King_Corduroy wrote:

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers ar […]
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The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers are still going strong with no issues or part failures (other than the occasional bad PSU or CD-ROM / Floppy drive) but the XP era computers have a glaring flaw. All (Or most) of those 2000's machines used cheap caps and bad design choices on the motherboards which means that if you put an XP machine into storage there is no garuntee that when you come back the whole board wont be fucked.

My first computer I ever purchased was an IBM Thinkcenter 8183 that had windows XP home edition on it. It was a refurbished business computer from MiComp and I paid 99.00$ for it back in 2008. However 6 years down the line I dug it out of storage and noticed the caps on the motherboard are bulging.
I'm going to take pictures of it and document it's last days before I recycle it (hell I'll probably put XP on it again for one last time). Why am I going to recycle it instead of try and replace the caps? Well a number of reasons but mainly because like many have already pointed out, all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers.

So while it would be nice to think that people are going to try and save these P4 machines I really don't think many will start collecting them due to the fact that they were basically designed to fail after a number of years. Designed Obsolescence... isn't it a wonderful thing?

This is pretty random.
Some models only used boards with bad caps, these boards are junk by now if not recapped.
Some models used bad caps on some boards but Rubycon and Panasonic on others.
Some models only used good caps on the boards and all of these boards are still fine, if they have not been running hot 24/7 in a cramped space that is.

I have plenty of Slot1 boards with bad caps aswell so this is not just a XP era issue.

You could replace the board with a mini ATX P3 board if the board is a standard one. I like the look of those IBM desktops.

brostenen wrote:

What's going to happen? Is the speed of the tech industries just too blazing fast?

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably enough on Low (not the lowest possible) settings in 1920x1200 with all components stock except for SSD. That's a 5-6 year gap between the game and the PC and it still runs it good enough. Now try running Doom 3 from 2003 on 1997 hardware (let's be generous and assume top of the line Pentium II, Voodoo Graphics, fast RAM etc.). The game won't even start.

From my experience, plenty of people throw out their perfectly functional computers because they don't know what "adware", "bloatware", and "system update/reinstall" even means. This Core 2 Quad beast was stuck with a ridiculously slow installation of Windows XP and tons of adware. The guy wanted to throw the computer out because it was "slow". I talked him into installing Windows 7 on it and he also got an SSD now and now he's oohing and aahing at how fast his computer is.

People consider Core 2 and such PCs "retro" because they're used to their PCs becoming useless for modern software 2 years after buying it. The days of "good enough" are here, the rapid upgrade cycle is over and this is why companies are so desperate to force people by doing things like artificially blocking perfectly usable dualcores from running games (looking at you Ubisoft) and inventing ridiculous resolutions like 4K.

As for quality of XP era PCs, my Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 Ghz from 2004 is still kicking strong as an office PC now in 2015. The original HDD and the Geforce 6600 in that thing died a long time ago, but another HDD + Geforce 4 MX keep it going. I'm tired of all the hate towards P4s. "They can do anything i7 can do only worse" - is that supposed to be a drawback? At least they CAN do it unlike 486s and Tulatins that everyone seems to worship here. But then, it was a custom build computer from a local company, not one of those Dell "econobox PCs" that everyone seems to associate with P4.

m1so wrote:

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably eno […]
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brostenen wrote:

What's going to happen? Is the speed of the tech industries just too blazing fast?

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably enough on Low (not the lowest possible) settings in 1920x1200 with all components stock except for SSD. That's a 5-6 year gap between the game and the PC and it still runs it good enough. Now try running Doom 3 from 2003 on 1997 hardware (let's be generous and assume top of the line Pentium II, Voodoo Graphics, fast RAM etc.). The game won't even start.

From my experience, plenty of people throw out their perfectly functional computers because they don't know what "adware", "bloatware", and "system update/reinstall" even means. This Core 2 Quad beast was stuck with a ridiculously slow installation of Windows XP and tons of adware. The guy wanted to throw the computer out because it was "slow". I talked him into installing Windows 7 on it and he also got an SSD now and now he's oohing and aahing at how fast his computer is.

People consider Core 2 and such PCs "retro" because they're used to their PCs becoming useless for modern software 2 years after buying it. The days of "good enough" are here, the rapid upgrade cycle is over and this is why companies are so desperate to force people by doing things like artificially blocking perfectly usable dualcores from running games (looking at you Ubisoft) and inventing ridiculous resolutions like 4K.

As for quality of XP era PCs, my Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 Ghz from 2004 is still kicking strong as an office PC now in 2015. The original HDD and the Geforce 6600 in that thing died a long time ago, but another HDD + Geforce 4 MX keep it going. I'm tired of all the hate towards P4s. "They can do anything i7 can do only worse" - is that supposed to be a drawback? At least they CAN do it unlike 486s and Tulatins that everyone seems to worship here. But then, it was a custom build computer from a local company, not one of those Dell "econobox PCs" that everyone seems to associate with P4.

*thumbsup*

m1so wrote:

brostenen wrote:

What's going to happen? Is the speed of the tech industries just too blazing fast?

...People consider Core 2 and such PCs "retro" because they're used to their PCs becoming useless for modern software 2 years after buying it. The days of "good enough" are here, the rapid upgrade cycle is over and this is why companies are so desperate to force people by doing things like artificially blocking perfectly usable dualcores from running games (looking at you Ubisoft) and inventing ridiculous resolutions like 4K.

As for quality of XP era PCs, my Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 Ghz from 2004 is still kicking strong as an office PC now in 2015. The original HDD and the Geforce 6600 in that thing died a long time ago, but another HDD + Geforce 4 MX keep it going. I'm tired of all the hate towards P4s. "They can do anything i7 can do only worse" - is that supposed to be a drawback? At least they CAN do it unlike 486s and Tulatins that everyone seems to worship here. But then, it was a custom build computer from a local company, not one of those Dell "econobox PCs" that everyone seems to associate with P4.

+1 for both comments.

My main rig/daily machine is a Core2 Quad (9550 I think), has 4GB RAM, and apart from the Display adapter (updated from GTS 250 to GTX 560 last year), it still has the same configuration when I built it in 2009. It still kicks around with Windows 7 (updated from XP in mid 2013), without creating any capability issues. But I need to admit, I'm not fan of "most recent" games, I always play them 2-3 years after release (i.e.: when they become 20 USD or less in price) and the most recent games I'm playing with at the moment is from 2011-12.

My spare/secondary rig is an XP box based on AMD Athlon64 (P4 class and era machine for all intents and purposes) and still kicks since 2006 (was my main rig from 2006 to 2009). Its' cheapo Gigabyte FX 6xxx display adapter is long gone (died), one of the original HDDs (Quantum 20GB)also gone with the wind, but its' high quality motherboard from ASUS (K8N-E Deluxe) and other parts (Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller, Audigy2 ZX sound card, etc.) has no issues at all. Now it has an AGP HD 3450 Display adapter and 3GBs of RAM, and is still useful when it comes to pre 2008 games and browsing around.

m1so wrote:

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably eno […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote:

What's going to happen? Is the speed of the tech industries just too blazing fast?

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably enough on Low (not the lowest possible) settings in 1920x1200 with all components stock except for SSD. That's a 5-6 year gap between the game and the PC and it still runs it good enough. Now try running Doom 3 from 2003 on 1997 hardware (let's be generous and assume top of the line Pentium II, Voodoo Graphics, fast RAM etc.). The game won't even start.

From my experience, plenty of people throw out their perfectly functional computers because they don't know what "adware", "bloatware", and "system update/reinstall" even means. This Core 2 Quad beast was stuck with a ridiculously slow installation of Windows XP and tons of adware. The guy wanted to throw the computer out because it was "slow". I talked him into installing Windows 7 on it and he also got an SSD now and now he's oohing and aahing at how fast his computer is.

People consider Core 2 and such PCs "retro" because they're used to their PCs becoming useless for modern software 2 years after buying it. The days of "good enough" are here, the rapid upgrade cycle is over and this is why companies are so desperate to force people by doing things like artificially blocking perfectly usable dualcores from running games (looking at you Ubisoft) and inventing ridiculous resolutions like 4K.

Pretty much this. I still run a Q9550 as a main machine and it has all the stuff modern PCs have like SATA, PCI-E and SSE4.
There is really no point upgrading to an I5/I7 because it isn't enough improvement to justify it. Hardware improvements have slowed
way down ever since ~2006 (GPUs are still moving fairly quick though)

As for quality of XP era PCs, my Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 Ghz from 2004 is still kicking strong as an office PC now in 2015. The original HDD and the Geforce 6600 in that thing died a long time ago, but another HDD + Geforce 4 MX keep it going. I'm tired of all the hate towards P4s. "They can do anything i7 can do only worse" - is that supposed to be a drawback? At least they CAN do it unlike 486s and Tulatins that everyone seems to worship here. But then, it was a custom build computer from a local company, not one of those Dell "econobox PCs" that everyone seems to associate with P4.

Basically P4 is hated because they are common (not interesting) and they are hotter, slower per clock and use more power consumption than a Pentium 3.
486 - P3 era are quite interesting and each generation was innovative in it's own way. Also, I challenge you on what can be run on a 486 and P3

Skyscraper wrote:

This is pretty random. Some models only used boards with bad caps, these boards are junk by now if not recapped. Some models use […]
Show full quote

King_Corduroy wrote:

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers ar […]
Show full quote

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers are still going strong with no issues or part failures (other than the occasional bad PSU or CD-ROM / Floppy drive) but the XP era computers have a glaring flaw. All (Or most) of those 2000's machines used cheap caps and bad design choices on the motherboards which means that if you put an XP machine into storage there is no garuntee that when you come back the whole board wont be fucked.

My first computer I ever purchased was an IBM Thinkcenter 8183 that had windows XP home edition on it. It was a refurbished business computer from MiComp and I paid 99.00$ for it back in 2008. However 6 years down the line I dug it out of storage and noticed the caps on the motherboard are bulging.
I'm going to take pictures of it and document it's last days before I recycle it (hell I'll probably put XP on it again for one last time). Why am I going to recycle it instead of try and replace the caps? Well a number of reasons but mainly because like many have already pointed out, all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers.

So while it would be nice to think that people are going to try and save these P4 machines I really don't think many will start collecting them due to the fact that they were basically designed to fail after a number of years. Designed Obsolescence... isn't it a wonderful thing?

This is pretty random.
Some models only used boards with bad caps, these boards are junk by now if not recapped.
Some models used bad caps on some boards but Rubycon and Panasonic on others.
Some models only used good caps on the boards and all of these boards are still fine, if they have not been running hot 24/7 in a cramped space that is.

I have plenty of Slot1 boards with bad caps aswell so this is not just a XP era issue.

You could replace the board with a mini ATX P3 board if the board is a standard one. I like the look of those IBM desktops.

No that's the thing, it's not standard. IBM made some weird design choices here. It's almost like they were trying to make the worst desktop they could. 🤣

It only has 2 PCI slots also and it uses a riserboard. Everything about this case is strange, it really is too bad though because I like they way the case looks too. 😒

King_Corduroy wrote:

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers are still going strong with no issues or part failures (other than the occasional bad PSU or CD-ROM / Floppy drive) but the XP era computers have a glaring flaw. All (Or most) of those 2000's machines used cheap caps and bad design choices on the motherboards which means that if you put an XP machine into storage there is no garuntee that when you come back the whole board wont be fucked.

I have made similar experiences. Got lots of P4 and AMD boards from eBay for little money and DOA policy but many didn't work and I lost shipping costs. Theses sellers don't bother testing and know many will be DOA.

My solutions is to take the Time Machine approach and I'm using a Socket 1155 with Core i5 😀 Slow down multiplier and disable cores to simulate older chips. 1600 MHz is the slowest. AMD AM3+ can go down to 800 even.

As for what people are happy with, totally subjective and everyone should use what they want. Personally my PC can't be fast enough. Time is the real currency for me and being productive. So it's an i7 3770 for me and SSD.

My brother mainly plays mainly 10+ year old games so for a present I built him a nice XP rig using parts from my old kickass 2005 era system; an ASUS A8N-8X SLI [not the deluxe], Athlon 64 4400+ [an upgrade from the original 2400+] and a pair of EVGA 7800GT's in SLI. He bought a 500gb SATA drive and was set.

My own dedicated 'failsafe' XP box is built around a P4-3.6 with a CoolerMaster 101+ cooler that excels at keeping the Pentium beast cool and clear headed. Coupled to this are a 7900GTX plugged into a Biostar P4M890-M7-TE mATX board, It's sort of an up-gunned version of the one I built bro [I went single core/single GPU on mine or stability and compatibility reasons], and a cracking system that will be home for all those 'not quite yet retro' games of that era when the last shed of reverse-compatibility is lost on whatever version of Windows we'll be running in the future.

smeezekitty wrote:

Basically P4 is hated because they are common (not interesting) and they are hotter, slower per clock and use more power consumption than a Pentium 3.
486 - P3 era are quite interesting and each generation was innovative in it's own way. Also, I challenge you on what can be run on a 486 and P3

Don't forget that back in the day, S3 Virge were called "Graphics Decelerators" and noone wanted them, so many ended up with me. Now everyone wants them 😁

Northwoods are quite decent I think and the high end s478 boards seem to be easier to work with then contemporary sA boards (which are basically just faster and hotter Tualatins with DDR support and requiring extra power on the 5v rails which very few modern PSU's will deliver).

That something is common today is no indication it won't be wanted (or useful) 5 or 10 years down the road

King_Corduroy wrote:

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers ar […]
Show full quote

The only problem I see with collecting XP era computers is the quality of the materials they used. My 80's and 90's computers are still going strong with no issues or part failures (other than the occasional bad PSU or CD-ROM / Floppy drive) but the XP era computers have a glaring flaw. All (Or most) of those 2000's machines used cheap caps and bad design choices on the motherboards which means that if you put an XP machine into storage there is no garuntee that when you come back the whole board wont be fucked.

My first computer I ever purchased was an IBM Thinkcenter 8183 that had windows XP home edition on it. It was a refurbished business computer from MiComp and I paid 99.00$ for it back in 2008. However 6 years down the line I dug it out of storage and noticed the caps on the motherboard are bulging.
I'm going to take pictures of it and document it's last days before I recycle it (hell I'll probably put XP on it again for one last time). Why am I going to recycle it instead of try and replace the caps? Well a number of reasons but mainly because like many have already pointed out, all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers.

So while it would be nice to think that people are going to try and save these P4 machines I really don't think many will start collecting them due to the fact that they were basically designed to fail after a number of years. Designed Obsolescence... isn't it a wonderful thing?

This isn't all XP era boxes. I have a number of NetBurst machines that have zero problems with bad caps or stability. Granted they were all very expensive pieces of equipment 10-12 years ago, but the cap plague, much like the black plague, was not a 100% universal event. It's also worth pointing out that generally the garbage equipment from the 1970s, 1980s, and even 1990s will likely have long since died and been discarded, so you're getting an inaccurate representation of "how things were" from those decades.

Now of course I can tell you the other side of the story, where I recycled most of my AthlonXP box a year ago after pulling it out of storage and the board was an unstable mess, and after powering it up to test it some of the caps started to bulge. So don't take my post to mean that I'm looking back on 2003 with rose colored goggles. 😀

I would also say that "all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers." is not entirely accurate. There are plenty of games and applications that will work in XP on a P4 (or whatever other "old" CPU) that will have trouble in both XP on newer hardware, or especially in Windows 7 on newer hardware. This list can only be expected to grow as XP has gone EOL and developers finally abandon it moving forwards (so backwards compatibility becomes less and less of a concern), just as happened for Windows 9x software starting around ten years ago. At this point I think we've only started to see the tip of that iceberg as XP is only starting to be abandoned on a large scale, and after that migration is done we'll start seeing the real hijinks - just as DOS and 9x stand apart right now, there will probably too be a category for NT 5.x applications and hardware.

m1so wrote:

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably eno […]
Show full quote

Actually quite the opposite. I have a friend with an old Core 2 Quad rig from 2008 or 2009 and it runs Far Cry 4 comfortably enough on Low (not the lowest possible) settings in 1920x1200 with all components stock except for SSD. That's a 5-6 year gap between the game and the PC and it still runs it good enough. Now try running Doom 3 from 2003 on 1997 hardware (let's be generous and assume top of the line Pentium II, Voodoo Graphics, fast RAM etc.). The game won't even start.

From my experience, plenty of people throw out their perfectly functional computers because they don't know what "adware", "bloatware", and "system update/reinstall" even means. This Core 2 Quad beast was stuck with a ridiculously slow installation of Windows XP and tons of adware. The guy wanted to throw the computer out because it was "slow". I talked him into installing Windows 7 on it and he also got an SSD now and now he's oohing and aahing at how fast his computer is.

People consider Core 2 and such PCs "retro" because they're used to their PCs becoming useless for modern software 2 years after buying it. The days of "good enough" are here, the rapid upgrade cycle is over and this is why companies are so desperate to force people by doing things like artificially blocking perfectly usable dualcores from running games (looking at you Ubisoft) and inventing ridiculous resolutions like 4K.

As for quality of XP era PCs, my Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.2 Ghz from 2004 is still kicking strong as an office PC now in 2015. The original HDD and the Geforce 6600 in that thing died a long time ago, but another HDD + Geforce 4 MX keep it going. I'm tired of all the hate towards P4s. "They can do anything i7 can do only worse" - is that supposed to be a drawback? At least they CAN do it unlike 486s and Tulatins that everyone seems to worship here. But then, it was a custom build computer from a local company, not one of those Dell "econobox PCs" that everyone seems to associate with P4.

I agree with this, but wanted to point out that Doom 3 on a Voodoo is probably a bad example, because people actually have gotten that to work on Voodoo2 (but maybe you were referencing that ironically). 😊 But I do completely get what you're saying, and agree with the general argument - there's absolutely been a "slowing" of performance growth, and aside from newer chips offering newer features or better power management, there's not a whole lot of incentive to upgrade as performance gains aren't generally linear or geometric as they once were.

I also will agree with not understanding why P4s get denigrated so much. I've never had an issue with NetBurst though - I've happily owned them since 2001, and don't have too many complaints. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

...I would also say that "all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers." is not entirely accurate...

Absolutely correct and probably the main reason that XP era rigs are slowly gaining currency. While *most* XP era software and games might be expected to run nicely on W7 systems, enough doesn't to make the back-step to XP a worthwhile play. Take the big "leap forward" to W8 and the situation probably appears even more urgent.

If you like to keep a large 'menagerie' of games running smoothly an XP box isn't controversial at all - just another project. And similarly, as machines from the era come more and more into focus, bit by bit the lowly P4 gains more acceptance and credibility - hot and not so elegant but still very serviceable.

I would also say that "all the software that would run or did run on XP and these old Pentium 4 machines runs flawlessly on modern computers." is not entirely accurate. There are plenty of games and applications that will work in XP on a P4 (or whatever other "old" CPU) that will have trouble in both XP on newer hardware, or especially in Windows 7 on newer hardware.

I am going to say it isn't so much the hardware but rather just the OS and those programs generally run perfectly on brand new hardware IF the hardware works with XP.
The only problem I can see might be with graphics cards but even that is usually a non-issue.

One thing that is definitely hurting compatibility is the adoption of 64 bits. Given 64 bits breaks all compatibility with 16 bit applications
and even some older 32 bit programs.

Netburst isn't necessarily a bad architecture, but if I wanted to build a "period" system for the 2002-2005 era, I'd probably go with a Pentium M or Athlon 64 instead. The Pentium M has always been an impressive chip for me, but the only machine I've ever owned with one was a laptop bottlenecked with Intel onboard graphics, and a slow IDE hard drive.

If I had to, I could probably get by with a Netburst rig as a "daily driver", though I'd want to use a fairly lean OS setup, and ideally an SSD.

Referring to what the op posted, I think there is a very quantifiable way of defining what is retro based on the price of the average system or item on sites like ebay or your local online marketplace. A system becomes retro after its price has bottomed out and begins to rise. This is a surefire way of telling when junk has slowly become collectible.
As it is, you can find completely fine P2-P3-P4 systems for about 20 euros, sometimes with monitors included where I live, so I would not really consider these collectible or retro (an the price says that many just consider these "junk" right now, although I am sure this will change in under 5 years time).

I personally find 386/486 systems most pleasing, but that is what I grew up with. Nothing like a great 486 DX4-100. The ultimate prize, a 386 SX-33 by Highscreen that my family gifted away, still eludes me and is going for lots of bucks on german ebay. Ah well.

As it is, you can find completely fine P2-P3-P4 systems for about 20 euros

Where do you find P2/P3 for 20 euro?
They are going up in price here. And I usually find P4 for free or maybe $5

"Where do you find P2/P3 for 20 euro?"

On Hungarian online marketplaces like vatera.hu they go for even less 😀

smeezekitty wrote:

I am going to say it isn't so much the hardware but rather just the OS and those programs generally run perfectly on brand new h […]
Show full quote

I am going to say it isn't so much the hardware but rather just the OS and those programs generally run perfectly on brand new hardware IF the hardware works with XP.
The only problem I can see might be with graphics cards but even that is usually a non-issue.

One thing that is definitely hurting compatibility is the adoption of 64 bits. Given 64 bits breaks all compatibility with 16 bit applications
and even some older 32 bit programs.

For the most part I'd agree, except for games that break with multi-core CPUs due to timing bugs, games that refuse to install because they can't accurately judge the size of the hard-drive or installed memory, and so forth. These aren't every-day cases, but it's certainly something to keep in mind. There's a lot to be said for a decent single-core CPU and DX9 graphics card for early-2000s gaming. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

There's a lot to be said for a decent single-core CPU and DX9 graphics card for early-2000s gaming. 😀

Core i7 > BIOS > disable HT > Disable 3 cores > Lower multi = 1.6 GHz + GeForce 7 series 😀

It works so well. I might get rid of / sell my Pentium 4 and AMD 64 stuff and skip Core 2 altogether.

Oh AM3+ platform works just well with Athlon II and Phenom II chips. FX and later are tricky because they have modules not cores. So even after disabling all cores, one module is left which is seen as dual core in OS.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Core i7 > BIOS > disable HT > Disable 3 cores > Lower multi = 1.6 GHz + GeForce 7 series :) […]
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obobskivich wrote:

There's a lot to be said for a decent single-core CPU and DX9 graphics card for early-2000s gaming. 😀

Core i7 > BIOS > disable HT > Disable 3 cores > Lower multi = 1.6 GHz + GeForce 7 series 😀

It works so well. I might get rid of / sell my Pentium 4 and AMD 64 stuff and skip Core 2 altogether.

Oh AM3+ platform works just well with Athlon II and Phenom II chips. FX and later are tricky because they have modules not cores. So even after disabling all cores, one module is left which is seen as dual core in OS.

Oh there are certainly other workarounds, and your solution here isn't supported by all platforms. But all of those various hackjobs both take extra time and can be a pain to fool around with constantly switching back and forth yadda yadda - I'd rather save the time and have a machine that works like it's supposed to work. 😀

obobskivich wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

I am going to say it isn't so much the hardware but rather just the OS and those programs generally run perfectly on brand new h […]
Show full quote

I am going to say it isn't so much the hardware but rather just the OS and those programs generally run perfectly on brand new hardware IF the hardware works with XP.
The only problem I can see might be with graphics cards but even that is usually a non-issue.

One thing that is definitely hurting compatibility is the adoption of 64 bits. Given 64 bits breaks all compatibility with 16 bit applications
and even some older 32 bit programs.

For the most part I'd agree, except for games that break with multi-core CPUs due to timing bugs, games that refuse to install because they can't accurately judge the size of the hard-drive or installed memory, and so forth. These aren't every-day cases, but it's certainly something to keep in mind. There's a lot to be said for a decent single-core CPU and DX9 graphics card for early-2000s gaming. 😀

I have run into the problem with stubborn installers that says you need xx MB of RAM to install even though I have much more.

You can probably work around it by temporarily setting the OS memory limit and rebooting and installing. Then you can usually remove the limit
once it is installed. It would be nice if developers thought for the future about that stuff