a "horseless carriage" or "brass age" car is pre-1915, whatever, that anchor those terms to specific age ranges. To me, personally, just about any computer built after the mid-1990's will *never* qualify as "Vintage". Call it a "classic" or "retro" or whatever, sure, but to me a "vintage" computer is like a "vintage" car: there's something obviously antiquated about it to even a casual observer. Someone that doesn't know cars might not really grok much difference between a 1986 Ford Taurus and a 2023 Nissan Altima, but they *will* be able to see the obvious differences between the Taurus and a Model T. It's definitely debatable how antiquated you need to get to qualify for the "Vintage" label, but in my mind any computer that runs Windows XP ain't it, at least not until we get quite a bit more water under the bridge.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I think I pretty much agree with the sentiment here, IE, this is why I threw out that "end of history" comment. To me the definition of a "Vintage" computer to some extent hinges on it being a machine that fundamentally "feels" different than a run-of-the-mill modern desktop computer, and by that I don't mean the icons are different colors or the CPU a little slower, I mean it needs to embody to at least some degree different user interaction or operational paradigms.

I agree. That's a lot of the reason why I've separated out everything as XP and earlier as "vintage". Windows vista is basically windows 10. There's just not a huge difference between them. But XP is distinct and 98 is distinct. 95 and 98 can be lumped together, as can all the 3.xs put alongside DOS.

Everything before that I haven't gotten around to yet. But I'm working on it!

 

[Zare]

I think I pretty much agree with the sentiment here, IE, this is why I threw out that "end of history" comment. To me the definition of a "Vintage" computer to some extent hinges on it being a machine that fundamentally "feels" different than a run-of-the-mill modern desktop computer, and by that I don't mean the icons are different colors or the CPU a little slower, I mean it needs to embody to at least some degree different user interaction or operational paradigms. And, personally, to me this line was pretty much crossed the day most people stopped starting windows from a DOS prompt, and thoroughly obliterated the day Windows XP eliminated the split between "consumer" and "professional" OSes. I say this in spite of having been mostly a user of other operating systems even before the first milestone on this list, because, well, even if you're talking about Linux or something instead there's a fuzzy line somewhere in the 1990s, strongly correlatating with the introduction/popularity of Intel P6 CPUs, such that the main difference between a Pentium II from 1997 and a 32 bit Core Duo from 2006 is just speed, assuming you shove enough RAM in the former; they're both fundamentally the "same thing". Or at least they're a lot closer to the same thing than what you'd see if you compared a 1997 Pentium II to a 386 from 1988, or that 386 to a TRS-80 from 1979.

In car collecting you'll see various categories chucked around like "Collector", "Classic", "Antique", "Vintage", "Brass Era", etc; there's not a ton of agreement about what those words actually mean, of course. Some insurance companies just call any car over 20 years old a "classic", an "antique" might be 45 years old, etc, while other organizations like collector clubs might have *very* specific meanings for those terms, like a "Vintage" car is strictly something between 1919 and 1930, a "horseless carriage" or "brass age" car is pre-1915, whatever, that anchor those terms to specific age ranges. To me, personally, just about any computer built after the mid-1990's will *never* qualify as "Vintage". Call it a "classic" or "retro" or whatever, sure, but to me a "vintage" computer is like a "vintage" car: there's something obviously antiquated about it to even a casual observer. Someone that doesn't know cars might not really grok much difference between a 1986 Ford Taurus and a 2023 Nissan Altima, but they *will* be able to see the obvious differences between the Taurus and a Model T. It's definitely debatable how antiquated you need to get to qualify for the "Vintage" label, but in my mind any computer that runs Windows XP ain't it, at least not until we get quite a bit more water under the bridge.

Agreed especially on the car analogy.
The only thing I can comment on is that my Core 2 Quad is an amd64 cpu. Thus it's running the same instruction set as all contemporary CPUs.

I've used that CPU for 8 years as mainstay. Switched it in 2015 for a high end Haswell-E. It is my current computer, I'm posting from it and I don't feel like replacing it any time soon. Before Core 2 I was running same P4 Northwood for 6 or 7 years.

Those periods are expanding.

Btw. I've also bought an advertised "vintage PC" Pentium from eBay but for me a built case configuration mid'90s cannot be vintage.
There is something about how old computers were connected together also that makes them "vintage". With all the idiotproof connectors, jumperless operation, ACPI, BIOS does 99% of configuration automagically, etc. it loses a lot on the "vintage" side even if the software you run is pretty archaic.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

The only thing I can comment on is that my Core 2 Quad is an amd64 cpu. Thus it's running the same instruction set as all contemporary CPUs.

Yeah, 'cause it's a "Core 2". There was a 32 bit "Core" CPU, codename "Yonah", that's what I was thinking of. They only sold it for about a year. (Maybe a little longer with the "Pentium Dual Core" name?) It was basically two Pentium M's stuck together and was the last/best 32 bit Intel x86 CPU.

I agree. That's a lot of the reason why I've separated out everything as XP and earlier as "vintage".

See, this is where I pretty strongly differ. Why is Windows XP "Vintage"? You can set up Windows 11 to look pretty much exactly like it, and it even came in a 64 bit flavor. (Rare as hen's teeth, I know.) It's modern Windows by every measure. (I would mostly apply that to Windows 2000 as well, actually. NT is a different animal. Not one I'd call "vintage", but it is at least "different". And terrible.) It runs on a "modern" filesystem (NTFS), it has essentially the same architecture and driver model, modern versions of Windows are almost completely backwards compatible with it... yeah, I think you've lost me there.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Again, why not just categorize them by operation width? 16-bit vs. 32-bit vs. 64 bit.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

See, this is where I pretty strongly differ. Why is Windows XP "Vintage"? You can set up Windows 11 to look pretty much exactly like it, and it even came in a 64 bit flavor. (Rare as hen's teeth, I know.) It's modern Windows by every measure. (I would mostly apply that to Windows 2000 as well, actually. NT is a different animal. Not one I'd call "vintage", but it is at least "different". And terrible.) It runs on a "modern" filesystem (NTFS), it has essentially the same architecture and driver model, modern versions of Windows are almost completely backwards compatible with it... yeah, I think you've lost me there.

I've spent hundreds of hours in my time trying to make Windows 7/8/10/11 behave like Windows XP with no success. I could rant for hours about it. Aside from some very superficial similarities it cannot be *done.





*NOTE: if you know a way to make the windows 10 file browser look and behave exactly like the one on XP, I'll be your friend forever.

Again, why not just categorize them by operation width? 16-bit vs. 32-bit vs. 64 bit.

This also makes perfect sense to me. Thrown off somewhat by the shockingly stable server2003 x64, but still.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

NOTE: if you know a way to make the windows 10 file browser look and behave exactly like the one on XP, I'll be your friend forever.

This is precisely *not* the category of things I would consider important in determining whether an operating system is “vintage” or not. I wince every time I upgrade *any* program or operating system based on the well founded assumption that somebody is going to rearrange, move, or delete some function that I happen to like where and how it is.. but then after it happens I sigh, figure out the new way, and get over it.

 

[Zare]

I've spent hundreds of hours in my time trying to make Windows 7/8/10/11 behave like Windows XP with no success. I could rant for hours about it. Aside from some very superficial similarities it cannot be *done.

*NOTE: if you know a way to make the windows 10 file browser look and behave exactly like the one on XP, I'll be your friend forever.

I wouldn't conflate user interfaces and backwards compatibility support with "modernity" of an OS.
When most GTK applications moved from 2 to 3 I lost the capacity to theme GTK apps as NeXTStep and integrate them seamlessly with WindowMaker. It's not that someone cannot port the theme, it's the new theme engine and design guidelines that prevent next-alike visuals. Some dockapps I used back in the day do not work any more, they need code patches.

Doesn't relate to the underlying OS at all.

I'm more on the side that nothing after Windows 2000 is 'vintage'. W2K was a pretty modern OS. SP4 was great, I did not use Windows XP bar a short period in Vista age before 7 came out.

 

[Zare]

This is precisely *not* the category of things I would consider important in determining whether an operating system is “vintage” or not. I wince every time I upgrade *any* program or operating system based on the well founded assumption that somebody is going to rearrange, move, or delete some function that I happen to like where and how it is.. but then after it happens I sigh, figure out the new way, and get over it.

Always used a full set of 3rd party utilities, for file browsing, internet browsing, image viewing, etc. Never used the built in Windows ones.
That makes it rather easy to move versions.

I also quite don't get people using Windows file manager heavily. Especially in days pre Windows 7, it was known that MS doesn't want to enhance the FM too much to not step foot into 3rd party market which are their ecosystem customers also. XP version got support to open a zip. That's what Norton Commander had ages ago. This was intentional.

 

[Brown]

Hello, my friends.
All computers platform 8 or 16 bits - Vintage computers.
General bus IBM PCs - ISA (8 or 16 bits).
32-bit mainboards supported bus ISA - computers support Vintage computers.
Some PIII or Athlon, and P4, Athlon XP, or High did not support bus ISA.