Repurposing a 2004 Athlon 64 system in 2021

[momaka]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

And you can still watch YouTube under Windows 2000 today, if you can believe it. Serpent web browser + Windows 2000 Extended Kernel.

Thanks for sharing this!
Yes, I just got a hint of that in another thread on here. Haven't tried it myself yet, but would certainly be interested to someday. Apparently Serpent browser can support even more ancient CPUs. Seems like retroPC / 3rd party software coders for older OSes have really picked up more steam in the last few years. I suppose everyone is getting tired from MS'es tactics at this point, and we just don't want a new OS only for the sake of saying we have a new OS.

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Youtube on my Pentium-M and Atom (both 1.6GHz single core; Atom is HT) are just about unusable, chew up 100% of CPU... Linux/Firefox 91 ESR, 32-bit. Pains me when someone brings a youtube link when I'm using one of these to browse. Sigh.

I feel you - my main PC is still a s478 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 Prescott... which is probably on par with your Pentium-M there. Same experience when I try to follow a YT link. Though it seems the majority of the CPU hogging is happening only in the beginning of the video, while the silly scripts try to load their stuff (i.e. comments, "related" videos, and etc.) Once they load, video isn't that heavy for me on the CPU - at least 360 and 480p. 720p (@30 FPS only) is playable, but sometimes choppy at high-bitrate parts. So I always have to manually set the quality to 360 or 480p to avoid CPU hitting 100%.

Interestingly enough, today I just learned there are a few "alternative" front-end sites/apps to YT that are much more lightweight (e.g. https://piped.kavin.rocks/)
Don't think I'm going to replace me visiting YT main page just yet... but good to know such alternatives exist.

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

The old-school FXes=They were so expensive, just like video cards now!

Kind of and not exactly.
Yes, they are over-priced... but that's because they're getting more and more rare. Also, the FX CPUs are pretty tough and won't go bad on ya, unlike modern video cards.

[TechGeek]

Even managing to stream YouTube Music with fairly light CPU load!

[eccerr0r]

Damn... I think my P4 is a bit more stable with a weaker video card. Swapped out the Radeon X800 with a Radeon HD6350 and seems a bit more stable. Now need to see what it does booting into 64-bit Linux...

I now have 9 hard drives in it "just because" - 4 IDE and 5 SCSI/SCA - mainly because the SCA bay is in this machine. It's stressing the 400W PSU in it, saw it using 300W at times, idles a bit under 200W. Sad that the failing 2TB HDD I have exceeds the capacity of all the trash drives I dumped into the machine...

---

And as soon as I posted... poof. Crash. Not stable. Oh well, don't need this P4 anyway.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Even managing to stream YouTube Music with fairly light CPU load!

Nice!

Classic Windows GUI FTW! And I see you're playing Barracuda by Heart - that's another classic. I prefer WinAmp for MP3's, though - more customizable/options and some nice add-ons / skins.

BTW, I see the CPU pinned at 100% for a little bit - I'm guessing that's at the beginning when the YT page loads? I get the same thing on my 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott. Once it loads, my CPU utilization is pretty low - especially if streaming music and the tab with the YT video not active or the browser minimized. The only thing I do like better about the P4 Prescotts is that they have HT, which IME pretty much deals away with audio stutter due to high CPU usage. With my Athlon 64 FX-57, the YT page loads much much faster, but video is stutter-y and very easy to make the audio stutter too if I do something else that loads the CPU very high.

BTW x2: I'm guessing you didn't OC the CPU?

BTW x3: I tried both Basilik and New Moon on a P3 laptop, getting a hint from your thread here. Basilik is OK, but New Moon really flies on that P3 laptop, despite it having only 512 MB of RAM. Or at least I can get online on most websites without errors, FWIW. Many still peg the CPU @ 100%... but what can you do - it's a 20+ year old laptop.

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Damn... I think my P4 is a bit more stable with a weaker video card. Swapped out the Radeon X800 with a Radeon HD6350 and seems a bit more stable. Now need to see what it does booting into 64-bit Linux...

I now have 9 hard drives in it "just because" - 4 IDE and 5 SCSI/SCA - mainly because the SCA bay is in this machine. It's stressing the 400W PSU in it, saw it using 300W at times, idles a bit under 200W. Sad that the failing 2TB HDD I have exceeds the capacity of all the trash drives I dumped into the machine...

Well, you're "doing things" that probably aren't good for your "400W" PSU (loading it down too much), and yet you wonder why the system is unstable. Maybe time to check the caps in the PSU and probably back off on the # of HDDs?

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by momaka

I prefer WinAmp for MP3's, though - more customizable/options and some nice add-ons / skins.

I still run 2.81 on everything. Clean, simple, no telemetry telling big brother what I'm listening to.....

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by momaka

Nice!

Classic Windows GUI FTW! And I see you're playing Barracuda by Heart - that's another classic. I prefer WinAmp for MP3's, though - more customizable/options and some nice add-ons / skins.

BTW, I see the CPU pinned at 100% for a little bit - I'm guessing that's at the beginning when the YT page loads? I get the same thing on my 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott. Once it loads, my CPU utilization is pretty low - especially if streaming music and the tab with the YT video not active or the browser minimized. The only thing I do like better about the P4 Prescotts is that they have HT, which IME pretty much deals away with audio stutter due to high CPU usage. With my Athlon 64 FX-57, the YT page loads much much faster, but video is stutter-y and very easy to make the audio stutter too if I do something else that loads the CPU very high.

BTW x2: I'm guessing you didn't OC the CPU?

BTW x3: I tried both Basilik and New Moon on a P3 laptop, getting a hint from your thread here. Basilik is OK, but New Moon really flies on that P3 laptop, despite it having only 512 MB of RAM. Or at least I can get online on most websites without errors, FWIW. Many still peg the CPU @ 100%... but what can you do - it's a 20+ year old laptop.

Streaming an Internet radio station, hence the song. Not many stations that get through on ports 80/443. (My firewall system has nearly all Internet ports locked out.) Definitely going to install WinAmp on this system, as well as Pinnacle Studio 6 or 8, whatever the oldest version I happen to have is. Also going to install a FireWire 400 card in this system just because I can.
(P.S., said Pinnacle Studio software is currently sitting in a box full of other stuff that would otherwise be obsolete in this day and age, including some stuff which was ALREADY obsolete in 2004 when this system was built. So it *might* be a little bit before I happen to have the time to dig it up and install it.)

And yes, the CPU was pinned @ 100% during page loads, but settles down quite nicely otherwise.

CPU is not O/C'd. Haven't had time to get into that with this system.

I'll give New Moon a try and see how it runs on this system. I don't expect anything much of a difference, seeing as a 17 year old system has a rather low (and hard) speed limit compared to today's hardware.

[eccerr0r]

Originally Posted by momaka

Well, you're "doing things" that probably aren't good for your "400W" PSU (loading it down too much), and yet you wonder why the system is unstable. Maybe time to check the caps in the PSU and probably back off on the # of HDDs?

Actually the board crashes with only 1 hdd attached or with another PSU ... I did not find any really bad caps on the board either, in fact I replaced the worst one and it didn't improve the reliability of the board. Oh well.

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by Topcat

I still run 2.81 on everything. Clean, simple, no telemetry telling big brother what I'm listening to.....

Have you found a way to get it to successfully perform CDDB lookups these days? I certainly haven't been able to.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Have you found a way to get it to successfully perform CDDB lookups these days? I certainly haven't been able to.

No, that's been gone for ages. For ripping CD's, I used MMJB, that was the last functional one, and that died decades ago.

[TechGeek]

Enjoying some time on the Win2K side of the system.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Enjoying some time on the Win2K side of the system.

If there was a 64-bit version of Win2k for the x86 platform (there was an itanium version), I'd still be running it!

[TechGeek]

Hotrodding the XP side of things now...

BTW, does anyone know where I can get a full version of WindowBlinds or Object Desktop 5? Can only find a trial version of the software and of course you can't buy it anymore because it's well past obsolete.

P.S.: Stay tuned, something cool coming up soon!

[TechGeek]

Coming together nicely, and got the WindowBlinds situation sorted out.

[TechGeek]

Dual monitors!