My core2quad/GTX 260 is out on loan to a friend at the moment, she actually needs the performance right now. So my main machine right now is a Celeron D 320(2.4Ghz) on a VIA PM266 board with 1GB RAM, FX5200 graphics and a 40 GB Hard disk, I actually built this machine as a bit of a joke, using bits left over from that were for won't of a better word rubbish! It is however running fine and doing all I need it too for the time being so I guess this is what I can get along with without being fussed at all. Kind of makes you wonder really................

And I was thinking my K62 500 was too modern.. 🤣.. I would use the K63 400 but I think it push too hard the wattage requirements on the board.

From about 2009-2012, I used a Fujitsu Stylistic LT C-500 tablet computer. 500MHz Celeron, 6GB hard drive. Originally came with 32MB RAM and Win98, but I upgraded it to 256MB and WinXP then stuck in a wifi card. I used it for on-the-floor ordering at work (Retail). It was actually pretty good for this because it had a numeric keypad built into the bezel next to the screen, so I could quickly punch in SKUs without having to pull up an on-screen keyboard. Thing was ungodly slow though. It eventually got replaced by a Dell convertible netbook/tablet.

My main rig is from 2009, a C2Q (9550) with 4GB RAM, GTX 560 Ti, and Windows 7 32 bit, my HTPC (built from used parts in 2015) is a C2D (8400) with 4GB RAM, HD5450 and Windows 7 32 bit. Both can easily be considered as out-of-date compared to what is hip today. Daughter's PC is definitely in better condition (Phenom II X6 1090T with 8GB RAM, GTX 740 and Windows 10 64bit).

I considered using a SFF Pentium 4 2.8GHz Dell with 2GB RAM as a HTPC, but it didn't workout (not because of the insufficient computing power but because of the jet engine like CPU fan / overheating SFF case).

My backup PC is an Opteron 180 with 4GB RAM and Windows XP SP3. I use it for daily things from time to time, if my main rig is somehow occupied or not in working condition for any reason. There is also wife's Asus EeePC notebook, Atom N280 CPU and 1GB RAM with Windows XP. We use that PC whenever we are on the move and need to be light (holidays, travels, etc.). Daughter still uses her Ipad II 16GB daily (5th year of the device). And my phone is an Iphone 4 😊

All my older PCs, (from Pentium III to 386SX) are only for retrofun. 🤣

Upping the thread to say how I am impressed by the old Pentium-s 120Mhz (60mhzx2) running W98 FE with a big 384MB ram and a UDMA2 disk. After some test I woudl say that the Millennium 4MB sgram is the best 2D only old card I have not to go to the Mystique or some Riva card.
Probably the MVP3 chipset is too modern for this, I should use some older mainboard but I've only this Chaintech one.
By the way it's incredibly usable and fast. Obviously surfing is limited but without any ad-animated-animation-jscript-kind it's not a bit bad. Just some more patience to wait and you can scroll well rendered pages. I think it show really how the Pentium architecture was so advanced.

Interesting how Linux doesn't seem so popular around here for such task, there are distributions specifically compiled for slow CPUs and memory constraints which let you run a decent browser and a modern set of applications.
For everydasy tasks I used an HP9000 C100 8 years ago or more, not a PC but close.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-K5ycAHzI

vmunix wrote:

Interesting how Linux doesn't seem so popular around here for such task, there are distributions specifically compiled for slow CPUs and memory constraints which let you run a decent browser and a modern set of applications.

I'd guess it is because nowadays maxing out the memory in old PCs is very cheap, and the OS overhead is far from relevant when compared the browser's own CPU/memory useage. Also, Windows XP still allows for modern browsers and codecs while being very frugal itself. I do run Debian on a Sonoma Pentium M 1.73 GHz laptop though, and have little to complain.

I don't know. DSL, supposedly one of the lightest Linux distros with a WM, was very unusuably slow on the 486 I had.

leileilol wrote:

I don't know. DSL, supposedly one of the lightest Linux distros with a WM, was very unusuably slow on the 486 I had.

X11 is a pig. Command line Linux works fine on old PCs but that's about it

tayyare wrote:

There is also wife's Asus EeePC notebook, Atom N280 CPU and 1GB RAM with Windows XP. We use that PC whenever we are on the move and need to be light (holidays, travels, etc.).

I still use one of those too. But the recent updates have made Firefox too taxing for this netbook. Fortunately there is a special Palemoon build for Atom Netbooks with Windows XP, and that works well.

gerwin wrote:

... Fortunately there is a special Palemoon build for Atom Netbooks with Windows XP, and that works well.

^ Which just for the record also works fine on other CPUs, not just Atom. 😉

The machine I am using for everyday use, are a 5+ year old Acer Extensa 5235 Laptop.
Celero Dual Core 1.79ghz and 3gb Ram. Intel onboard GFX. Enough for my needs.

My main rig:

Asus A8n SLI - socket 939
Athlon 64 X2 3800+
4GB
HDD 500GB
Geforce 7600GT

I think its 10 years old.

Pentium 233mmx, 256mb pc100, pair of 80gb Maxtor ata133 drives in RAID 0 on a promise pci card, Realtek Gigabit lan pci card, SB Live! and a 4mb Rage II running Windows xp pro sp3. I think that was in 2010 right after my P4 died, lasted 6 months and the cheesy AT powersupply blew out killing the motherboard. Wrote up school assignments, browsed the web and kept in contact with my friends pretty well 😀 right now I use a 2002 P4 laptop everyday.

A few years ago, as my main PC was due for replacement, the video card died. At the time I didn't have any spare video cards that fit the slot, so there was no way of getting any display from the machine.

It was running Linux though, and I had an old NCD "HMX" X-Terminal laying around that I'd been playing with. So I plugged my monitor into the X-Terminal, booted it up, then launched a remote X session on my main PC. It worked!

The end result was my main PC, in all its multi gigahertz, multi gigabyte glory, was running over the network in 1024x768 at 256 colours, on a machine with an 80MHz MIPS CPU, which I had never heard of until I received the terminal.

Aside from the lack of colour it worked remarkably well, so much so that I ended up using it for a couple of months while I was researching the parts to buy for my next main PC. Ironically that makes it the first 64-bit computer I used as my main PC (even though it was slower than my last two main computers), because it wasn't until the computer *after* the one I was researching that I entered the world of x86-64 CPUs.

I still use the Katmai 500 for a living room PC. Browses the mobile version of Facebook and of course VOGONS, checks my email, lets me talk on IRC, and plays my music all at the same time very well. Having a titanic amount of RAM probably helps.

But the lowest spec'd main PC I've ever used was... the Kaimai 500! My main went out of service for about a month due to a PSU failure. Living without my modern games was oddly refreshing.

Around 2005 or 2006 I used a Power Computing PowerCenter Pro 180. My brother had gotten it and a few truck loads of other older computers from the advanced placement school he went to. We only had dial up available where we lived, which suited me well as I also had a 14.4K external modem for it. Slow, but it worked.

I moved up to a Dell Inspiron 3500. 266Mhz P2 with 256MB of ram, 4GB hard drive running on Windows XP. I ripped it apart and upgraded it to a 333Mhz. I received an HP Vectra VL600 shortly afterwords, that had a 667mhz P3 and a 15GB hard drive, and that was really screamin' for me back then. I got one of those powerline wireless AP's and created a wireless network in our house. I would log into AOL on the HP and RDP into it with the laptop to be able to browse the internet wirelessly. Back then I was constantly receiving old computers for free. Today I always see these high end P3 and P4 computers that people can hardly give away and I think about how back then my mouth would water over the thought of getting something like that.

That's enough reminiscing for now.

From 2001 to 2005 I used one of the A950-TWR Packard Bell machines for everyday use.
233mhz Intel processor, 128mb ram, 16mb Xpert128 video card, 20gb hard drive, 24x CD-ROM and Windows 98 SE. It browsed fine and back then Youtube was useable on a 233 but divx video and gameboy emulation was way too much for the machine to handle.

I remember the day I moved to the Dell machine with 256mb ram, 1ghz coppermine and a GeForce 2 MX. That day was heaven.

Recently built a P5KC Q6600@2.4GHz/8GB DDR2@800/8800GT/500gb HDD Yosemite hackintosh with an original Apple USB keyboard as an all-around box but never use it; I always seem to reach out to my old P4 box which has all my files on 3 HDDs... Hell, even today it covers more than 70% of my computing needs!

Specs:
Pentium 4 660 @ 3.6GHz on AOpen i915Pa-E
(MB supports no speedstep! hot as hell! zalman cnps7000c-cu cooler!)
2GB DDR400
NEC ND-3500A DVD-RW
Asus EN6600/TD/256
1x320, 2x500gb HDDs
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 1 + LiveDrive IR (the old white one)
Windows XP SP3 w/ Watercolor theme 😁

I use it mainly for opening MadTracker modules (editing/remixing older works from me/friends), playing FS2004+REX+UT and some older games (lots o' tools! SoundFX2000/nGlide/etc), listening to online radio, leeching music from Soulseek and burning CDs.

Remember some time in 2000 when my main Celeron@400MHz PC was off/infected with CIH, I replaced it with a SEGA Dreamcast with the PlanetWeb 2.6 disc for surfing the net for almost two months... Good old dial-up times!

Anyone using something from the 90s or earlier through necessity gets instant kudos especially for something as painful as video rendering. Imagine if the final assignment render had failed sure to a power cut or summat!

I used a 486DX4-100 for far too long because it was the only machine I had with an ISA slot to accommodate my GUS classic for using Impulse Tracker. I never learned to use Modplug or Fruity Loops or even a MIDI sequencer. Even acquired a copy of Reason with the intention of moving over to that but never used it. I think I stopped writing music in 2003.