<taps> So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

[eccerr0r]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

I'll happily sacrifice bloatware... just don't click sites that look like bloat.

Still don't see any proof that a computer like that can be acquired for the price you quote, or do you mean you're selling at that price, shipped?

[televizora]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

$50 is definitely a bit of a stretch.....but a system with a lower end C2D CPU like that can be had for ~$100 in working condition with 4gb for sure.

I really have no idea what the prices in USA are right now, but around here one could buy the config below for 42EUR.
G2020 is 3rd Gen processor from the Core family. With these prices I see no reason to punish yourself with something like P3 or P4 system, on which even opening a browser with a single tab with Google search leads to CPU usage spikes.
And if you do have P3 system for retro gaming, you cant complain that newer programs refuse to work on system. Not that I like the bloated software today, written by programmers who really don't care or make any efforts to optimize their software, but even if we imagine that all software suddenly becomes optimized, you will still have a hard time watching 1080p video on PentiumIII.
And there is a limit of what you can optimize and after a certain point you start to sacrifice functionality.
---
Fujitsu Esprimo E710 Desktop
Intel Pentium G2020 2900MHz 3MB
4096MB DDR3
250 GB SATA
DVD-RW
----
BTW, I tested Palemoon build specifically compiled for processors without SSE2. The experience was everything but nice.
When you try to open any modern page the browser slows down to degree, where it is almost nonresponsive or just hangs completely.

[Topcat]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Today you can buy at least Dual Core x64 capable system with 4-8GB of RAM for 50$ or less.

$50 is definitely a bit of a stretch.....but a system with a lower end C2D CPU like that can be had for ~$100 in working condition with 4gb for sure.

FWIW, this was posted from another old timer.... Ratdude's old "hyper-drive" badged aopen system he gave me on his last visit. It's a 233mmx w/256mb RAM and a Matrox Millennium 8mb GPU. I got it out to test one of the 50-pin SCSI Barracuda HDD's Momaka sent.... ....from NT4 and Firefox 2.0.0.20.

[eccerr0r]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Today you can buy at least Dual Core x64 capable system with 4-8GB of RAM for 50$ or less.

[ citation request ]

[televizora]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

I think that dropping support for 15+ years old CPU-s is normal. Even if they are supported, they are mostly useless today.
It is the same as asking why you cant run Windows10 on Intel486. After 2010 CPU-s before Pentium IV became obsolete.
Today you can buy at least Dual Core x64 capable system with 4-8GB of RAM for 50$ or less.

[eccerr0r]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

I suspect Gentoo will run 32-bit for a while, surprised sparc hppa and alpha still are supported...

Then again NetBSD will stick around, alas it doesn't matter if no applications are supported. Gosh rust is really making me mad.

[TechGeek]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Good thing I moved my firewall off of the old Advantech system that served me faithfully for over 3 years. The day Debian drops i686 is the day my APCUPSD server is permanently firewalled off from the Internet.

[eccerr0r]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Up until this point the whole point is these machines used to be able to run everything that modern machines could run... therefore they could be spares... until they started prohibiting that by adding unnecessary instructions into the code stream.

Plus even today I don't think people would consider GUIs to require mega horsepower to run, especially ones that look like WinXP or even Win95 era...

Disappointing, and not even running video or games - just a plain desktop environment that always had been running... until they wanted to add scalable vector graphics to the icons that they were so worried to have security holes but as a side effect requires unnecessary instructions, and suddenly things won't work anymore.

I do wonder how bad it would be to emulate these instructions, can't imagine there should be that many of them, just to render a few icons?

[lti]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

My Athlon XP is currently the "you can't overclock a laptop" system.

Most of my old stuff is being used to collect dust until I get replacement optical drives. I only have one working IDE optical drive, and it's in my Pentium II laptop. I tried CD emulation software, and it wouldn't play music.

[Topcat]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

What are you using it for?

Look at the specs of the build, and I'll give you three guesses....

Then look at the hardware in question for this thread and let me know who's using that era of hardware for anything but novelties & nostalgic purposes.

[Uranium-235]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

FWIW, this post created from THIS BUILD, a slot-2 P3 Xeon (cascades cores) from firefox 12; no less than a 3DFX voodoo3500 providing the video....one of my favorite and most unusual retro builds. It's still working!!

What are you using it for?

[Topcat]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

FWIW, this post created from THIS BUILD, a slot-2 P3 Xeon (cascades cores) from firefox 12; no less than a 3DFX voodoo3500 providing the video....one of my favorite and most unusual retro builds. It's still working!!

[Topcat]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

...and who uses anything that old/slow for things that aren't retro?

I don't think my retro gamers will suddenly stop working...

[dmill89]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Rust?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(...ming_language)

[lti]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

My Athlon XP got retired to "retro" use (or at least the small amount of old stuff that will run on VIA/S3 integrated graphics) a long time ago. I have to reinstall Windows every few weeks just to keep SSE support for some reason, but SSE instructions always work in Linux. Even if it supported SSE2, it's too slow for modern stuff, especially since I have the 1400+.

[eccerr0r]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Hmm... maybe not, does Tualatin have SSE2? Might not after all, mine's not set up at the moment...
Coppermine apparently does not, but I don't have any to check.

NOPE. All Pentium III's are now obsolete due to rust - Tualatins do not have SSE2.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

That includes Coppermine, too! Katmai was pretty much a Pentium II with a different name. At best, was a Pentium II with SSE.

[Uranium-235]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Rust?

[piernov]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Atom N270 (and N280) does not support x86_64, and it was a very popular CPU in netbooks around 2008-2010. The early (well, up to 2013) Atom Z series and some others didn't support it either but they were less relevant.

Core Solo and Core Duo were also missing x86_64 support, it came back only on Core 2. A bunch of laptops can be upgraded but not all (BIOS limitations).

32-bit support is also becoming more and more abandoned in the Linux world. The only mainstream distribution that still actively supports it is Debian as far as I know (but it's not the most user-friendly), and there have been talks to drop it for a while already. A good bunch of proprietary applications already dropped it (so without sources you can't do anything about it), and even free/open-source ones (with convoluted build process and hardcoded optimizations) are starting to move away from it.

[stj]

Re: &lt;taps&gt; So long, Pentium III, Athlon XP, and older...

Atom is 64bit