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XP On 8-MHz Pentium With 20 MB RAM
swehack writes "The guys over at winhistory.de managed to get their Windows XP Professional running on a very minimal box: an Intel Pentium clocked down to 8 MHz with 20 MB of RAM. (The installer won't work with less than 64 MB, but after installing you can remove memory.) The link has plenty of pictures of their progress in achieving this dubious milestone. They deserve a Golden Hourglass award for 'extreme waste of time.' What obscure hardware configurations have you managed to get Windows running on?"
Don't think we ever heard back from them.
It's comparable to the time I wanted to see just how brutal an environment Windows 95 would install
and still "run". I had this old narfy 386sx-16 "laptop" with 16Mb of RAM and 120Mb of HD. I installed
it with compression out of the gate and the thing just went in there. It wasn't happy with me, but
it was usable for very small values of "usable" and it ran stuff like Delphi if you were patient for
very large values of "patient" as it swap-thrashed itself to death doing what I asked of it.
It still worked. I was impressed. Wasn't USEFUL, mind.
This falls under the same category.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
A MAJOR accounting firm, 300,000 accountants world wide, that I support their Frame-Relay connectivity, until today, 25th of February, Sunday, 2007, still using windows 3.11 for their computers.
They constantly upgrade their hardware (as soon as warrenty expires on the hardeware, they start selling it, auction style, for the book value of $1.00). Yet they still run windows 3.11. Eventhough that Microsoft told them that they will no longer support it. They simply think that it works fine for filling spreadsheets, writting Word Perfect documents, and exchange files on line via FTP, and exchange information via a well-put-together Oracle-core database.
Their tech support team knows the ins and outs of the system, they feel comfortable working with it, the top execs of the company are not lured by all the sales idiots that march in their offices on querterly basis to sell them another Misrosoft system. They are just working fine, and making good money, no headaches, no new viruses, no graphics,, just a f!@#$% spreadsheet and an ftp, with a good DB. subject closed. If you show them any Microsoft certs for job credentials in your interview, you almost hear them say "good for you, close the door behind you, NEXT".
BTW, until today, most of the airlines in Europe are still using OS2 for their end terminal client at the airports. They just need a 'thing to run the f!@#$ database', no more.
And I'm curious as to which Windows 3.11 system it is that can run Oracle? Or do they run a newer version of Windows (or heaven forbid, gasp, Unix) for it? In which case, what happened to all that "glitz and glam" that they so vehemently shunned?
I'm not buying it.
D-Link DFL-700 router runs WinXP quite well. It has 266 MHz AMD Geode (486 class CPU) and 64MB RAM. Just connect keyboard and VGA to debug connectors onboard (get pinout from Lanier website - they're actual board manufacturer) and plugin laptop HDD instead of non-standard flash-drive they ship with.
So why in the dickens can't someone write a 16-bit wrapper so I can get some of this "32-bit software with a 16-bit installer" to install on Server 2003 x64?
(Microsoft Great Plains version 9 if anyone cares)
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
You can run win 3.1 on dosbox. I imagine there's a 64 bit port in Debian and elsewhere. With a fast enough machine, it should be about as quick as it ever was. It's kind of slow on a 1GHz class 32bit cpu.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Since this seems to be a story about the bare essentials. Once, back in 96 to impress a friend and and show him what this internet thing is about. I went over to his place with a bunch of floppies.
I had a local dialup account. He had some old computer parts:
1. Low end VGA monitor
2. VGA card capable of 16 colors at 640x480
3. 2 Megs of Ram
4. 20 Meg Hard Drive
5. 1200 baud modem
6. 1.2m floppy dirve
7. A 386-SX motherboard with a lowend 16hmz CPU
On this sweet box, I was able to install a striped down DOS 6.22, a bare install of Windows 3.11, trumpet winsock (1.x series I belive), and the Opera Web Browser (3.x) series.
I had to practically perform a seance to get MEMMAKER to give the MGA adapter memory over for use to bump the DOS 640k limit.
It was painful, but I was able to get a graphic dial up connection at 1200 baud, 16 color 640x480 resolution and show my friend this brave new world of the internet.
Of course this system operated with the rock soild reliability we have all come to know and trust from Mircosoft.
The sad thing is. It probably took less time to build this box AND install all the software than it takes to do a VISTA install nowdays.
vi +