Old hardware, and why I love it.

[vt3c]

This is going to be a short but lovingly peaceful rant post basically covering my love of older (but not ancient) hardware. I own(ed) several machines based on PowerPC, Pentium 4, Core 2, and Athlon 64 based processors and I've loved them all. And it was within recent years as well. They all had enough power to handle just about anything I threw at them. Like today, I had a ton of tabs open in chrome on my trash toshiba (Basically the toshiba laptop that had the screen bezel completely shatter and the screen can't be held on it's own) but the CPU, motherboard, RAM, and HDD are all still working and it still holds it's own in terms of CPU performance. It hardly even works when giving it a pretty balanced workload such as watching HD content on netflix and having several tabs open in google chrome working on docs (including a list of parts for building a PC on newegg). and it's just a measly core 2 duo on integrated graphics.

 

My Athlon 64 3200+ machine (which I'll happily call "garbage can") was a measly single core with 2GB of RAM. I had a bit of pride due to me building it, but I'll give it 100% credit for being as poweful as it was for a single core. Despite not having a dedicated graphics card, it got me into PC gaming with a DREADFUL 6150LE. Games like HL2 deathmatch and TF2 barely got playable FPS but I could have anything in the background and it took it like a champ.

My dell (pentium dual core E5300 machine, which I'll happily call "mini me") was my first dual core, ever. It started with 4 gigs of RAM and an HIS Radeon HD 5450. It was the first time I could ever play games at a playable frame rate. I later stumbled upon more upgrades for it, and sold it off with 8GB of RAM and an ATI Firepro V3800. The person I sold it to dropped in an E5700 and is using it as a tri-monitor gaming beast... somehow. 
 

My PowerPC machine (which I'll happily call Timebox) was given to me between the time of Garbage Can being an actual garbage can, and getting "Mini Me". Dual 1GHZ, 2GB RAM, Radeon 9000 Pro, OS tiger. I was really, really surprised by how much power the little bastard had left in it. It had a type of charm to it that I never got tired of. Surprisingly never got utilized entirely. Despite the 64MB graphics card, I was able to do 3D modeling for school projects like it was opening an e-mail.

Basically, each of these computers had a special charm. Like, somehow, it still worked despite the fact it's owners gave up on them, pretty much. And they blew me away with what they were capable of despite their age.

tl;dr older computers are faster than most people think and i'm impressed by how well some architectures have held up to the test of time despite everyone dropping it.

 

[EcoBoost]

Core 2 Duo keeps up with AMD FX in terms of single-threaded performance, just because it's old doesn't mean it isn't good

[Maheshvara]

@Gala

[Clyne]

I own a AMD Athlon 64 3200+ rig that only had 1GB of RAM.....and a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ with 2GB of RAM and i had to use the board graphics for a while before switching to a  HD5450.

[STRMfrmXMN]

Core 2 is Love. Core 2 is Life.

[Vypa]

This makes me want to buy some old hardware; love messing around with old hardware - Soo cheap that it doesn't matter if it breaks.

[spwath]

Love my ppc iMac g4

But painfully slow at anything.

But really pretty, and nice, loud speakers.

[CDHoward]

Core 2 Duo keeps up with AMD FX in terms of single-threaded performance, just because it's old doesn't mean it isn't good

Just stop.

To OP: Nice story.

[Mattr567]

Gainward Ti200 and Athlon Thunderbird with Windows 98SE. Yes.

[EcoBoost]

Just stop.

Stop with what... it's actually true

[vt3c]

Gainward Ti200 and Athlon Thunderbird with Windows 98SE. Yes.

The good ol days. 

I'm more of a P3 guy myself, but I owned a K6-III machine with a PCI-based Fx5200. I installed XP home on it, and it held up surprisingly well for what it was.

[vt3c]

Stop with what... it's actually true

It is true. If you want single-thread/core performance, you have to go intel. But if you're a video streamer, the FX series is a good choice as it's thread hungry compared to single-core power dependent. 

[Jack.EXE]

I still have An old Pentium Dual Core chip. (prototype core 2 duo basically)

 

 

775 aint old /rant

Man, I remember that i486 my grandpa gave me when I was just getting into computers.

[Mattr567]

The good ol days. 

I'm more of a P3 guy myself, but I owned a K6-III machine with a PCI-based Fx5200. I installed XP home on it, and it held up surprisingly well for what it was.

 

Nice.

 

I dont now why, but a red pcb always looks interesting

 

 

Athlon

 

 

Dat 512MB of RAM

 

 

Also with an old Sound Blaster audio card.

 

 

Also manged to get the thing on the internet with a Ethernet cable a couple years ago. Plugged it in, and it just worked.

 

[vt3c]

Nice.

 

I dont now why, but a red pcb always looks interesting

 

 

 

 

Athlon

 

 

 

Dat 512MB of RAM

 

 

 

Also with an old Sound Blaster audio card.

 

 

 

Also manged to get the thing on the internet with a Ethernet cable a couple years ago. Plugged it in, and it just worked.

 

 

 

 

Beautiful! Yeah, my dad was a bit of a hardware guy when I was a little one around the era of the pentium 3. He was part of tech support at Intel at the time, and built machines on the side. But he always personally owned possibly the most badass AMD system at the time. It was a K6-III with 256MB of RAM, dual 20GB hard drives, and an ATI Rage 64MB. Yeah.

 

That hardware you have holds up very well for retro games, in fact, I'm surprised you manage to squeeze 512MB of RAM into the sucker! Jesus. Could you imagine having 512MB of RAM in those days? It'd be like having 128GB now!

[MEC-777]

Just inherited my mother-in-law's 8-year old Acer Core 2 desktop PC. (Just built her a new one). So many ideas running around in my head as to what to do with it. I'll probably throw Linux on it for the time being. Also thinking about craming some powerful hardware inside for cheap (G3258 OC'd to the moon and my 7950) and turn it into a "sleeper" gaming rig.  

 

Also recently helped my sister-in-law pick out a new laptop and she gave me her old one to fix up/mess around with. It's an old Acer Aspire 5517 with an AMD dual-core 1.2GHz, 4GB ram and some AMD HD integrated graphics chip that can't even handle full screen youtube at 360p. Runs a little better with Linux Mint than it did with Windows 7 (no big surprise) but the biggest bottleneck is the slow HDD and that lackluster CPU. Still, it's good enough for basic use and browsing the web (and as a Linux guinea pig ).

 

Old hardware ftw!

[vt3c]

Just inherited my mother-in-law's 8-year old Acer Core 2 desktop PC. (Just built her a new one). So many ideas running around in my head as to what to do with it. I'll probably throw Linux on it for the time being. Also thinking about craming some powerful hardware inside for cheap (G3258 OC'd to the moon and my 7950) and turn it into a "sleeper" gaming rig.  

 

Also recently helped my sister-in-law pick out a new laptop and she gave me her old one to fix up/mess around with. It's an old Acer Aspire 5517 with an AMD dual-core 1.2GHz, 4GB ram and some AMD HD integrated graphics chip that can't even handle full screen youtube at 360p. Runs a little better with Linux Mint than it did with Windows 7 (no big surprise) but the biggest bottleneck is the slow HDD and that lackluster CPU. Still, it's good enough for basic use and browsing the web (and as a Linux guinea pig ).

 

Old hardware ftw!

That core 2 has power on it's own. Specifically, what CPU is it? If it's an E6400/E6600 it still handles just about anything these days just fine given you put in a sufficient GPU. 

In fact, Eric S. Raymond (linux/open source developer) used an E6600 for 9 years to develop linux releases and repository surgery tools, with nodes in 18GB of length. And apart from the issue of not having enough memory, the CPU took it like a champ. 18 gigabytes of raw computational data. Damn.

[Guest]

Love my ppc iMac g4

But painfully slow at anything.

But really pretty, and nice, loud speakers.

+1

 

iMac G4 is an awesome piece of hardware, and though I own the baseline 700MHz model, in the future I definiely want to pick up the later 1.4GHz model with a 20" display, and mod it with an Intel NUC inside (as seen in this mod), as I believe it's one of the most unique and well-designed computers out there. I'm keeping this one forever, as mine looks new and is upgraded to a max of 1GB(!) of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.

 

Still rocking a 32MB GeForce2 MX! Wonder how many CUDA cores it has

[Suffokation]

I used to own a 486 and a Pentium III, but I covered the Pentium in LN too see how cool it would get. it just died.

rip p3.

[vt3c]

775 aint old /rant

It isn't. I'm rather annoyed with people who say it is. If you've got a core 2 quad, you have no reason to upgrade. Core 2 Duo? Maybe. New games love more cores. But current games are just fine with the core 2 (BF3, any source game, MMOs, etc given you have a usable GPU)

[vt3c]

+1

 

iMac G4 is an awesome piece of hardware, and though I own the baseline 700MHz model, in the future I definiely want to pick up the later 1.4GHz model with a 20" display, and mod it with an Intel NUC inside (as seen in this mod), as I believe it's one of the most unique and well-designed computers out there. I'm keeping this one forever, as mine looks new and is upgraded to a max of 1GB(!) of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.

 

Still rocking a 32MB GeForce2 MX! Wonder how many CUDA cores it has

I've got my G4 MDD with 2GB RAM and the dual 1GHZ. When I had tiger on it, previous owner loaded every version of office, CAD, and iMovie. Thing was full of previous shit that was really, really cool. Really expensive apps. Used a lot of them for school projects, too. 

But somehow along the way disk permissions got so messed up that I couldn't repair them and it could not launch any apps. Had to wipe and reinstall Linux and I wish I had Tiger or Leopard.

[Guest]

I've got my G4 MDD with 2GB RAM and the dual 1GHZ. When I had tiger on it, previous owner loaded every version of office, CAD, and iMovie. Thing was full of previous shit that was really, really cool. Really expensive apps. Used a lot of them for school projects, too. 

But somehow along the way disk permissions got so messed up that I couldn't repair them and it could not launch any apps. Had to wipe and reinstall Linux and I wish I had Tiger or Leopard.

Yeah, Linux is probably best for compatibility with software (Linux is better than 2007-era OS X), but mine still chugs on Tiger, as Leopard is just too much for the CPU. I've tried to install Linux multiple times, but the incompatibility with the ancient Nvidia chip has halted me every time; it boots, but I can't see anything except a black screen. I've tried everything I can, but never did get it to work. I did get the command line installer to run, but after install the normal OS had the same problem with video. If I could find a solid solution, I'd love to run Ubuntu on the thing

[vt3c]

Yeah, Linux is probably best for compatibility with software (Linux is better than 2007-era OS X), but mine still chugs on Tiger, as Leopard is just too much for the CPU. I've tried to install Linux multiple times, but the incompatibility with the ancient Nvidia chip has halted me every time; it boots, but I can't see anything except a black screen. I've tried everything I can, but never did get it to work. I did get the command line installer to run, but after install the normal OS had the same problem with video. If I could find a solid solution, I'd love to run Ubuntu on the thing

It runs like total ass. It runs awful. Don't do it.

[vt3c]

I used to own a 486 and a Pentium III, but I covered the Pentium in LN too see how cool it would get. it just died.

rip p3.

That really sucks, dude. I've seen vids on youtube of people getting 1GHZ P3's and an FX 5200 and playing portal on medium. It was really cool. 

 

If he had used something like XP that didn't destroy the video memory on the Fx 5200, he'd have been able to crank it up.

[Mattr567]

Beautiful! Yeah, my dad was a bit of a hardware guy when I was a little one around the era of the pentium 3. He was part of tech support at Intel at the time, and built machines on the side. But he always personally owned possibly the most badass AMD system at the time. It was a K6-III with 256MB of RAM, dual 20GB hard drives, and an ATI Rage 64MB. Yeah.

 

That hardware you have holds up very well for retro games, in fact, I'm surprised you manage to squeeze 512MB of RAM into the sucker! Jesus. Could you imagine having 512MB of RAM in those days? It'd be like having 128GB now!

 

Yeah, it's one of my dad's old PC's he built back in the very early 2000's. Eventually was handed down to me which I enjoyed very much. I haven't turned it on in about a year. Its been having a problem though, its stuck in 16 color mode instead of 256 color mode which allows it to play games. If you tried to launch a game, it would fail and tell you to switch to 256. I believe the problem is that its thermal throttling because of all the dust choking it. Haven't gotten around to cleaning though, will do eventually.

 

Good thing Speed Fan supports down to Windows 95 0.0

 

EDIT: By stuck I mean if you changed it, and then have it auto restart, when you got back to the desktop, it would still be in 16.