I ran XP on an 200Mhz Pentium 1 MMX when i was younger.
Why not just run NT4?

I've used Windows 2000 on a Pentium before. The memory footprint is very real, you need to get over 48mb+ for it to be very usable. 32mb and less has it churning the drive for minutes on the dialog right before the log-in screen (and that's not counting the screens before it)

I've also Win2k'd on a 486 before. Same deal, though I never pigged out the ram on it to see if that made a real difference,but it was stable enough to run Cinebench R10 for 24 hours straight

You could run it, but you probably wouldn't want to. Besides, if it can only cache 64MB, wouldn't adding extra ram actually slow it down?

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

You could run it, but you probably wouldn't want to. Besides, if it can only cache 64MB, wouldn't adding extra ram actually slow it down?

Do you think uncached ram is slower than a swap access ? 😁

you could you use it, but it won't be the smoothest thing in the world, for a 233Mhz I would have gone with NT4 which would work better with a CPU like that.

its a little like trying to run Vista on a P4 or Athlon XP , it would run and be usable. but its not ideal.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

You could run it, but you probably wouldn't want to. Besides, if it can only cache 64MB, wouldn't adding extra ram actually slow it down?

It's the 430HX, and so it will cache the full 512mb

I used to run Win2k on an AMD K6-266 clocked to 300 Mhz and it was a bit of a crawl on 64MB RAM
It runs but not at any speed for gaming, etc. At least not on any Pentium MMX or K6 equivalent.

I've ran Win2k on a PII-266 in the past and it seemed to run fine with only 128MB SDRAM. I can't see why it wouldn't run on something like the setup you're aiming for.

I totally forgot the specs of the win2k terminals I used at the campus' labs, though my guess would be at least P3 class. But I'd pay more attention to the RAM instead. If you're going to put at least 256MB it'll be alright. P233MMX is close enough to PII-233 speed.

I'm not sure what version is your FIC PT-2200 though. Quick search suggests P55C 166-233 are only supported with v2.2.

I agree with the ram points. Its fine on a Pentium, but RAM is your problem tho.
You really at min want 128mb, and I'd go for 256mb+
I don't even try to run 9x with less then 128mb if I can keep from it, there are plenty of programs that will thrash the drive at 64mb, and when that drive is flash memory (CF\SSD) thats bad.
If you don't have the caching issue and can install 4 64mb simms go for it, otherwise run 9x\NT4 in a dual boot 🤣 .

I would suggest that you completely disable any ACPI to give the system a little performance boost. Absolutely do not use hibernation or system restore, and possibly try disabling Windows File Protection... if all those things are present in 2000. I used to get a performance increase on XP by disabling ACPI, but unfortunately they disallowed Non-ACPI installs beyond SP1.

People were actually using on their main pc win2K on Pentiums MMX 200-233Mhz with 64-128MB RAM, myself included. It's not the best thing you can do though, since we're talking about retro-computing there are better OS choices for that pc and better pc's to run win2K on, but it's doable, especially since you plan to overload it with memory. SP4 will criple it significantly, but it's a must for me and I don't think you can avoid it. Not too slow or unusable such as XP on the same hardware for example , but still slow. In a few words and since you're asking about speed, it's not the best OS (speed wise) to run on a Pentium 1. Win98 will feel much more responsive.

I have 2k on a dual PPro 200 machine. I wouldn't imagine that second PPro does very much, because I never put a heavy load on it.

sunaiac wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

You could run it, but you probably wouldn't want to. Besides, if it can only cache 64MB, wouldn't adding extra ram actually slow it down?

Do you think uncached ram is slower than a swap access ? 😁

If it wasn't for the fact memory is usually allocated from the top first.

I regularly run 2000 on my 486-120 so there is NO problem with 233MHz Pentium
It does take a while to boot though. And the 64MB of RAM holds it back too

leileilol wrote:

I've used Windows 2000 on a Pentium before. The memory footprint is very real, you need to get over 48mb+ for it to be very usable. 32mb and less has it churning the drive for minutes on the dialog right before the log-in screen (and that's not counting the screens before it)

I've also Win2k'd on a 486 before. Same deal, though I never pigged out the ram on it to see if that made a real difference,but it was stable enough to run Cinebench R10 for 24 hours straight

True that. I've ran a 200MHz MMX (so almost there 😁 ) with 96MB RAM and Windows 2000 ran quite smooth on it. It was running on a SiS chipset though. Board was MSI MS-5146.