[HN Gopher] Usability of Old Computers
___________________________________________________________________
Usability of Old Computers
Author : vkaku
Score : 144 points
Date : 2023-09-23 12:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.karthikkumar.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.karthikkumar.org)
| [deleted]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Why can't I get a small mobo for old processors? Everything
| should have shrunk substantially in the last 30 years.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because designing a new motherboard is an expensive and painful
| process, so it's usually reserved for new processors.
|
| The SBC market is full of things that are small and new.
|
| But old processors are often run in old equipment, which has
| lots of space. And if you're running a new-old board, you often
| want bulky connectors anyway.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Like this?
|
| https://www.homebrew8088.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| > The most important thing I learned was that old computers are
| still fast -- and quite usable as a daily driver. User percieved
| latency has not improved with much faster hardware (throughput).
| We need to start paying attention here when writing software.
| jdblair wrote:
| I seriously expected minis and mainframes to be "old computers,"
| not PCs from the 90s!
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| vkaku wrote:
| If I do this exercise 30 years from now it will get there.
| arp242 wrote:
| Not even that; the CPU they use is from 2004. Socket 478 wasn't
| introduced until 2001. And they're using a SATA SSD!
|
| Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago was
| 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as "old
| computers" in 2004.
|
| On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than from
| 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as Windows 10,
| macOS, or GNOME today, even though details between
| implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is essentially the same
| as a modern CPU, except slower.
|
| A C64, DOS, or old Unix machine was conceptually quite
| different to Windows XP, and the capabilities of these machines
| were radically different from a P4.
|
| "Age" and "old" is not really about years, but more about
| concepts.
|
| This reminds me, around the same time I got a Sun SPARCstation
| from the early 90s _for free_ , and I was doing the guy a
| favour by taking it off his hands. With inflation and EU import
| tax the price of this machine must have been EUR15-EUR20k,
| easily. And I got it for free with keyboard and (huge!)
| monitor, and everything. I don't think anyone is giving away 10
| year old high-end workstations today; they're perfectly
| functional (my i5 midrange laptop is 6 years old).
| ACS_Solver wrote:
| > Then again ... this is 20 years old. In 2004 20 years ago
| was 1984, and computers from 1984 were definitely seen as
| "old computers" in 2004.
|
| > On the other hand, a lot more changed from 1984-2004 than
| from 2004-2023. Windows XP is conceptually the same as
| Windows 10, macOS, or GNOME today, even though details
| between implementations differ, and a Pentium 4 is
| essentially the same as a modern CPU, except slower.
|
| This is also my takeaway here. I'm pretty sure that someone
| who first used a computer with a typical 2023 setup, Win10
| and all, would pretty easily figure out a typical 2004 PC
| with Windows XP, Internet Explorer or early Firefox, etc. But
| going back even ten years from 2004 is more different, you'd
| be on Windows 3.1, which looks quite different and requires
| familiarity with different workflows. 1984 is radically
| different as the typical machines were all CLI/TUI and
| required machine-specific knowledge to work on, you couldn't
| just figure it out by looking at it.
| jdblair wrote:
| ...and my own age!
| fortran77 wrote:
| I just sold a 2010 supermicro Mobo on eBay with a 6 core Xeon
| and 8GB of ECC memory. It sold for $1.99. And I had to list
| it twice.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| just dl the youtube videos and use vlc.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| For YT can just force mp4 rather vp9 with h264ify or another
| extension.
| sambazi wrote:
| mpv+ytdlp my friend
| thelastparadise wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out!
|
| Did not realize it was so simple and easy to download high
| quality video files and watch them full scrren with great
| performance and hardware acceleration (and no ads!) This is
| awesome!
| bombcar wrote:
| And if you have tons of storage, you can datahoard the
| videos that might disappear someday.
| atahanacar wrote:
| You can even use sponsorblock scripts on mpv to skip
| sponsor segments.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| You know you're ancient when you find it odd to see a 1GB video
| card be labelled as "old".
| vkaku wrote:
| It was a fun video experiment, I wanted to actually see if a
| low-power semi-modern PCIe card (2.0 x16) with HDMI would
| actually work on a slot 478 motherboard with PCIe 1.0 x16. It
| works rather well and can run OpenCL 1.2 applications.
|
| Apparently CUDA v6.5 can run on Windows XP 32-bit as well. I
| intend to try this on a GeForce 730 I have saved from before
| (PCIe 3.0 x16).
|
| Incidentally, the first Graphics Card I had was a 32MB RIVA
| TNT2. Do not have that working card anymore. :-)
| diarrhea wrote:
| I don't understand how checksums help for HTTP sites. If an
| attacker controls file delivery such that checksums are
| desirable, they might very well also control those checksums and
| their display.
|
| At that point one might get those checksums out of band, on a
| modern device via HTTPS. But if a second device is needed it
| could also, at the cost of some more effort, be used to just
| download those assets directly, then transfer locally.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| HTTPS does not solve the problem if the server operator adds
| malicious software; it only prevents spies from doing so.
|
| Cryptographic hashes can help if the user who downloads the
| files knows the hash ahead of time somehow, although there can
| be a difficulty in figuring them out.
|
| Getting the checksums out of band like you suggest is a
| possibility, and might be suitable if the file cannot easily be
| transfered directly. (It could also perhaps be communicated by
| other people by writing down, by voice on telephone, etc; if
| they (and the communication in use) can be trusted.)
| vbernat wrote:
| Checksums are GPG-signed. This helps because it's easier to be
| secure (not a protocol) and you can accept third-party mirrors.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| How do you distribute the GPG keys?
| vkaku wrote:
| How are certificates distributed to computers before the
| TLS session begins? How does a user trust an untrusted
| certificate and it's chain, say from Let's Encrypt?
|
| You only distribute public keys to the end user - and
| private key signed hashes that can be verified by those
| public keys.
|
| The user is given an option to trust a key for a new repo,
| when it's not in their list of trusted keys. The
| installation already comes with a list of trusted keys when
| it begins. If you trust it, then you run it - just like you
| should be trusting the root certificates in your system to
| really benefit from TLS, even. That includes Government,
| Telco and Company issued certificates. :-)
| earthboundkid wrote:
| > How are certificates distributed to computers before
| the TLS session begins? How does a user trust an
| untrusted certificate and it's chain, say from Let's
| Encrypt?
|
| A handful of root certificates are baked into every OS
| and carefully guarded at every level to make sure they're
| never given to someone who doesn't have possession of a
| domain. Are you proposing to do this for GPG checksums?
| What would that look like?
| sbrorson wrote:
| This is a relevant article to me since I also make 20yo (or
| older) computers run legacy stuff ... but not for fun.
|
| Factories and labs frequently have machines or instruments which
| are controlled by a computer. They are run off control cards
| which are inserted into ISA or PCI slots in the computer and are
| commanded by the legacy software through old, proprietary
| drivers. Examples are cards from National Instruments or Galil.
| Such equipment can cost tens of thousands of dollars (or more)
| when new. Also, decades-old software written by long-gone
| engineers at the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody
| understands how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is
| plenty of incentive to keep the old systems running and running
| and running.
|
| Unfortunately, old computers sometimes break. That's where I come
| in -- I do a side consulting business with a colleague where we
| refurbish the old computers -- replace parts as necessary,
| install old versions of the O/S, replace mechanical hard drives
| with SSDs, and do whatever else is needed to keep the computers
| running for the next few decades.
|
| I know we're not alone out there since we're aware of other small
| businesses which provide a similar service. It's an important
| thing since -- as many point out here -- modern software
| companies don't make backwards compatibility a priority, but
| factories and labs have equipment which need to run for decades,
| so the computers controlling them also need to run for decades.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > ... but factories and labs have equipment which need to run
| for decades, so the computers controlling them also need to run
| for decades.
|
| for PCs it's obviously not a problem (there are just so many
| parts out there for just about everything and anything) but
| what about these proprietary expensive ISA (or PCI) cards you
| mention? Are replacement available for decades too? Or are they
| easy to find second hand at reasonable prices?
| behringer wrote:
| You take them to someone who can do component level repairs.
|
| And the basic hardware is more difficult than just the parts
| and these nuances can make certain parts expensive and rare.
|
| You have to know all kinks of things like irqs, dos commands,
| memory layout, jumper settings, just an insane amount of
| stuff compared to modern plug and play equipment.
| EricE wrote:
| That insane amount of stuff was just par for the course
| back in the day. I still have my old spreasheets and
| technicians toolkit of 5.25" floppies with all the old
| school utilities (check it - I forgot about it until I came
| across my old suite of floppies while moving a few years
| back)
| graemep wrote:
| Will it help that this increasingly affects less specialist
| stuff (household appliances, cars...) that the general public
| use? It makes it more of a known issue.
|
| With more things being network connected, how will we deal with
| the problem of keeping things not just working but secure? Is
| it generally practical to air gap equipment in factories and
| labs?
| bombcar wrote:
| Older equipment is often air gapped just because it really
| had no reason to be networked, and even if you DO want it
| networked, it's relatively easy to air gap.
|
| It's the new stuff that is all "cloud based" that will have
| real problems in 10 years.
| sbrorson wrote:
| Yes, this will be a major problem for factories. Any "cloud
| based" software is guaranteed to become obsolete and
| incompatible well within the lifetime of the equipment it
| controls. If you're dealing with real manufacturing or lab
| equipment you should avoid "cloud based" stuff like the
| plague.
|
| Most of the equipment I deal with is not on the net. It
| doesn't need to be since it's just controlling some machine
| which is busy making something real. If you need to move
| any data on or off the computer you use USB sticks (or
| sometimes CDs or floppies).
|
| Some newer test stands are interfaced to an internal LAN so
| they can provide process control data to a database. In
| that case one either needs to provide some sort of firewall
| between the equipment's computer and the database, or just
| bite the bullet and redesign the whole thing for
| compatibility with, say, Win 10 (at major expense in time
| and money).
|
| I wish I could convince people to target their automation
| stuff to Linux so the backwards compatibility problem would
| be easier, but corporations still balk at that.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Also, decades-old software written by long-gone engineers at
| the factory still runs on the equipment, and nobody understands
| how the stuff works nowadays. Therefore, there is plenty of
| incentive to keep the old systems running and running and
| running.
|
| Vernor Vinge figured this out 25 years ago. _A Deepness in the
| Sky_ depicts a human society thousands of years in the future,
| in which pretty much all software has already been written; it
| 's just a matter of finding it. So programmer-archaeologists
| search archives and run code on emulators in emulators in
| emulators as far back as needed.
| <https://garethrees.org/2013/06/12/archaeology/>
|
| (This week I migrated a VM to its third hypervisor. It has been
| a VM for 15 years, and began as a physical machine more than
| two decades ago.)
| ozim wrote:
| I'd say most of current stuff is "get new guys, write it from
| scratch again".
|
| That is how you get new framework each year.
|
| Maybe more people should be just software historians.
|
| On the other hand rewriting stuff in new ways is beneficial
| as new processors come to life.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I'm curious if you do this alone or with another full time job.
| I've been searching for a gig company that allows one to turn
| old PC knowledge into a side gig.
| sbrorson wrote:
| It's a side gig for me. The biggest hurdle is finding a bunch
| of companies fielding the old equipment and then becoming
| known to them. In that sense it's like any other consulting
| gig -- it's mostly about who you know, not what you know.
| speedgoose wrote:
| > With so much effort, technology and money being invested on the
| frontend side, why do we still have so many websites that fail to
| work?
|
| Because it's not worth it. I don't know many people excited about
| debugging websites on museum hardware to please the potential one
| user, that could use a more modern device when it fails anyway.
| As a hobby why not, but it makes no sense in a professional
| context.
| vkaku wrote:
| Your CPU instructions follow an architecture written almost 40
| years ago and JavaScript is itself 27 years old. They are
| actually museum worthy.
|
| The point of having any standard is to exactly prevent people
| from debugging things every few days.
|
| Despite this, many modern websites hardly follow any sort of
| compatibility despite using a polyfill library. So these
| professionals are either not doing a very good job or this
| argument is a non argument. :-)
| textfiles wrote:
| TEXTFILES.COM is http only - your reading material needs are
| assured.
| jdietrich wrote:
| At some point, the efficiency of new hardware completely
| outweighs the benefits of keeping old hardware running. Obviously
| there's a valid need to preserve hardware for historical
| purposes, but for any other reason I think it's a false economy.
|
| The CPU on a Raspberry Pi 4 is nearly three times faster than a
| 3.2GHz Pentium 4. A Raspberry Pi draws no more than 10W
| (excluding USB devices), but the Pentium 4 has a TDP of 100W. We
| could draw a parallel with incandescent vs LED lightbulbs, but I
| think that would be too kind to the old computer - an old
| motherboard and a discrete GPU will add substantially to the idle
| power consumption.
| eisa01 wrote:
| Has recycling progressed far enough that these old computers
| are a "gold mine" and should be repurposed for that reason
| alone?
|
| Or is it still "just" a energy efficiency aspect?
| [deleted]
| swagempire wrote:
| That's a specific choice you make -- let's be clear about that.
|
| Your measurement of value is hardware efficiency, which is
| valid.
|
| But I may have a favourite laptop that's just the right size
| with the perfect keyboard, or a gaming rig setup that's awesome
| for CS.
|
| Ultimately what hardware we choose to keep in service is a
| personal choice.
| shrubble wrote:
| The Pentium from 2004 doesn't have a binary blob OS that can't
| be disabled running on it, that has full unrestricted access to
| the hardware.
|
| The Pi does, unless the Pi4 changed something...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| For many people in the world, possibly the majority, whatever
| old hardware they happen to have, that is what they have, and
| there is no replacing it.
|
| There is also something to be said for treating any functioning
| hardware as worth preserving, just because it already exists,
| just like a human's life is worth preserving, just because
| they're already alive.
|
| Also, for environmental reasons, because the environmental
| impact of manufacturing an entire new computer from scratch is
| much higher than the power saved by running a more efficient
| one.
|
| Finally, of course, there is simply personal preference,
| whether due to unique features (as mentioned in a sibling
| comment), lack of features you do not want, and sentimental
| value.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > The CPU on a Raspberry Pi 4 is nearly three times faster than
| a 3.2GHz Pentium 4.
|
| It sure doesn't feel like it. It was never questioned if a
| Pentium 4 would make an OK desktop, of course it did. The
| Raspberry Pi 4,... It feels like it should be completely fine
| for email, Internet browsing, word processing and pretty much
| any office work, but it's just to slow. People are even maxing
| out a Raspberry Pi 3 (or 4) running home assistant... Yet an
| old DOS machine can run an entire factory production line (or
| multiple).
|
| We really need to do much better on software.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is getting software curated and designed for the
| device.
|
| If you run a P4 with modern distributions of linux, you're
| likely in for a bad time.
|
| But if you take the time to customize a distribution of Linux
| for the hardware, you're not going to have much of an issue.
|
| The biggest problem _by far_ is the modern web browser is an
| absolute bloated pig.
|
| https://www.sevarg.net/tag/raspberrypi/ has some hints and
| tricks.
| bayindirh wrote:
| The problem is that we don't optimize the software (most
| desktop apps), or don't understand the processing power
| required to complete a task (i.e. home assistant).
|
| I have successfully ran DNSMasq, WebFS, qBittorrent, VSFTPD
| and Syncthing _at the same time_ on a OrangePi Zero with 4
| cores and 512MB of RAM. That thing is barely bigger than a
| postage stamp.
|
| I'll switch to a much more powerful device, because I need
| more hardware acceleration for video encoding and such, but
| other than that, the same Pi Zero can still handle the tasks
| needed.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Back in 1999, me and two roommates ran ipchains, Samba and
| an FTP server on an old PC, it had a 120MHz Pentium and
| 32MB of RAM. The only reason it didn't run more service
| was: What services would that even be?
|
| Took up a lot more space than a stamp though.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Looks like we did similar things in the similar time
| frames. I was doing live broadcasting over a simple
| webcam over Apache, for example.
|
| I think you can still run modern versions of these
| software on that hardware, albeit with a bit lower
| performance due to all added features. Kernel would
| require a bit more resources, too, possibly.
|
| The biggest problem on the OrangePi Zero was to run SSH
| at full speed, due to required encryption/decryption on
| the fly. DNSMasq and VSFTPD were essentially invisible,
| qBittorrent requiring 85MB of RAM to handle all the state
| data.
|
| While the applications are tied down with cgroups to
| prevent pushing each other to the reaper of OOMKiller,
| none of the applications have died because of
| insufficient memory, which is telling, in a good way.
|
| It shows that my point still stands. Basic functionality
| on a software is very cheap, but when you add
| cryptography, or a couple of compute-intensive features,
| the old hardware breaks down instantly. It's of course
| possible to optimize these up to a point, but dedicated
| cryptography accelerators and other instruction sets are
| really helpful.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| The cost of a Pentium III and the electricity to run it might
| be much, much less that the cost of labor to move one
| application over to a Raspberry Pi.
|
| Then the cost of debugging the application on a Pi 4 might be
| more than the value of the company trying to run it.
| johnklos wrote:
| You were sold a silly idea: that the reason software isn't
| portable has to do with work and resources. That's simply not
| true in a vast majority of instances. Companies intentionally
| lock software to certain platforms for sales reasons much,
| much more often than for technical reasons.
|
| OTOH, Windows isn't portable, so if you want to run old
| Windows software, you don't move it - you emulate it.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >At some point, the efficiency of new hardware completely
| outweighs the benefits of keeping old hardware running.
|
| Agreed. That's why the best solution is to run old software on
| new hardware.
|
| Vernor Vinge figured this out 25 years ago. _A Deepness in the
| Sky_ depicts a human society thousands of years in the future,
| in which pretty much all software has already been written; it
| 's just a matter of finding it. So programmer-archaeologists
| search archives and run code on emulators in emulators in
| emulators as far back as needed.
| <https://garethrees.org/2013/06/12/archaeology/>
|
| (This week I migrated a VM to its third hypervisor. It has been
| a VM for 15 years, and began as a physical machine more than
| two decades ago.)
| sbrorson wrote:
| That's not how the real world works. A lot of manufacturing
| equipment and test stands were developed using LabView and used
| NI cards to control equipment and take data. The people who
| developed all that stuff are long gone and the new people
| neither understand the old stuff nor do they have time to spend
| many months spelunking into the guts of the old software to
| maintain it. Their managers are also very reluctant to change
| anything since it means very expensive downtime for an entire
| assembly line. Downtime can cost tens or hundreds of thousands
| of dollars per month. Everybody wants to keep the old stuff
| running as long as possible -- generally several decades.
|
| I have no experience in the banking industry but I do hear the
| same considerations I see in manufacturing exist in banking
| software. Any change is fraught with major risk (millions of
| dollars in loss) so change is avoided as much as possible. I
| see lots of people on HN talk about how change and churn is
| avoided in banking software ... the same applies to
| manufacturing.
|
| The Rasberry Pi comment is laughable. I'm not talking about
| toys for hobbyists. I'm talking about computers running
| software controlling cards costing tens of thousands of dollars
| running physical equipment of equal or greater expense. Nobody
| will hire a hobby hacker to light a few LEDs with a Pi when
| doing factory automation.
| userbinator wrote:
| Also, it's laughable to talk about power consumption when the
| PC is controlling an industrial system that's using many kW
| or even MW of power. At that level, 10W vs 100W is noise.
| dijit wrote:
| yet at some point we tend to throw efficiency at the wall for
| raw compute.
|
| it was exceedingly uncommon for PC's in the Pentium 4 era to
| ship with anything higher than a 200W PSU. Yet today it is not
| uncommon to hear of 850W PSU's. Of course such PSU's are
| undoubtedly more efficient at doing the conversion. What I mean
| is that the argument of (power) efficiency doesn't hold when we
| _actually_ end up using significant more power anyway.
|
| Also, to play devils advocate a bit, that's a 20yo PC: how many
| times would you have upgraded in 20 years- and what is the
| carbon cost of all of those upgrades? Some PC manufacturing is
| pretty bad for the environment. I'd guess once every 3-5 years?
|
| According to "8 Billion Trees":
|
| > the Carbon Footprint of a Computer? A desktop computer emits
| 778 kgs of CO2e annually. Of this, 85% results from emissions
| during manufacture and shipping, and 15% results from
| electricity consumption when in use.
|
| https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-
| foot....
|
| So you have to really ask yourself: when is that upfront cost
| paid for by the inefficiency of energy use (which _can_ be
| sourced sustainably unlike many parts of PC manufacture)?
|
| 20 years? Sure, but it's still very questionable at 10 years.
|
| If _only_ we didn 't force people to upgrade their computers by
| making more and more features non-optional and slowing down the
| computing experience for the sake of producing features easier
| for developers.
|
| ---
|
| EDIT: I can't stop thinking abut this; I think I've been nerd
| sniped:
|
| I can't find good data on this though, it seems like a new
| laptop costs the planet 422.5kgs of CO2e on average.
|
| The actual running cost of the Pentium 4 (mobo, ram, etc)
| itself is somewhere around 40w for this generation (not
| including peripherals, discrete GPU or screen) - it does not
| have speedstep so can't power down. a high end dGPU from the
| era runs about the the same as the entire PC. so let's double
| that 40w. -- we ignore peripherals and screens as those could
| be the same for both new and old PC's.
|
| 80w used roughly for 8hrs per day? That comes to about 292kW a
| year roughly.
|
| In the US energy generation costs 0.3712kgs CO2e per kWh; so
| something like 109kgs of CO2e for running this PC for a year.
|
| Meaning even if your energy efficiency of a new PC doubled
| (using 40w instead of 80w) it would take nearly 5 years to
| offset the carbon cost of a new PC. Not discounting that energy
| production can be carbon neutral.
|
| That said, currently: The most efficient x86 computer will
| consume 10W to 25W at idle.
| Roark66 wrote:
| >it was exceedingly uncommon for PC's in the Pentium 4 era to
| ship with anything higher than a 200W PSU. Yet today it is
| not uncommon to hear of 850W PSU's
|
| Exactly that. I just had to upgrade my 850W psu to 1000W
| because I'm upgrading my gpu to an rtx 3090.
|
| This is why if you want the absolutely most power efficient
| NAS/home server and you don't need a lot of cpu/ram people
| use p4 era hardware. The lowest wattage I saw on a German
| user group about this was around 6W for an idling system.
|
| I myself am currently running a p4 era 1u server (a Fujitsu
| primergy rx100 s7) with a 4 core Xeon (2.4ghz or so), 4gb
| ram, google's edge TPU accelerator(dual edge tpu on pcie) and
| two 1tb spinning disks in a mirror on as a CCTV server(the
| tpu does object recognition). This box runs at 20%~90% cpu
| utilisation all the time and it draws 35W on average at the
| wall. It can peak at 75W or go down to 25W (it never really
| idles). This server (excluding the tpu) cost me under $100.
| And if I want I can replace the disks with bigger ones or add
| 2 more external drives as there are 2 unused sata ports. Also
| this server comes with remote management card so I can login
| anytime using a separate network port and do a power down,
| set temperature alerts etc, see power usage or access the
| console/bios.
|
| Good luck finding a similar option with similar features, low
| power consumption and price with modern hardware.
|
| Yes, I'm a fan of retro hw. I have a commodore 64, a 386sx, a
| win98 and winxp pcs. Some have only sentimental value, but
| not all old hw is impractical to use seriously today.
| makomk wrote:
| Your 1U server seems to be Ivy Bridge-based, which is about
| a decade or so newer than the Pentium 4 and much, much more
| energy efficient - and there's a lot of cheap second hand
| hardware out there from that era as well.
| Roark66 wrote:
| I had to check, because I wasn't aware there is such a
| time gap between the two. I seem to remember having P4s
| in many an office desktop while E3 xeons were present in
| new servers we installed.
|
| My Xeon cpu is Intel(r) Xeon(r) processor E3-1220Lv2 with
| 17W TDP wow! It was released in 2012 while last of P4s
| were sold new in 2008 (but first were released in 2002).
| So yes, you're right there is a decade between these two.
| In my mind (incorrectly) they were in the same "era" as
| many of my small business clients had lots of PCs with
| them at the time of Ivy Bridge Xeons.
| nikau wrote:
| > This is why if you want the absolutely most power
| efficient NAS/home server and you don't need a lot of
| cpu/ram people use p4 era hardware
|
| Calling bullshit on this one, my p4 nas chewed through
| power, I upgraded to one of the low power modern Celeron
| boards which drew around a quarter of the power.
|
| My p4 had a big heatsink and fan, my quad core Celeron is
| passive cooled with a tiny heatsink in comparison.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _it was exceedingly uncommon for PC 's in the Pentium 4 era
| to ship with anything higher than a 200W PSU. Yet today it is
| not uncommon to hear of 850W PSU's._
|
| Sure, but today we're pushing absolutely crazy levels of
| performance. At the efficiency end of the spectrum, we have
| something like the Intel N100, which delivers something like
| 14x the performance of a Pentium 4 on a TDP of 6 watts. An
| i9-13900F might have twice the peak TDP of a Pentium 4, but
| it has 150x more throughput.
|
| Big PSUs are mostly driven by GPU power consumption, but it's
| easy to forget just how insanely performant modern GPUs are.
| An RTX 4090 has a TGP of 450W, which is admittedly very high,
| but it delivers 73 TFLOPS at single precision without
| sparsity. That's the same level of performance as the fastest
| supercomputer in the world circa 2004. It's kind of goofy
| that we'll often use all that performance for playing video
| games, but we can also do important work with that power.
|
| _> A desktop computer emits 778 kgs of CO2e annually. Of
| this, 85% results from emissions during manufacture and
| shipping_
|
| I don't really buy this figure. Using standard methodologies,
| Dell cite a figure of 454kgCO2e for the full tower version of
| the Optiplex 7090, with 46.7% of those emissions created
| during use. For the micro form factor version, they state
| 267kgCO2e, with 30.8% of emissions created during use.
|
| There's absolutely a valid case for extending beyond the
| usual 3-4 year lifecycle, there's absolutely a valid case for
| buying a refurbished computer if you don't need high
| performance, but at some point an old computer is just
| e-waste and the best fate for it is responsible recycling.
|
| https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/corporate/social-
| impact/advanc...
| bombcar wrote:
| >A desktop computer emits 778 kgs of CO2e annually.
|
| It's patently false; a desktop computer emits barely any
| emissions at all; maybe a tiny amount of off gassing as it
| heats up.
|
| _The power_ to run the device may emit CO2 during
| generation, but that 's a separate question and isn't from
| the device itself.
|
| The gist is still correct, _reduce_ and _reuse_ are very
| important overall.
|
| What I haven't really worked out (and the math would be
| involved and difficult) is whether _all things considered_
| running old enterprise hardware is better than buying new
| power-efficient hardware for the same use case. A quick
| cost-benefit analysis says buying new is 'better' because
| the energy use of the old pays for it, but that doesn't
| correctly account for all the cost of manufacture _and_ if
| you 're in a climate that mainly _heats_ the house, you get
| "free heat" from the use of the older equipment.
| vel0city wrote:
| > The most efficient x86 computer will consume 10W to 25W at
| idle
|
| Totally untrue. I've got a box sitting in my closet right now
| that has a full system power of only ~4.5W measured by a
| kill-a-watt.
|
| Its based around a Supermicro X11SBA-LN4F, a small SATA SSD,
| and a, 80 PLUS Gold power supply.
|
| My personal laptop based around an AMD 3200U sitting idle
| right now is pulling ~6W at the wall with the 14" screen on.
| According to HWMonitor the CPU package is using 0.65-0.9W.
|
| Both of these are x86 computers and they're well under even
| your 10W idle estimate.
| uoaei wrote:
| Disclaimer: I don't mean to derail the discussion and I don't
| intend this tangent to go far in this thread:
|
| I really wish more systems- and particularly tech-minded
| folks would think like you more often, especially when it
| comes to manufacturing/logistics as well as end-of-life
| costs.
|
| In nearly all cases of my life I've found no real benefit to
| buying new over buying used, maybe it takes a little more
| research and patience finding the right deal but the effort
| is always worth it. I find the discussions around electric
| cars and massive ML models especially problematic because of
| the complete lack of consideration for these factors on
| display.
| BirAdam wrote:
| This a bit dated now as Rust is quite efficient, but I wrote
| about this exact problem:
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/waste-and-the-wasters-who-
| make...
| vkaku wrote:
| I think that new software bloat far outweighs the benefits
| brought in by new hardware as well.
|
| You would also need to ask how many people here actually use
| Raspberry Pis as their daily driver to claim the power benefits
| that they should be realizing today.
|
| I think that viewing this as a pure power consumption exercise
| is very reductive at best. Then, in that spirit, you should
| also be going behind the people running the H100s today and
| asking why they aren't running their model training on a RPi 4
| yet.
| myk9001 wrote:
| > I think that new software bloat far outweighs the benefits
| brought in by new hardware as well.
|
| While software bloat is undeniably a problem, in my
| experience it's not that clear-cut.
|
| E.g., a messanger app built on Elector is a pure bloat. At
| least, from technical perspective -- maybe Electron brings in
| business value that outweighs the technical downsides.
|
| But an IDE from around 2005 is nothing more than a dumb
| notepad in comparison to a modern JetBrains IDE. Even though
| I often find their IDEs extremely frustrating in terms of
| consumed computational resources, I'd rather upgrade my
| hardware than go back to something less "smart". After all,
| hardware is just a means to an end of solving whatever task
| at hand.
| vkaku wrote:
| An IDE from even 2001 isn't as dumb as you would think at
| all. In fact, I was one of those early adopters of
| Websphere Application Studio (Eclipse) and I thought it was
| bloated. 20 years later, it's the same argument, same stack
| (Java).
|
| Cut to 20 years from now, you may remember JetBrains as the
| best thing you had worked on - and that some other
| JavaScript IDE in 2043, which requires a bare minimum 128GB
| of RAM to run - will be the means to that end for those
| developers.
|
| See you in 20 years. :-)
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But an IDE from around 2005 is nothing more than a dumb
| notepad in comparison to a modern JetBrains IDE.
|
| Which IDE is this?
|
| I've used IDEs from the mid 90s (Watcom C/C++, Visual
| Studio 5.5, Delphi, C++ Builder) and from 2005, and they
| did a lot more than just let you edit code and run make.
|
| In 2005, _all_ major IDEs had autocomplete, for example.
| They also had jump to definition, jump to help (remember
| help pages? .chm files?), syntax highlighting, source-level
| debugging, inline with the source code ...
|
| I mean, what exactly do you think they are missing that
| makes them a rudimentary text editing tool?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Eclipse from 2005 was already great, and better than most
| languages support out there.
|
| As was Netbeans in 2005, or Delphi, VB, Visual Studio,....
|
| JetBrains gets too much praise.
| sn_master wrote:
| Visual Studio 6 (1998) is an unappreciated piece of art
| for what it was back in the day and even by today's
| standards.
| myk9001 wrote:
| I'd respectfully disagree on VS 6. It was OK for its
| time, but hardly a piece of art, in my experience.
|
| Please excuse me copying the relevant portion from my
| other comment.
|
| VS 6's support of C++ back in 2005 wasn't that great, at
| leat the way I remember it now.
|
| Code navigation was very primitive, and you were lucky if
| it didn't consider the code too complex to offer any
| navigation around it at all.
|
| Its built-in debugger often wouldn't let you inspect a
| string's content because it was just another pointer from
| the debugger's perspective.
|
| And there was a bug, where the editor would slow down so
| much it would be littery unusable -- e.g., it'd take a
| couple seconds to react to a key stroke. The reason was
| it kept a file with the workspace's (solution in today's
| terms) code metadata and that file grew too big over
| time. So you had to remember to delete it regularly.
|
| But VS 6 had a great plugin -- Visual Tomato, if memory
| serves -- that made things so much better in terms of
| code navigation/refactoring/etc.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was great for the context of 1990's IDEs, and most
| people would use plugins anyway.
|
| Visual Assist being a well known one.
|
| It isn't as if JetBrains products aren't full of plugins
| as well.
| myk9001 wrote:
| Yes, Visual Assist is the name, thank you.
|
| I see how my comment may sound that way, but I didn't
| really mean to contrast JB vs others.
|
| A better idea woud've been comparing a modern version of
| VS with VS 6, for example.
|
| Anyway, my point is bloat is not the only reason for
| increased hw requirements. Modern software is often way
| more capable than the old and adding capabilities seems
| like a good use of added hw power.
|
| This is a bit similar to the concept of accidental vs
| inherent complexity in sw engineering. There's accidental
| bloat and inherent "bloat", so to speak:)
|
| My impression is people don't usually acknowledge the
| existence of inherent "bloat" in discussions like this
| one.
| sn_master wrote:
| Compared to modern IDEs it won't do very well, but do you
| remember better alternatives back then, at least if you
| wanted a "friendly" UI instead of a command line one?
| Would you choose something different if you go back to
| 2005? how about 1998?
| myk9001 wrote:
| Oh, back at the time it was a good. IDE. There was also
| C++ Builder, but it had its own quirks, of course.
| Picking one of them was, I guess, a matter of personal
| preference, the project's requirements, etc.
|
| Anyway, I sure see how my comment may sound that way, but
| I didn't really mean to contrast JB vs others. Comparing
| a modern IDE to its old version in the context of
| software bloat is the whole point I'm trying to make.
|
| I think bloat is not the only reason for increased hw
| requirements. Modern software is often way more capable
| than its old versions and adding capabilities seems like
| a good use of added hw power.
| myk9001 wrote:
| Can't comment on Java support in Eclipse back then.
|
| VS 6's support of C++ back in 2005 wasn't that great, at
| leat the way I remember it now.
|
| Code navigation was very primitive, and you were lucky if
| it didn't consider the code too complex to offer any
| navigation around it at all.
|
| Its built-in debugger often wouldn't let you inspect a
| string's content because it was just another pointer from
| the debugger's perspective.
|
| But VS 6 had a great plugin -- Visual Tomato, if memory
| serves -- that made things so much better in terms of
| code navigation/refactoring/etc.
|
| Writing C++ in Eclipse CDT or KDevelop was simply a pain.
|
| Actually, a plain editor with syntax highlight was
| probably a better option because it was not even
| pretending to have "smart" features that would inevitably
| break on each non-trivial piece of code -- better no
| promises than false promises.
|
| Delphi, and C++ Builder for that matter, were great as a
| package: fast GUI builder, editor, debugger, etc. That
| said, I don't remember them offering much in terms of
| working with code: finding an identifier usages,
| refactoring, etc.
|
| As to praising JB, it wasn't my intent to single them
| out, surely there're other great IDEs. Their products is
| just something I'm personally familiar with. If something
| better happens to cross my way, I'll have no problems
| switching.
| Narishma wrote:
| VS 6 is from 1998, not 2005.
| myk9001 wrote:
| Point taken. Didn't mean to say its release date is 2005,
| but that's definitely not obvious from my comment.
|
| It was still mainstream in 2005, I think. Do you remember
| if I get that right? At least we were using it at work in
| 2005.
|
| VS release cadence is much faster nowadays, isn't it? :)
| Narishma wrote:
| There were 2 releases between VS6 and VS2005, so slightly
| slower than the current cadence of a new release every
| couple of years but not by much. I think VS6 remained
| popular for a long time because it was the last release
| before they switched to the heavier .NET-based IDE.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I think VS6 remained popular for a long time because it
| was the last release before they switched to the heavier
| .NET-based IDE.
|
| The in my opinion the much more important reason was that
| Visual Studio 6 was the last version of Visual Studio
| that was capable of running under Windows 9x (every
| version of Visual Studio that was released after required
| some Windows-NT-based Windows version; Visual Studio .NET
| 2002 was the last version to run under Windows NT 4.0:
| Visual Studio .NET 2003 required at least Windows 2000;
| keep in mind that Windows XP came only out end of October
| 2001).
| johnklos wrote:
| There's a vast gap between what we can run and what we're told we
| should run.
|
| Why not run on old hardware, with software that works for you?
| Because of electricity? As others have pointed out, the
| environmental cost of manufacture is greater than the difference
| in performance per energy unit for even systems that are ten
| years old, and in some cases, older. We're literally sending
| hardware to landfills because companies like Microsoft want to
| make more money (which, incidentally, is why I think Microsoft is
| the cause of the Dark Ages of Computing and why Bill Gates will
| eventually be remembered as someone who caused more waste and
| held back progress more than anyone in this time period).
|
| I run servers, and even though many of the servers I run are
| using modern hardware (ARM, Apple ARM, AMD Ryzen), I still run a
| fleet of AMD AM1 Athlon hardware. They serve DNS, web, firewall,
| SFTP, NAT, email and so on in all sorts of environments. Why?
| Because to NAT and firewall a gigabit of traffic you don't need
| more than a quad core, 2 GHz CPU, and because using all four
| cores at 100% still takes less than 20 watts for the whole
| system.
|
| I'm even building one in to a 1U case right now to go to colo
| because the colo power budget is 100 watts or less, and I also
| have four 10 TB drives and a RAID controller to add. But even
| these 2014 systems, unlike Intel CPUs of the time, can take 32
| gigs of ECC memory, so they're still very usable.
|
| So much software has artificial barriers. You need AVX. You ned
| AVX2. You need SSE4.2. You need FMA3. But why? Do you REALLY need
| them, or are you fine running certain software a little slower?
| After all, you're not going to use your 2014 AMD Athlon to
| transcode to h.265 often.
|
| It makes me sad that so much hardware goes to landfill because of
| completely ridiculous reasons. Add FUD that people share about
| how just writing zeros over a drive is somehow not good enough,
| and you have the problem of people literally destroying hardware
| rather than recycling. It's not a good way to run a planet.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > a Pentium 4 Prescott RK80546PG0881M > ... and running a 32-bit
| Linux Server
|
| Out of curiosity and I don't even remember: wouldn't that CPU
| already support 64-bit Linux?
| bombcar wrote:
| It should, but it's early enough you might have to custom-
| compile to fully utilize it.
|
| Also 32bit (or 32bit with weird memory features like EM64T) may
| be _significantly_ faster because of the smaller memory access
| sizes. Or weird hybrids with 32bit addressing and 64bit
| extensions.
| happycube wrote:
| I think Socket 478 Prescott was 32-bit only, except for a
| _very_ few S-specs that were sold (mostly?) to Lenovo.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore."
|
| This has not been true for me. In fact, using a TLS proxy I have
| tried to force TLSv1.3 for all sites and a large number, possibly
| even the majority, still use TLSv1.2 and will not accept TLSv1.3.
|
| If using old software/computers, one approach for dealing with
| changes in TLS is to use a present-day TLS forward proxy, bound
| to localhost address or running on a relatively recent computer
| on the LAN if necessary. This way, one does not need to do any
| encryption using the old software/computer. The proxy converts
| HTTP to HTTPS.
| baz00 wrote:
| The key take home for me there is the simple replaceable software
| and data portability. This is something I am working on at the
| moment. I built a new windows PC recently and am moving to
| portable file formats and tools slowly. Nothing goes near it
| until it is portable. This may end up as a Linux desktop one day
| but I have 100gb of stuff to sift through.
| thelastparadise wrote:
| > This may end up as a Linux desktop one day
|
| Based on your goals that's going to happen a lot sooner.
| baz00 wrote:
| Yeah I got itchy fingers today and am currently playing with
| Rocky Linux desktop...
| hiimsteveee wrote:
| not directly related, but I've been thinking about getting an old
| CRT monitor, launch https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-
| term and start working
| gattilorenz wrote:
| To... put some crt in your crt, so you can have phosphor
| persistence while your phospors persist?
|
| Why would you put a crt emulator on a crt?
| hiimsteveee wrote:
| Exactly, two levels of awesomeness
| hnlmorg wrote:
| In fairness to the GP, the kind of CRT that would support a
| usable desktop session is light years away from the type of
| CRTs that cool-retro-term simulates.
|
| Though if I was going to do something like this then
| personally I'd rather have a second screen as a CRT and have
| that resolution dropped right down, rather than "putting some
| crt in your crt"
| obscura wrote:
| > The most important thing I learned was that old computers are
| still fast -- and quite usable as a daily driver.
|
| I have to point out that your build isn't entirely an old
| computer. Having an SSD makes a major difference. If you were to
| use an IDE HDD or even an old SATA, you'd probably think
| differently.
|
| Nevertheless, an interesting exercise.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| If people had integrity DRM/Activation would eventually expire
| with the publisher EOL, and default to an unlocked state for
| data/media/format migration. There is nothing worse than getting
| legacy IT issues elevated to a forensic recovery operation.
|
| I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope since XP
| and 7. =)
| jimnotgym wrote:
| > I think many users agree MS has been on a downward slope
| since XP and 7. =)
|
| I think it is worth discussing the counter arguement.
|
| My team supported Windows from XP to Windows 10. I continued to
| be staggered at the backwards compatibility of it. I remember
| having an ERP client that was written in VB6, and nobody
| thought it would run on 7, but it did. Everyone assumed it was
| obvious it wouldn't run on 10...but it did... with less RAM
| usage and it was a bit snappier. Same with the ancient copies
| of WordPerfect and Photoshop (old enough that they came in a
| box).
|
| I had a mixed fleet of machines from very old to very new and
| Windows 10 ran on all of them. I bet it would run on this guys
| P4 just fine. That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current
| commercial OS that will run on 30 year old hardware!
|
| Before we criticise MS too much, let us compare that to other
| commercial providers...like Apple for instance. How much of
| your 1990's software runs on the last gen Intel Macs even?
| Answer is...none, isn't it?
| thfuran wrote:
| >That is extraordinary isn't it? MS have a current commercial
| OS that will run on 30 year old hardware!
|
| Not anymore. Windows 11 won't run on my ~4 year old laptop.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of users installed the early Win11 fine, than
| lost legacy desktop registry flag support, and the missing
| TPM overlay screen spam this year.
|
| If you game, than YMMV on the current MS OS. Now I have to
| figure out how to get Steams Cuphead to run under Linux. =)
| wolletd wrote:
| According to ProtonDB, you just launch it:
| https://www.protondb.com/app/268910
|
| I haven't had a Windows for Gaming in 10 years. The first
| seven years of that, I haven't played many games.
| However, CS:GO, Factorio, Civilization and Stardew
| Valley, among others, all had native Linux support and I
| wasn't bored.
|
| Then the Steam Deck and Proton came. I ticked a box in
| Steam settings to not restrict "Steam Play" to verified
| games, installed a Windows game and started it. It just
| worked. When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, Proton was updated
| in time and I launched Cyberpunk 2077, a demanding modern
| game, in my Linux Steam Client as if it was nothing
| special.
|
| It's three years later and I'm still thrilled. You
| bascially don't have to care anymore. I still take a look
| into ProtonDB before buying a game, but I can't remember
| the last time it wasn't working (excluding Anti Cheat-
| Stuff for Multiplayer, but even that is being worked on).
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Thanks, I agree Steam has seen the light, and I hope they
| keep focused on improving fun stuff.
|
| Also, Classic FreeCIV on the web looks like fun too,
| definitely have to find a weekend for a round. The Anti-
| cheat stuff is unfortunately a necessity for multiplayer
| games, as even Pokemon GO PvP cheats lamed up the game.
| lol
|
| Cheers =)
| xethos wrote:
| > Steam has seen the light
|
| Valve took a look at how hard Steam Machines bombed, and
| tried again with Proton. They saw some companies anti-
| cheat rootkits weren't working, and didn't let that stop
| them from making all the other games work.
|
| Valve saw the light over a decade ago. Hell, I'd argue
| they always saw Linux as second-class, but worth not
| completely ignoring or actively breaking.
| wolletd wrote:
| Oh, I didn't want to critique Anti-cheat for existing and
| not properly working (yet) in Proton.
|
| It's software that tries to validate the environment the
| game is running in and is suddenly confronted with "wait,
| thats not a Windows system at all". And as you already
| argued, just ditching Anti-cheat is not an option.
|
| So they either ignore Linux/Proton altogether or have to
| start actually implementing anti-cheat for a Linux/Proton
| environment. Even if they go with the second option (as
| e.g. EAC is, iirc), it simply takes time to implement.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Someone needs to add a lag-switcher Nerf feature on all
| platforms. They would make serious coin. =)
| Zambyte wrote:
| > So they either ignore Linux/Proton altogether or have
| to start actually implementing anti-cheat for a
| Linux/Proton environment.
|
| Most of the popular anti cheats _do_ work on Proton. EAC,
| Punkbuster, Battleye, and VAC all work fine, which I
| think covers most games with anti cheat. Unfortunately
| some of those require opt-in by the developer to work on
| Proton, and therefore some developers have neglected to
| opt in.
|
| A handful of other games use their own anti cheat that
| does not work, and unfortunately those games have the
| resources to do that because they are very popular (CoD,
| Valorant).
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Windows 11 will run on the same hardware as Windows 10 if
| the hardware checks in the installer are worked around.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Sure, but most users don't know these tricks, and MS is
| actively neutering workarounds each update.
|
| =)
| bombcar wrote:
| You get a weird situation where _very old_ software runs fine
| on the latest OS - and of course very _new_ software works
| fine, but somewhere in the middle you get things that were
| removed (often software works fine, but the installer won 't
| run because it's WIN16).
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Nope, MS has the worst competitor imaginable... themselves.
| =)
|
| People are going to compare the new with the old... every
| release.
|
| Modern MS is getting well deserved criticism, because we all
| know they are better than a GUI concept 1990s Apple Steve
| Jobs was actually recorded ridiculing in an interview.
|
| Win10 SSD support was good, and is the last version of
| windows in my opinion.
|
| Win11 has done too many silly things to trust in production
| environments. =)
| sambazi wrote:
| > MS have a current commercial OS that will run on 30 year
| old hardware!
|
| i586 support was dropped by major linux distros some time
| ago, i somewhat doubt that w10 will run on something pre-
| pentium and w11 won't even install on my ~5y old dell laptop
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I'm surprised they went with Windows rather than with one of the
| ultra-lightweight GNU/Linux distros intended for use on antique
| computers. Puppy Linux, or something similar.
|
| Windows XP is presumably full of security vulnerabilities.
| lproven wrote:
| I did a similar exercise recently and wrote it up:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_w...
|
| Win XP is considerably smaller and more responsive than the
| lightest of lightest-weight modern distros. XP was released
| over 2 decades ago now, and Linux has bloated up vastly in that
| time.
|
| About the only Linux that can even compare is a hand-rolled
| config of Alpine, and even so, while Alpine on a well-specced
| 15YO 64-bit machine can compare with XP64, XP remains lighter
| and more responsive. On a 32-bit machine, it's game over: XP32
| is dramatically lighter and quicker.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I tried Linuxes on old PCs in the late oughts. Yet they were
| usable only for a narrow sliver of technical users. Puppy also
| ran as root and had a super janky collection of inconsistent
| apps.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| Perhaps Xubuntu [0] or Lubuntu [1] would be better go-to
| lightweight distros.
|
| These days with the web having taken over much of what people
| use desktop computers for, I think Xubuntu + Firefox should
| go a long way even for a non-technical user. Admittedly I
| have little experience helping non-technical people use
| desktop Linux.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Tried those too. They pass for users who don't want Netflix
| or have specific apps they cannot part with. And sadly Wine
| would be too slow.
| BirAdam wrote:
| On the browser front, mypal will work with most websites. There
| are some exceptions, but it'll run the web version of Slack.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Oh well, he does it for fun. I do it daily, running Win2003 and
| last PaleMoon browser that works on WinXP. Why? Because I really
| like XP/2003. Sure, I could run Firefox 52 ESR, but it looks like
| junk and its slow. Palemoon on warm cache starts right away
| (around 200ms probably).
|
| Luicky, most of web sites I care still runnining fine, but dark
| clouds are on horizon. I cannot belive that rendering
| "mainstream" web pages eats more RAM than playing first Stalker
| game!! What the hell happened? Everything gets bloated. UIs are
| terrible and yet people are using it, just mumbling to
| themselfs..
|
| For shitty webpages I have VM running Linux and using of course
| latest crappy firefox. But hey, some newest firefox starts to lag
| terrible when rendered over X server. Thank you Mozilla for
| putting even more bloat to Firefox..
|
| Okey, I vented abit :) Time to play some TRS2004 instead...
| walteweiss wrote:
| Joking or not, that 'stuck in time' story is so terrifying! I
| have my worries with bloatware as well, but I solve that with
| Linux or FreeBSD, minimalistic DE and other modern ways.
| Attempts to freeze time for some mediocre event (be it some
| Windows version of the past or good-ol'-days) scares me so so
| very much! My personal hell would be living that very life you
| praised.
| Borg3 wrote:
| I yet to have to find my new great OS. Im 100% sure it wont
| be Windows. I have an eyes on some minimalistic Linux distro.
| But who knows, maybe Haiku will grow enough, before I will be
| forced to make a switch.
|
| As for staying in past, im not that much afraid for SW part.
| I have all toys mirrored. What worries me is the HW part.
| Those scrapyards where I get pretty decent HW will eventually
| run dry. And we know what new HW is...
| jmclnx wrote:
| The article does not mention memory, and to me, that is the
| largest constraint on old systems when choosing an OS.
|
| For a Minimal OS on an Old system, you can try NetBSD or
| OpenBSD, i386. Modern Browsers will be a no-go, but you
| will find NetBSD and OpenBSD very usable.
|
| One note for OpenBSD, if you have less than say ~2 gig of
| memory, you may need to disable the kernel re-link. It will
| work, but will hammer the system. For NetBSD, I have it on
| a system with 512M and it works great.
|
| Both fully are able to handle the 2038 issue on their i386
| builds (32 bit) and has been able for a while. That is
| something you should be aware of for long term use.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
| Borg3 wrote:
| Yeah, I am aware of that problem. Windows seems to store
| TIME differently that UNIX so it should be all right
| here. But I have dozens of old Linux 32 bit servers here
| and there...
|
| As for RAM, well I have 16GB RAM and its pretty much
| upper limit Win2003 can handle. Ideal seems to be 8GB
| because you will have more Pools and PTEs. For todays
| web, limiting factor is per process 2GB limit (or 3GB on
| Linux). It barelly enough to browse using new FF browser.
| Older browsers like Palemoon are much more memory
| efficient. When it uses 300MB of RAM, its already quite a
| lot for it.
| j_not_j wrote:
| For OpenBSD, only 512MB is needed even with the kernel
| relinks. Or so my experience with virtual machines says.
|
| I sometimes run two VMs at 512MB each on my 4GB Windows
| 10 laptop. And I can use Windows apps too at the same
| time. (VMware workstation.)
|
| If you want to shrink the kernel and the relink memory
| footprint, @unangst has an unofficial recipe.
| replete wrote:
| Have a look at SerenityOS, it's early days but I think it's
| a truly awesome project and expecting good things in future
| years. It's a completely new OS. The founder just hired two
| developers full time which is promising
| Borg3 wrote:
| Hmm, I think I never heard of it.. Looks really cool..
| Ill keep an eye on it! Thanks.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I really hope that one becomes daily driveable. The
| pairing of the consistent UI and the BSD-style holistic
| unix is something I'd relish.
|
| The biggest hindrance will be, as ever, drivers. They are
| making consistent progress with USB and PCIe from what I
| can tell in the Discord. If they targeted a _known_
| platform like RPI4 and got all the drivers for that right
| it could be big.
| replete wrote:
| Serenity WINE port could be decent. Tried ReactOS a few
| times but it also seems some ways off
| marttt wrote:
| Out of curiosity: have you ever considered React OS as a WinXP
| alternative?
| Borg3 wrote:
| Yeah, I track ReactOS. Unfortunately, its not stable to my
| needs. I would really like it in better shape.. Im too
| old/tired to try to contribute to it sadly :(
|
| Writing OS today is nightmare because of drivers. HW vendors
| are shady, HW is very complicated and whats worse, it changes
| often. You need army of skilled devs to handle that.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Just wondering, did you compile that Win2k3 yourself? Since it
| is technically _source available_ ;)
| Borg3 wrote:
| Well, I have them, but they arent really Win2003 but XP.SP1,
| and they seems to be incomplete. If you have better source, I
| am all ears :D
|
| Anyway, those sources are handy to check some internals of
| Win2003. I have few binaries hex edited so they are tweaked
| to my needs. Like Desktops 2.0, IPMON.DLL helper to accept
| DNS server as 127.0.0.1 from netsh and few more probably.
|
| I would LOVE to have Win2003 sources :)
| vkaku wrote:
| I guess there are places on the internet where I have seen
| people being able to build some versions of Windows from
| source.
|
| Since this is illegal I can't say a lot more about it.
|
| There's always the ReactOS project, I wonder how good
| things will be if we just slipstreamed their DLLs into
| Windows. That would be a good way to do this.
| [deleted]
| rbanffy wrote:
| I came here for an analysis of the usability of Apple //s and
| TRS-80's, or about doing useful things like text editing on CP/M
| machines.
|
| I'm disappointed.
| bombcar wrote:
| The easiest thing to do with a really old computer is get it an
| Ethernet card of some form (they almost always had them and
| they're not terribly hard to actually _build_ ) or a serial
| port, and connect it to a modern Linux computer as a dumb
| terminal.
|
| Many people prefer those old computers and their (adjusted for
| inflation) $200 keyboards.
|
| Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should best
| be forgotten. PCjr.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Other devices had absolutely horrible keyboards and should
| best be forgotten. PCjr.
|
| But, hey, it had a wireless keyboard!
| [deleted]
| vkaku wrote:
| Well, that article is for others to write. :-)
|
| I see lot of people already write about Apple II, and I seem to
| follow one who is working on getting Fujinet to those.
|
| https://www.tindie.com/products/masteries/fujinet-for-apple-...
| rbanffy wrote:
| Fujinet is an excellent way to make an old computer useful.
| vkaku wrote:
| A report of my experience after trying this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662929
| vel0city wrote:
| "See, old computers really were pretty snappy!"
|
| Most of the desktops I saw people using in 2004 had like
| 256-512MB of RAM, _total_. They 've got 512MB of just graphics
| memory. And then on top of that its a GPU from 2010, so this
| isn't "an early 2000s machine" to assess what performance would
| have been like. Try running on a SiS graphics adapter on-board
| with 256MB of RAM, and I imagine their results would have been a
| bit different.
|
| And then they've got a 480GB SSD? That's an absolute monster of a
| drive for 2004, practically nothing would have come close to the
| latency and throughput available on that drive. Even a 32GB SSD
| in 2004.
|
| I always see people remark "wow look how snappy old computers
| were" when they're essentially built like $10,000 machines if you
| were to actually have those specs at that time.
| vkaku wrote:
| The overall memory usage is still much lower than 512MB when
| running the older Office XP suite - and when using Remote
| Desktop. In contrast, I tried running Opera 36 and my system
| started swapping already. That has nothing to do with hardware.
|
| While there is a point about I/O being expensive, and I did
| mention that they get removed over time when chips get faster,
| it still points to the fact that software that is not bloated
| runs better. Period.
| kvetching wrote:
| The last I used a Windows XP PC, I've found it's near impossible
| to browse the internet. Most websites require a modern browser.
| Modern browsers don't work with XP.
| bombcar wrote:
| Try http://kmeleonbrowser.org or similar. From
| https://rigorousthemes.com/blog/best-browsers-for-windows-xp...
| lproven wrote:
| I tried it.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/24/dangerous_pleasures_w.
| ..
|
| The best by a long way I found was MyPal; that worked with
| every site I tried and can run a modern ad-blocker and so on.
|
| Chrome360 is close but it's crashy and parts remain in
| Chinese whatever I did.
| userbinator wrote:
| _Mostly because the HTTPS protocols are getting outdated /changed
| and nothing working is kept on websites today for old computers._
|
| There's a patch that adds SHA256 algorithms to XP, which is the
| biggest obstacle.
|
| _Most websites do not work with TLS v1.2 anymore._
|
| Are you sure you don't mean 1.1 or 1.0? In my experience 1.2 is
| still supported by the vast majority of sites.
|
| Also related: TLS 1.3 on Windows 3.11(!)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36486512
|
| I've been thinking about the idea of easily replaceable, minimal-
| dependency crypto modules along with an interface that shims them
| into existing OS implementations. In the meantime, my MITM proxy
| that I force everything on my network through will take care of
| HTTPS and upgrading to TLS 1.2/1.3.
| vkaku wrote:
| I saw that, the work done to get WolfSSL to work is truly
| examplary on how to keep things going.
|
| Do post a link to that SHA256 patch. I suppose it is possible
| to compile and generate an unsigned 3rd party cryptographic
| services DLL (CAPICOM) if someone truly wants really old
| software to work everywhere.
|
| TLS needs to be re-vitalized in general for SMTP and other such
| protocols as well.
|
| The browsers mentioned in this thread:
| https://msfn.org/board/topic/178588-tls-13-in-winxp-sp3-poss...
| have all stopped building for XP as of today. Happy to try new
| builds and let people know it goes.
| userbinator wrote:
| Look for KB3055973.
| vkaku wrote:
| Thank you! It is part of POSReady on LegacyUpdate. I have
| installed it. :)
| ormax3 wrote:
| - TLS 1.2
|
| https://www.emailarchitect.net/eagetmail/sdk/html/object_tls.
| ..
|
| - Root Certificates
|
| https://msfn.org/board/topic/175170-root-certificates-and-
| re...
|
| - XP Browsers / Mail Clients
|
| https://rtfreesoft.blogspot.com/search/label/browser
| vkaku wrote:
| Great Collection! Kudos to the folks maintaining this well.
| Thank You!
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(page generated 2023-09-24 23:02 UTC)