Discussion Obsolete and Obsolescent: i286/386/486

[jnjnilson6]

Have any of you still Intel 286/386/486 chips and systems running Win 3.11 for Workgroups or Windows 95 in the world of vintage hardware?

Even if you have not the chips currently in your possession: was there a time in which you did? What interesting stories regarding the aforementioned hardware and practicableness and vigorous abandon peculiar to the nocturnal hours could you consider to share?

If you've only had such systems for a point in time or for a while, do write about your experience!

Thank you!

 

[USAFRet]

I've had all of those. And earlier.
I might still have the original AST shipping box for a 486SX system.

As time went on, they were all passed to lower need users. Or the Great Recycling Bin in the Sky.

 

[jnjnilson6]

I've had all of those. And earlier.
I might still have the original AST shipping box for a 486SX system.

As time went on, they were all passed to lower need users. Or the Great Recycling Bin in the Sky.

I bet some airplanes still use even weaker stuff, perhaps even 8086 for particular tasks.

The fact an airport would use Windows 3.11 in modern days and depend majorly upon it is frightening. https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-23-year-old-windows-3-1-system-failure-crashed-paris-airport/

 

[USAFRet]

I bet some airplanes still use even weaker stuff, perhaps even 8086 for particular tasks.

The fact an airport would use Windows 3.11 in modern days and depend majorly upon it is frightening. https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-23-year-old-windows-3-1-system-failure-crashed-paris-airport/

Seeing as a LOT of currently flying aircraft were designed in the 1980's or before, not unusual.
Systems in aircraft are completely different than what you have on your desk.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Seeing as a LOT of currently flying aircraft were designed in the 1980's or before, not unusual.
Systems in aircraft are completely different than what you have on your desk.

Yes, of course. The software within should be written perfectly (nearly perfectly). Changing hardware and rewriting the software often could have deadly consequences in the sky. When something works beautifully it can work like that for a long time.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, of course. The software within should be written perfectly (nearly perfectly). Changing hardware and rewriting the software often could have deadly consequences in the sky. When something works beautifully it can work like that for a long time.

Changing hardware and its software in aircraft is FAR more cost intensive than people think.

And...if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

What a 50 year old aircraft looks like:

 

[jnjnilson6]

Changing hardware and its software in aircraft is FAR more cost intensive than people think.

And...if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

What a 50 year old aircraft looks like:

That's one hell of a beaut.

Reminds me a little of IL2 Sturmovik 1946 - an exigent, breathless, wonderful simulator. Was never really good at it and had played it before many years.

I do not know which one should feel more comfortable flying in - an old plane or a new one. The new one may harbor (although very rarely) design flaws which have heretofore remained unnoticed; the old plane has undergone much repair and nobody really knows at what particular point in time somebody fixed something wrongly or half-conscientiously only. It's a coin toss in the end.

 

[Eximo]

I didn't keep any of my 486/386 hardware. Progress was too swift to think much about keeping it around. No need to keep the 210MB hard drive when you could get 6.4GB, etc, then a few years later, 20, 40, and 80GB drives.

My first PC was a 486 with a Pentium overdrive chip in it. Made mostly of used components. Monitor and drives came from some local company auction. My brother worked at an electronics retailer at the time and got a pretty good deal on the CPU if I recall. I added memory until it had 16MB. Had a 1MB video card and a Voodoo2, eventually SLI, which meant it could run pretty much any glide game at the time.

I still have a dual Pentium and dual PII around. Pentium is an old HP server with 11 SCSI disks, I guess it does have a 486, but that is the main processor on the RAID card. The Dual PII runs Windows 2000 off of a pair of SCSI drives. I put a Voodoo 5 in that for no reason. Also has a pretty high end AWE32 that I don't think was ever in my 486. Pretty sure I had an ASOUND knock off card, and that may have been the only new part purchased for that machine.

I've mostly moved over to emulation for everything else. Which I need to get back into, been a while since I did much in the way of retro gaming.

If you are interested in that sort of thing there is a fairly large organization. Several major events per year in various locations.

Vintage Computer Federation – VCF — A organization for vintage computer enthusiasts

vcfed.org

 

[jnjnilson6]

I didn't keep any of my 486/386 hardware. Progress was too swift to think much about keeping it around. No need to keep the 210MB hard drive when you could get 6.4GB, etc, then a few years later, 20, 40, and 80GB drives.

My first PC was a 486 with a Pentium overdrive chip in it. Made mostly of used components. Monitor and drives came from some local company auction. My brother worked at an electronics retailer at the time and got a pretty good deal on the CPU if I recall. I added memory until it had 16MB. Had a 1MB video card and a Voodoo2, eventually SLI, which meant it could run pretty much any glide game at the time.

I still have a dual Pentium and dual PII around. Pentium is an old HP server with 11 SCSI disks, I guess it does have a 486, but that is the main processor on the RAID card. The Dual PII runs Windows 2000 off of a pair of SCSI drives. I put a Voodoo 5 in that for no reason. Also has a pretty high end AWE32 that I don't think was ever in my 486. Pretty sure I had an ASOUND knock off card, and that may have been the only new part purchased for that machine.

I've mostly moved over to emulation for everything else. Which I need to get back into, been a while since I did much in the way of retro gaming.

If you are interested in that sort of thing there is a fairly large organization. Several major events per year in various locations.

Vintage Computer Federation – VCF — A organization for vintage computer enthusiasts

vcfed.org

Thank you for sharing! Had had a Pentium II 450 MHz myself; it was quite fast. But the Tualatin Celeron 1.3 GHz pummeled it down in terms of performance.

Had had servers on fanless Pentium IIIs and Debian 6; great little machines!

Would be interesting if we could try and render games like Crysis on a 486 CPU. A single frame would probably take awhile. Next year would mark 18 years since Crysis' release; and going 18 years further backward we would land in 1989 - the release of the i486.

Say a Pentium 4 at 2800 MHz achieves 20 FPS in Crysis on Low settings with enough RAM and a very good video card. A 25 MHz 486DX (not counting in the innumerable technologies for faster computation the P4 retains) should achieve 0.18 frames per second or 1 frame per 5.5 seconds.

Now that's only theoretical because we haven't a motherboard supporting 486 CPUs which would support Crysis' RAM requirements and a graphics card fast enough to play the game, let alone overpower the CPU to the point the game is readily playable...

 

[Eximo]

That was the era of memory expansion cards, and 486 could technically have 4GB of ram. Would just need a particular motherboard and/or some massive memory chips on a card.

Something like the Geforce 6200 256MB PCI supported DX9 so was enough for the minimum.

Apparently Windows 2000 will run on a 486 and that would support DX9 as well.

I doubt it would run well, but it could probably be done.

 

[USAFRet]

Apparently Windows 2000 will run on a 486 and that would support DX9 as well.

Could you make it run?
Probably.

But, outside of a curiosity....Why?

 

[jnjnilson6]

That was the era of memory expansion cards, and 486 could technically have 4GB of ram. Would just need a particular motherboard and/or some massive memory chips on a card.

Something like the Geforce 6200 256MB PCI supported DX9 so was enough for the minimum.

Apparently Windows 2000 will run on a 486 and that would support DX9 as well.

I doubt it would run well, but it could probably be done.

Funny thing ... Had had a GeForce 6200 TurboCache 256MB on a Pentium 4 520J system and Crysis ran ... very badly. Say about 15 FPS seemed great when reached.

That's a great bit of info! I think Crysis would run on WinXP and above though. WinXP would run it in DX9 Mode and Windows Vista in DX10.

 

[jnjnilson6]

That was the era of memory expansion cards, and 486 could technically have 4GB of ram. Would just need a particular motherboard and/or some massive memory chips on a card.

Something like the Geforce 6200 256MB PCI supported DX9 so was enough for the minimum.

Apparently Windows 2000 will run on a 486 and that would support DX9 as well.

I doubt it would run well, but it could probably be done.

Just checked up ... it may be possible to run Crysis on Win2000 judging by a few sources. I thought it would hardly be possible because back in the day, even before Crysis came out, I had Win2000 Professional and a lot of the newer software simply refused to run and required XP.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Could you make it run?
Probably.

But, outside of a curiosity....Why?

I have no good answer, but maybe for the thrill of swimming in crystalline high-quality waters and coruscating splashes of foam in the manner of hours frame after frame on a CPU which was meant to run games like Doom.

 

[USAFRet]

I have no good answer, but maybe for the thrill of swimming in crystalline high-quality waters and coruscating splashes of foam in the manner of hours frame after frame on a CPU which was meant to run games like Doom.

Similar:

Question - What vintage games from the year 2000 can run on 2 cores 64mb ram and 4mb vram?

I can't even look that up on google search

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[punkncat]

Why?

Why not?



I don't mess with any of the 3/486 stuff, I do watch a couple of channels that do content on them. I am old enough to remember when they were the hotness. My first PC purchase was a bit later than this era.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Similar:

Question - What vintage games from the year 2000 can run on 2 cores 64mb ram and 4mb vram?

I can't even look that up on google search

forums.tomshardware.com

The greatest game (graphically) I was able to run on my first gaming PC (Celeron Tualatin 1.3 GHz / GeForce2 MX 400 with 64 MB dedicated memory / 256 MB RAM and 40 GB HDD) was Xpand Rally. It does not say in its requirements that the GeForce2 is supported at all, but it is.

The only problem is the game had a memory leak and after hours of gameplay the computer simply restarted (that's due to an issue with the OS itself / it should not restart like that even with memory leaks; however, I never had such restarts while running any other game or piece of software).

The game ran surprisingly well. The graphics aren't hideous, but quite surprisingly nice even today.

PS. The OS the game was run on proved Win2000 Professional.

 

[USAFRet]

Why not?



I don't mess with any of the 3/486 stuff, I do watch a couple of channels that do content on them. I am old enough to remember when they were the hotness. My first PC purchase was a bit later than this era.

Why not?

I only have 2 hands, and only so much extra time per day.

In my stack of crap in the garage, I have a Pentium II laptop, and almost certainly a couple of earlier ones.
Could I resurrect them to booting up?
Yes.
And then do what? At best, hobbyist faffing about. Sure, but my hobbies are elsewhere.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Why not?

I only have 2 hands, and only so much extra time per day.

In my stack of crap in the garage, I have a Pentium II laptop, and almost certainly a couple of earlier ones.
Could I resurrect them to booting up?
Yes.
And then do what? At best, hobbyist faffing about. Sure, but my hobbies are elsewhere.

When you have slept and you have awoken and the baggage of a gone yesterday exuberantly flows like dark coffee in a mug you start working and work follows more work and the day passes drearily, and in the end, as you have said, you have only two hands and a tiresome reminiscence of the day's doings haunts and haunts ... So in the end we should pick out our hobbies with care; we have only so much time for them.