Discussion Pentium to Pentium III - The Forgotten Days

[jnjnilson6]

Have you worked on one of the CPUs mentioned within the title? Have you got a synonymous system today? For what would you use such a system currently?

The clicking of whitened keys, that superior and unrivalled moment, when to have 256 MB RAM sent you rocking through exhilarating moods and the consequent mooning of unlimited opportunities... The Internet a subtle touch away, the time-strewn logos of Windows 95 - XP being breathlessly intruded upon in swifter motion; the Processor speed beautifully accustomed to the times.

Those were the good days... And do write up!

 

[Misgar]

256MB RAM? Sheer unadulterated luxury.

My first true IBM-compatible PC (80286) came with 2MB RAM in the form of SIPPs (not DIMMs) and Windows 2.0. I'm afraid I missed out on Windows 1.0.

Prior to that I had an 8086 which I upgraded from 640K to 1MB RAM at great expense with a bunch of 64K DIL memory ICs, but that computer wasn't 100% IBM-compatible. It came with two floppy disk drives but I shoe-horned a couple of 20MB Lapine Titan ST506/412 drives into it.

Those were the even older days.

 

[Eximo]

I had a few systems during those times, but I was almost exclusively using my systems for gaming back then.

AMD K6 166Mhz (overclocked to 233) - 16MB DIMM, Pretty sure I was still running a 1MB video card and a Voodoo 2.
Celeron 466Hz for a Slot 1 board (with a slocket adapter) Voodoo 3 3000, Sound Blaster Live Value, I want to say 128MB of memory with a later upgrade to 256MB.
Took that same Celeron 466 and dropped a slot Pentium III 800Mhz in it when that was really cheap to pick up, and all the way to the 384MB of memory it supported. I never really used it though, I upgraded it for my brother to use for college. I think it may have had a Voodoo 3 2000 I got really cheap or perhaps an early Nvidia card like an FX5200 or something. Can't exactly recall when I built it. I don't think that one had AGP though.

A bit after the era I got a Dual Pentium II Dell Poweredge 4200 - I picked it up at the Dayton Hamvention to just use the chassis (Kind of like a Corsair Air 540 if you remember those early dual cabinets) I didn't expect it to be fully functional, so I ended up restoring it. Getting the second processor, 512MB of ECC memory (only registers 256 though, still can't get the BIOS to update properly) It was pretty beat up, so I also painted the metal parts black.
Has an ISA Sound Blaster Awe 32 with Midi daughter board, PCI Voodoo 5 5500, and two 10GB hot swappable SCSI drives. Never did get around to replacing the hot swappable PSUs for something quieter, but I use it off and on for retro gaming. Runs Windows 2000 and Dos. Actually been a while since I fired it up, one of these days the drives are going to go bad and I will have to replace them with compact flash or something.

I also have a dumpster dive File Print Server from a local company. Dual Pentium Compaq Server, 11 SCSI hard drives in two cabinets connected via an external SCSI card. The SCSI card in it is the proud bearer of its own socketed AMD 486. It is still intact with a Linux OS and everything still on it. Would have been a blazingly fast file server in its day.

 

[lvt]

I started with MS-DOS and different Intel 286/386 machines.

My first personal computer was a Compaq Presario with an Intel 486S CPU, 4MB RAM and 200MB HDD that I later upgraded to 486DX and 8MB RAM.

 

[Tac 25]

my dad had a 386 that used Windows 3.1 where he plays chess every morning. The pc case had a turbo button. Sad that my parents gave it away to one of my cousins. I would have kept it around as a collectors item.

my first pre-built is an Athlon with Sempron cpu and 256 mb ram. It died to overheat, because I was a noob back then who did not realize dust in the vents needed to be cleaned - I became very clean with pc's after this incident. Pc changed board a few times. And when we had this board with 1 gb ram each in 2 slots, I thought it was the most awesome thing. The good old days when life is simple... I miss those days.

edit: thinking about it again. The pc did not start with 256mb ram.. it started with 128mb SDRAM, which came with the pre-built. The 256mb, was after it got upgraded.

 

[jnjnilson6]

my dad had a 386 that used Windows 3.1 where he plays chess every morning. The pc case had a turbo button. Sad that my parents gave it away to one of my cousins. I would have kept it around as a collectors item.

my first pre-built is an Athlon with Sempron cpu and 256 mb ram. It died to overheat, because I was a noob back then who did not realize dust in the vents needed to be cleaned - I became very clean with pc's after this incident. Pc changed board a few times. And when we had this board with 1 gb ram each in 2 slots, I thought it was the most awesome thing. The good old days when life is simple... I miss those days.

Truest words...! Yeah, I remember those times too. 1 GB RAM used to be a big thing; especially adhering the Pentium 4 logo throughout bootup. I had Sempron 3300+ (1 core @ 2.0 GHz) machines with 896 MB RAM too (128 MB dedicated for Radeon Xpress 200M). Could open up about 40 tabs in Chrome about 2011-2012 on those machines seamlessly and a few other office applications alongside. Today nearly 16 GB RAM would be used from my memory for the exact same things. At this time I had much faster machines (2011-2012), but I still used those laptops. They were HP Compaq nx6125 laptops.

A video I made a long time ago.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PbLRWC9pPA


A Pentium 4 520 could run 1080p seamlessly... The good old Adobe Flash Player days. HTML5 would be so much weightier and draggier that older machines are stripped of a chance.

 

[Eximo]

I had a friend who blew a lot of money on PC parts back then. Ended up with Rambus and everything, early Soundblaster card/DAC, 10k RPM hard drives.

Also a very early, way too early, adopter of LCD screens. TN panel with the worst response time and viewing angles you could imagine. Beige 4:3 panel with speakers attached to the sides.

Had a few people rocking 19" Trinitrons too. Lan parties were certainly more interesting back then. Lighter computers, but way heavier screens.

 

[USAFRet]

A Pentium 4 520 could run 1080p seamlessly... The good old Adobe Flash Player days. HTML5 would be so much weightier and draggier that older machines are stripped of a chance.

Ah yes, the P4.
AKA 'The Space Heater'.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Ah yes, the P4.
AKA 'The Space Heater'.

The 'PresHot,' as innumerable people would have ventured to propound.

I imagine school computers from the early 2000s harboring those chips and way into the nocturnal hour, lights clipping sharply paraphernalia upon desks, basketballs thundering on the edge of the gymnasium, mouse pointers being turned and hefty software loaded within the blue gloom.

It's a bit wistful to think of those machines; brings you back to a magical time. The verge of apprehension for modernity and technology's invariable upscale... Vanished memories of something half-expected and half-understood. You can have one P4 dangle on a keychain and illuminate silverly the darkness like tepid memories arisen from the recurrent spell of the past and immemorial and immortal pieces of hardware making the dusk magical within beautiful contemplations and expectations veering away.

They tend to stick in the blue, those memories. Kids nowadays would be saying the same about Windows 11 and Meteor Lake... How times change!

 

[palladin9479]

I still have a Pentium T 1.4Ghz running a Windows98SE box with a GeForce 4200ti, it's my "high end ancient" system as opposed to the K6/2 for "mid 90s" stuff.

 

[thestryker]

The first PC I put together was a Coppermine PIII 700 OC'd to 933. The machine that replaced this was dual Tualatin PIII-S 1.4 which became my first server box and is now in storage. When I have room I really want to pull it out and see if it's still working.

 

[jnjnilson6]

The first PC I put together was a Coppermine PIII 700 OC'd to 933. The machine that replaced this was dual Tualatin PIII-S 1.4 which became my first server box and is now in storage. When I have room I really want to pull it out and see if it's still working.

Had a Celeron Tualatin @ 1.3 GHz / 256 MB RAM / GeForce2 MX 400 w/ 64 MB memory / 40 GB HDD from 2001. That Celeron could overclock to 1.5 GHz.

The system was great, the only downfall proved the RAM. It was acquired at the time specifications flew tremendously up every year and soon enough requirements began dragging on, leaving a quarter Gigabyte behind. In only a few years' time the standard became 0.5-1 GB.

Great days though!

 

[artk2219]

The first computer I could call my own was a Pentium 75 with 8MB RAM, it was slowly upgraded a part or three at a time through the years until, huh, I just realized I have never done a completely fresh build for myself. At least one part from the previous build has always remained, only to be replaced at a different time in the future, a disk, the case, the power supply, a random drive bay insert. Hah, only took my like 27 years of working on my PC to make that realization. Anyway, I guess the biggest revisions were probably when it went from that pentium 75 to a Cyrix 133, and then K6 - 2 with an ATI Rage 128 and then TNT 2 before being upgraded to an Athlon 700, then Socket A Thunderbird 1400 and Geforce 2 MX 400, XP 2100+, 2400+ then 2800+ with a Radeon 9600 Pro. I finally had a steady job at that point so I bought an, Abit socket 939 board and paired it with an Athlon 64 3800+ and Radeon X800 XT, then an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and X1800XT. Honestly from then on its been a ton of changes, literally dozens of CPU's and GPU's from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia. The current config is a B650 board with a Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and RX 7900XTX which I just recently swapped to (got a sweet deal on the 7900X3D and 7900XTX), replacing a Threadripper 1920X and RTX 3080. I also have a couple of dedicated retro computers, one for Dos, 95, and 98 with a K6-III+ 450 running at 550 Mhz, my previously mentioned Geforce 2 MX400 I still have (first GPU i Bought with my own money), and a Soundblaster Live with a 64GB SSD. The other is an original Athlon 64 3200+ with a Radeon X800 XT for late 98 and early XP. Technically I guess there is a third one for windows 7 but its currently incomplete, I7 2600, 16GB RAM, RX 470 4GB. I'm looking to change that to an I7 3770K, and RX 5700 XT or RTX 2070, but honestly it wouldnt surprise me if that isnt complete for a few years since I am sure that I will keep sniping parts from it for builds for others since those parts are all still useful. Eh who knows, maybe itll end up being AM4, TR4, or X299 based instead with an RX 6900 XT or RTX 3090 in a few years, Windows 7 definitely allowed for a ton of different options.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I have a Pentium II and a motherboard floating around in my closet. I have no idea what I'll do with it though since I already have a Windows 98 build that covers most of what I wanted out of a 90s PC anyway.

 

[jnjnilson6]

I have a Pentium II and a motherboard floating around in my closet. I have no idea what I'll do with it though since I already have a Windows 98 build that covers most of what I wanted out of a 90s PC anyway.

Have had a DELL Optiplex GX1 system harboring the following specifications.
Pentium II 450 MHz
128 MB RAM
ATI Rage Pro 4 MB (from what I can remember).

Haven't got the machine anymore, yet it was quite the thing. I think I may have had some problems with the drivers on Windows 98 with it, yet that is unsure as floundering in murky waters for the particular memories have been obscured with time.

I had it 2nd hand and got it, perhaps, way into the Windows XP era, a little before Vista.

 

[thestryker]

Had a Celeron Tualatin @ 1.3 GHz / 256 MB RAM / GeForce2 MX 400 w/ 64 MB memory / 40 GB HDD from 2001. That Celeron could overclock to 1.5 GHz.

The system was great, the only downfall proved the RAM. It was acquired at the time specifications flew tremendously up every year and soon enough requirements began dragging on, leaving a quarter Gigabyte behind. In only a few years' time the standard became 0.5-1 GB.

Great days though!

My dual Tualatin system ran on the Via DDR chipset so those limitations weren't a problem. I think I started with 512MB and by the end got 4GB as DDR went way down in price. Was one of those very rare times where the chipsets from Intel were inferior to the one made by Via.

 

[Karadjgne]

My first pc was a Commodore Vic20, with the 3K sram/rom super expansion. The cpu was an unbelievable 1.1MHz. Used a tape cassette drive as floppies weren't available until later.

Also owned Genuine Pentium 100, Pentium II-350 overclocked to 400MHz, Pentium 4 3.4GHz

 

[USAFRet]

My first pc was a Commodore Vic20, with the 3K sram/rom super expansion. The cpu was an unbelievable 1.1MHz. Used a tape cassette drive as floppies weren't available until later.

Also owned Genuine Pentium 100, Pentium II-350 overclocked to 400MHz, Pentium 4 3.4GHz

I still have my VIC20, and I'm pretty sure it still works.

 

[jnjnilson6]

I still have my VIC20, and I'm pretty sure it still works.

If you would like to add, how would it compare to the Apple II?

Have you tried running different programming languages within it? What software did you turn to most whilst using it? What games did you play if you did play any?

Would be quite illuminating to know.

 

[Tac 25]

Truest words...! Yeah, I remember those times too. 1 GB RAM used to be a big thing; especially adhering the Pentium 4 logo throughout bootup. I had Sempron 3300+ (1 core @ 2.0 GHz) machines with 896 MB RAM too (128 MB dedicated for Radeon Xpress 200M). Could open up about 40 tabs in Chrome about 2011-2012 on those machines seamlessly and a few other office applications alongside. Today nearly 16 GB RAM would be used from my memory for the exact same things. At this time I had much faster machines (2011-2012), but I still used those laptops. They were HP Compaq nx6125 laptops.

A video I made a long time ago.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PbLRWC9pPA


A Pentium 4 520 could run 1080p seamlessly... The good old Adobe Flash Player days. HTML5 would be so much weightier and draggier that older machines are stripped of a chance.

thinking about it again. My pc did not start with 256mb ram, it started with 128mb SDRAM. It's the one that came with the pre-built. Even with that small amount, I had fun playing Starcraft Gundam. The 256 mb was the time it got upgraded. Edited post.

btw, I watched your video. Some decent info, but those flashing lights might trigger epilepsy in susceptible persons.

 

[jnjnilson6]

thinking about it again. My pc did not start with 256mb ram, it started with 128mb SDRAM. It's the one that came with the pre-built. Even with that small amount, I had fun playing Starcraft Gundam. The 256 mb was the time it got upgraded. Edited post.

btw, I watched your video. Some decent info, but those flashing lights might trigger epilepsy in susceptible persons.

Thank you! That video was taken a long time ago; I think neither the monitor nor the camera have survived... And, additionally, I have entered within the opulent and redolent depths of another field (the literary field), vividly grasping, unfathomably unsubdued, stretching throughout the memory like breathless glimpses and mirrored walls illuminating orange moons in the city at night; like the shards of sunken starlight catching the ceaseless spindrift of the sea in pathways surreal and warm as a faded memory; like youthful dreams fading through opalescent and recurrent reveries...

Would like to thank you again for the positive feedback; you do know so much about hardware and your comments are always on point and very enlightening. It has always been a great occurrence communicating on the forums.

I am sure that Sempron was a wonderful CPU back in the day. They were very powerful and good, generally, and the verges of the newest games (2005-2006) would be mellowed down into a seamless reality if you had one of those (or a faster Pentium 4) installed.

 

[lvt]

I remember in the 90s, the 3.5" floppy disc was quite rare and expensive in my country so when the disc's sector 0 goes bad, we open the plastic cover, remove the disc from the round metal holder and flip the disc, secure it with glue and it works again.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

My first real PC was a Gateway 2000, with Pentium 3 800mhz (Coppermine T) IIRC. It came with an AGP slot, so I bought my first 'GPU' the Geforce 256 DDR. Man, it blew my mind in terms of gaming prowess. Other early machines:

1.Spectrum 48k
2. Atari 520 ST
3.Some early consoles - Mega Drive/NES etc
4. Gateway above^
5. Commodore Gaming PC : https://commodoregaming.com/ Absolutely loved this machine.

 

[Karadjgne]

If you would like to add, how would it compare to the Apple II?

Have you tried running different programming languages within it? What software did you turn to most whilst using it? What games did you play if you did play any?

Would be quite illuminating to know.

Comparing an Apple II to a Vic20 is like comparing an iPhone 4S to one of those cordless brick phones with the pullout antenna you see in movies from the very early 80's....

The Vic20 used Basic (100 if X=1, then goto 200, else 300) and the only game I had was Space Invaders which took 15 minutes to load via tape cassette drive and if you bumped the table, you'd glitch the download and have to start all over. Battleship was also a popular game because it was tailor made for the Basic programming language.

 

[artk2219]

If you would like to add, how would it compare to the Apple II?

Have you tried running different programming languages within it? What software did you turn to most whilst using it? What games did you play if you did play any?

Would be quite illuminating to know.

The Apple II was superior in some ways and inferior in others. Something to keep in mind is Apple produced the Apple II line from 1977 until 1993 with huge changes in between. For comparison purposes though, im using the Apple II, and Apple II+ since they were direct competitors. The Apple IIe, and especially the Apple IIc, Apple IIc+, and Apple IIGS came out much later, were very different machines, and definitely outclassed the Vic20. Both the Apple II and Vic20 used a MOS 6502 CPU with the Apple II clocked a bit slower (1.02 Mhz vs 1.11Mhz for the Vic20). It came with more memory out of the box (16K for the Apple II and 48K for the Apple II+ vs just 5K on the Vic20) and had a higher amount of supported memory (48K max for Apple II and 64K max for Apple II+ vs 32K on the VIC 20). They both could do 16 colors (The apple II could do 16 colors in low resolution mode, high resolution was limited to 8), but the Apple II supported a higher resolution (280 x 192 vs 176 x 184) since the VIC 20 was targeted to be used with a TV vs a monitor with the Apple II. The Apple II was superior when it came to text output being able to handle 80 columns vs just 22 (expandable to 40) on the Vic 20. Also because of the higher resolution and high resolution color limitations, Apple II games typically could be more detailed if less colourful, and Vic20 games were more colourful with chunkier graphics. Sound capabilities were way better on the VIC20 (3 voices and a white noise generator vs basic speaker clicks with the Apple II). Storage wise the Apple II is the clear winner, being able to connect to up to six 143K floppy drives vs a single 170K floppy on the Vic20, Apple II's could also connect to up to a 10MB Hard drive. The Vic20 did have a cartridge slot though, and it was primarily meant to work with cartridges, which allowed for extremely fast boot times on software, it could also accept a floppy or tape drive. Expandability was better on the Apple II with a user having access to up to 8 expansion slots giving it a whole range of abilities that were sometimes much harder to achieve on the Vic20. When it came to software the Vic20 came with commodore basic built in and booted up to it immediately upon starting up, commodore basic allowed you to immediately access and save data. The Apple II also had builtin basic, but you could not boot directly to it, you needed to use a key command on startup, and you could not save anything that you did in basic, you had to boot off of a disk for full functionality. Finally, price, a basic Apple II with no display or peripherals launched for $1300, the Apple II+ launched for $1200, the Vic20 launched for... $300. In general, the Apple II was the more expandable, and potentially more capable machine, but it cost a minimum of 4 times as much to begin with, and you could get a fully kitted out Vic20 for way less than the price of just the base Apple II, they sold quite well. The Commodore C64 just took the formula they used for the Vic20 and made some improvements. It came with a higher resolution 320 x 200, better graphics, default 40 columns mode for text, support for sprites, 64K out of the box, improved sound (an area the Apple II was not competitive in to begin with), support for most of the Vic20 peripherals, and they kept the price relatively low, $600. So if you already had a Vic20, you could get a C64, use your current peripherals, and sell your vic20 to make up for some of the cost. But I digress, at the end of the day you got an Apple II if you wanted the expandability and you had the money, or you were a business and you needed the better text support, if you were a home user, the Vic20 made a very compelling proposition. As a collector now though? If you have the means, why not both?