Windows 2000

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-07, 05:50:

The main question is how bad or good Windows Xp will be work?

Not bad, if you stay away from SP3.
Back then a friend of mine had a 333MHz Celeron, 64MB RAM and an S3 Trio64V+ (don't remember the board). XP ran okay, so did 90s games in software render. Years later upgraded with my 9200SE 64MB and another 64MB RAM it did even more okay. Of course not up to the standards of the time.

But you shouldn't be afraid of W98. It can work very reliably if you know how to set it up. Also, you don't use a retro PC as a general purpose PC. Installing and uninstalling all kinds of software and hardware. Just set it up to let's say play retro games and not much else. That also improves long term reliability of the OS.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:50:

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:45:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:34:

I did a bit of digging cause I was curious, and its because the CPUID is only 4 bits wide so 15 is the highest number that can be represented, no idea if its still only 4 bits wide in CPUs made after Core2 but they would have ran out of family IDs if they had left it only 4bits, Perhaps they used a different way to set CPUIDs.

This still doesnt explain why Itanium 2 had to use 15 too . there were a few free numbers they could have used, Itanium 1 was Family 7 so Itanium 2 should have been Family 8 ...more Intel weirdness.

Have you looked into that history with NT4? Family 8 would be 1000 in binary and... some things that only look at 3 bits might be very unhappy with that. I think that's why they picked 15 (1111) for P4, that way NT4 looking at 3 bits would see 111 and be happy.

But I guess that doesn't explain whose code on Itanium had these limitations? Just because 8 was bad for x86 doesn't explain why 8 is bad for IA-64...

I'm sitting here laughing at the stupidity of this ...though this is Microsoft here so it doesn't surprise me they couldnt have found an elegant work around for it.

As for Itanium ...best we forget it existed, it bombed so hard even Intel refuses to acknowledge it exists and that's very telling.

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

I think it's fine. You can probably get a compatible motherboard quite cheap as you have no need for an ISA slot as you have no need for it anyway.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:34:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:50:

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:45:

Have you looked into that history with NT4? Family 8 would be 1000 in binary and... some things that only look at 3 bits might be very unhappy with that. I think that's why they picked 15 (1111) for P4, that way NT4 looking at 3 bits would see 111 and be happy.

But I guess that doesn't explain whose code on Itanium had these limitations? Just because 8 was bad for x86 doesn't explain why 8 is bad for IA-64...

I'm sitting here laughing at the stupidity of this ...though this is Microsoft here so it doesn't surprise me they couldnt have found an elegant work around for it.

As for Itanium ...best we forget it existed, it bombed so hard even Intel refuses to acknowledge it exists and that's very telling.

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the HP server space. (HP was the main driver for Itanium to start with, realistically if HP had dropped it earlier when its performance numbers simply didn't make it commercially viable Intel would have also dropped it well before its 2019 EOL date)

I've read a lot about Itanium so lets not make it out to be something it wasn't .. it was a bomb in every way and a 19 year life span on contract based life support . .does it really count when even your own parents forget you exist and move on?

Thank god AMD had the right sense of mind to simply attach x64 extensions to x86 and not try to reinvent a perfectly good wheel.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:22:

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the server sapce. […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:34:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 13:50:

I'm sitting here laughing at the stupidity of this ...though this is Microsoft here so it doesn't surprise me they couldnt have found an elegant work around for it.

As for Itanium ...best we forget it existed, it bombed so hard even Intel refuses to acknowledge it exists and that's very telling.

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the server sapce.

I've read a lot about Itanium so lets not make it out to be something it wasn't .. it was a bomb in every way and a 19 year life span on contract based life support . .does it really count when even your own parents forget you exist and move on?

Thank god AMD had the right sense of mind to simply attach x64 extensions to x86 and not try to reinvent a perfectly good wheel.

Who is making it out to be something it wasnt?
It did have a 19 year life span.
Ive read up on them too, and their uses.

X86-64 was without a doubt the best way to go in the consumer space because it was so much cheaper and easier to roll out.

It was doomed to failure in the consumer space because it was incompatible with everything else that had come before. So no carrying over any of your old software to it.
Its not a system that will ever find any fans in a place like this because you cant play games on it in the same way as any x86 system.

If you have read up on it then you will know it did find its uses in certain places. And it was those places that kept it alive for 19 years.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:40:

Who is making it out to be something it wasnt? It did have a 19 year life span. Ive read up on them too, and their uses. […]
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Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:22:

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the server sapce. […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:34:

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the server sapce.

I've read a lot about Itanium so lets not make it out to be something it wasn't .. it was a bomb in every way and a 19 year life span on contract based life support . .does it really count when even your own parents forget you exist and move on?

Thank god AMD had the right sense of mind to simply attach x64 extensions to x86 and not try to reinvent a perfectly good wheel.

Who is making it out to be something it wasnt?
It did have a 19 year life span.
Ive read up on them too, and their uses.

X86-64 was without a doubt the best way to go in the consumer space because it was so much cheaper and easier to roll out.

It was doomed to failure in the consumer space because it was incompatible with everything else that had come before. So no carrying over any of your old software to it.
Its not a system that will ever find any fans in a place like this because you cant play games on it in the same way as any x86 system.

If you have read up on it then you will know it did find its uses in certain places. And it was those places that kept it alive for 19 years.

HP was paying Intel to keep Itanium alive, That is the only reason it lasted 19 years . .MONEY and Hubris and certainly not sales of very niche server systems.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:31:

But you shouldn't be afraid of W98. It can work very reliably if you know how to set it up. Also, you don't use a retro PC as a general purpose PC. Installing and uninstalling all kinds of software and hardware. Just set it up to let's say play retro games and not much else. That also improves long term reliability of the OS.

In my view, the real reliability problem of Win98 on good hardware was the system resources issue - if you were lucky to have an always-on Internet connection in 2000, well, good luck doing some multitasking and not really running out of system resources within a few hours.

But... who cares on a retro system? You're not going to multitask ICQ and AIM and mIRC and an email client and RealPuker and three web browser windows and whatever else you would have had open on your main system in 2000.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:34:

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

A 19 year lifespan is... low... for what it was intended to do.

Look at its competitors - the IBM mainframe architecture (now zArchitecture) has been around for 60 years. AS/400, now IBM i, has been around for 35 and still fully supported. That's the sphere Itanium was supposed to play in first - super-serious, more-serious-than-*NIX, business systems. The kind that run custom code for big corporations, infrastructure projects, and other things that aren't measured on a 10 year lifecycle.

And Itanium was intended to be, at least by HP, a platform that would take its super-serious platforms and those it acquired (indirectly) from DEC forward infinitely. Instead it crashed and burned within 10 years and stumbled along for a while.

The irony is, Itanium really proved the wisdom of the 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' crowd. If you picked AS/400 in the early 1990s, great, fully supported, you have a forward roadmap. If you picked VAX, well, congratulations, I hope you enjoy running OpenVMS on your x64 hypervisor after DEC/Compaq/HP dragged you through Alpha and Itanium.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:40:

It was doomed to failure in the consumer space because it was incompatible with everything else that had come before. So no carrying over any of your old software to it.

Well, it was intended to do something more similar to what Apple (and in other ways IBM and others) etc had done before - replace a platform with a different one. Put in a software emulation layer that lets old applications temporarily run, and move forward. Get rid of all the legacy junk (BIOS, MBR, ISA, all the stuff integrated into south bridges that's emulating a 1981 IBM PC, etc).

But the PC world doesn't evolve the way Mac world (or IBM world) does. In Mac world (or AS/400 world, or IBM mainframe world), the hardware and the OS evolve together - you don't make a PPC Mac pretend to be a 68K Mac in hardware to boot System 6 because, well, System 7.1.2 with a 68K emulator ships the same day as the PPC Mac and no one expects the PPC Mac to boot any OS prior to 7.1.2. The PC world evolves through a series of ugly hacks that basically let new hardware pretend to be faster old hardware until the software evolves enough to take advantage the newer hardware's abilities. You see that, for example, in the number of 386s that went to the e-waste pile having never run a protected mode OS (just DOS 6 and maybe Win3.x), and the number of C2Ds that went to the e-waste pile having never run a 64-bit OS. And amd64 was consistent with that model.

If AMD hadn't come around and provided the PC industry with a more typical transition path to 64-bit (i.e. 'add a secret 64-bit mode to processors that run 32-bit software better than yesterday's processors'), who knows what would have happened. I suspect Itanium would have still flopped. The problem, really, is that if you are Dell or Lenovo, you want to sell computers today that run your customers' software better/faster than their existing 3-5 year computers do, and a transition with an emulation layer doesn't do that unless the new architecture has a seriously huge performance advantage over the old.

Apple has a relationship with both their customers and their developers where they can say to people buying the first-gen PPC or Intel or ARM machines "yes, performance on your old software will be a little worse than if you had bought our flagship last year, but don't worry, the ecosystem will recompile their code and you'll get great results from this hardware in 6-18 months." PC ecosystem doesn't work that way, and certainly Dell/Lenovo/etc are unwilling to put their necks on the line on the assumption that the rest of the ecosystem will fully support a big architectural change in 6-18 months.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-07, 16:06:

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:31:

But you shouldn't be afraid of W98. It can work very reliably if you know how to set it up. Also, you don't use a retro PC as a general purpose PC. Installing and uninstalling all kinds of software and hardware. Just set it up to let's say play retro games and not much else. That also improves long term reliability of the OS.

In my view, the real reliability problem of Win98 on good hardware was the system resources issue - if you were lucky to have an always-on Internet connection in 2000, well, good luck doing some multitasking and not really running out of system resources within a few hours.

But... who cares on a retro system? You're not going to multitask ICQ and AIM and mIRC and an email client and RealPuker and three web browser windows and whatever else you would have had open on your main system in 2000.

Agree. If you don’t push W98 too much, it works just fine and on my retro setups I have had zero issues. I also use it with 98lite micro install on my Tulip P166MMX, because it provides all the benefits from 98SE with 95 performance.

GreenBook wrote on 2024-09-07, 05:50:

Hello :) […]
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Hello 😀

I've got a question about processor Pentium3.

When I was young I dreamed of a Pc with P3. I had P2. And now i wanna building retro Pc based on P3 processor.
I don't like Win98 because It reminds me of the nightmare of blue screens. Therefore I want to use WinXp. I know that better option for Xp gaming is Core2Duo or i5 secend generation but I care about a specific processor model : Pentium 3.

I dream of going into the properties of "my computer" and seeing the words "Pentium 3". I consider buying a P3 processor in the 500-866 (mhz) range. I noticed that the P3 500mhz has a built-in cooling system, which would be a big help. I don't know what motherboard to look for for the Pentium3 processor. Google won't tell you which ones are recommended. Is it true that Win98 is not compatible with USB 2.0? And to use USB 1.0 do you first need to install the appropriate drivers?

The main question is how bad or good Windows Xp will be work?

I'm in a similar situation, with a Socket 370 build in progress. Currently it has a Celeron 700 and Windows 2000, but I plan to upgrade it to a PIII coppermine 1000 (maybe even coppermine T for the added safety of IHS), and I was thinking if it was worth to ditch Windows 2000 and go with XP, or just be safe and use 2000. So I've read around, even on this forum, about PIII and XP.

Now you don't have a mobo alredy, and that's an advantage I didn't have. I had one alredy and didn't want to get a new one, and mine is compatible only up to Coppermine T. If you manage to get a MOBO that support Tualatin, you can go even faster, since those PIII easily outperformec first gen P4.
So, my suggestion is to look at The Retro Web for a MOBO compatible with Tualatin PIII and get one the top of those.

XP should run just fine, just test every Service Pack on its own and evaluate performance loss between them. SP3 may be a little too much even for a top of the line PIII. On the PIII 1000 I plan to get I would't go over SP1, or even just stick with 2000: games and software that will run on a PIII XP will also run on windows 2000, so it boils down to an aesthetic decision.

Cooling shouldn't be such big of an issue: PIIIs used very little power, especially when compared to contemporary Athlons, thus even a modern cooler compatible with socket 370 will do the job. Just watch out for the fan, it may be a noisy one. In that case you can get the bigger heatsing you find and put a nice noctua fan on it.

I ran Windows XP on a Celeron 1.3 GHz (Tualatin), 768 MB of SDRAM , and a Radeon 7500 back in the day. I used that configuration as my daily driver for nearly 5 years. It ran Windows XP with all updates quite well.

Used a P3 800/133 with 192 MB of memory as 2nd home PC until give or take 2009, then I got 256 MB in it and reached maybe 2012, wasn't that bad actually between XP and Debian (though sure, you could notice the SP2+ difference) - less worse than the P4 Celeron with 512 MB running Win7 I had in my main home as my good PC broke for sure!

(off topic)
As for 9x's stability... always been about the chinesium drivers, even today (install 8+ on a typical C2D laptop with an Intel 4965 wifi card and it will crash quite faster than 9x's guaranteed maximum month or so of uptime, I promise, and this one isn't just a WHQL certified driver but one actively distributed by MS)

Having ran many Pentium 3 and similar era systems in the late 2000's and well into the mid-to-early 2010's, here's my 2 cents.

1) Windows XP is more than FINE for a Pentium 3. Even the slowest P3 will actually perform just about as well under XP as it would under Windows 9x. Perhaps in games, there might be some difference in FPS (depending on the video card and drivers you use... but I wouldn't fret too much about it). Games aside, there's nothing CPU-heavy about Windows XP compared to older Windows (at least once you go past Pentium II)... OK, I take that back and revise it: there's nothing CPU-heavy about Windows XP *IF* you turn off all of the stupid visual crap, like fading of menus, animation of minimizing and maximazing windows (ugh! I always hate this crap), shadow under menus/mouse/ etc. Basically, just run classic UI on Windows XP and it will not be heavy on the CPU at all. With that said, there's really no need to go for the absolute top-end (and expensive) Tualatin CPUs. Yes, they are nice, but not worth the high price when a 800-1000 MHz P3 will do quite well in most cases. Even anything in the 600-933 MHz class will be plenty fast and should allow you to run a good deal of software from the early and mid-2000's.

2) In regards to RAM: contrary to some of the posts here, I will say that you do NOT need a ton... but you do need enough.
For Windows XP SP2, 256 MB will be... adequate to run the system, but not let you multi-task or open too many programs at once (or one RAM-heavy program.) 384 MB (128 + 256 MB stick for boards with only 2 slots) will be a little better. But if you can, try to go for 512 MB right from the start. More than that would be better... but probably unnecessary. And here's why: you really only need more than 512 MB if you plan to browse the (basic) web (yes, you can do it with a Pentium 3 and 512 MB of RAM, and it isn't the most terrible of an experience, though certainly one that requires a bit more patience) -OR- if you intend to play some 2003 and older games. In case of the former (browsing the web), I don't see many people building retro PCs particularly for that reason, so I imagine that won't be your case use here. And for games newer than 2003 - those will not only be heavier on the RAM but also on the CPU and GPU too. So with that said, going past 512 MB on a P3, IME, is not really worth it. Also, as VivienM mentioned above, going beyond 512-768 MB of RAM can actually become quite a challenge, because Intel i810/i815 chipset is limited to 512 MB of RAM, and 440*X is limited to 768 MB. Thus, you would either need some kind of a server motherboard that uses ECC/REG RAM or some rare unicorn board that can support 512 MB SDRAM sticks... which is pretty silly IMO, if all you want is a plain old Pentium 3 PC that can run XP. It might be worth it only if you're doing it just to brag / show off or as part of completing a personal collection.

3) Don't be afraid of XP Service Pack 3! Everyone here seems to imply that SP3 will slow downs stuff to a crawl and "eat all ur ramz". NO! SP3 is merely SP2 with a few security updates on there... and a few changes/additions (some of which are annoying, but can be reverted back, like Explorer asking you every time if you're OK with opening "unknown"/locked files - a common annoyance with some downloaded MP3's and similar files.) There's a few good fixes in SP3, too, though (like Explorer remembering a much bigger number of custom views for your folders, which is sometime I frequently maxed out in the past.) Apart from that, I get about the same performance under SP3 as I do in SP2, at least for non-gaming purposes. So depending on the use case of your P3 build, you may or may not want SP3. SP3 is good (in fact, NECESSARY) if you intent to connect that machine to the Internet. With bone-stock SP2, there are still a few viruses and worms roaming around that can infect your PC (DownAdUp is one of these, and it's almost instant as soon as you get online, which is why MS released a special update to prevent this... I can get the KB# later, if anyone is really that interested to know.) So in short: if you want internet browsing capability, you will need either SP2 with that special update or SP3. For old software or retro gaming -only purposes (no online use), then SP2 will suffice. In any case, I do NOT recommend going with anything less than SP2. MS really fixed a lot of bugs with the SP2 update, so I just can't see any justification for going with anything lower (a few rare exceptions aside, like PAE being enabled by default with original / pre-SP1 XP releases.)

Oh, and just to get an idea how far a PIII could go, here's a relatively brief list of my PCs and what I used them for.

-- Dell Latitude C600: Intel Penium 3 850 MHz @ 700 MHz ("downclocked" in BIOS option for silent fan operation), 512 MB of RAM, 20 GB HDD, Windows XP SP2 + a few security updates. <--- this was my "main" laptop for 8 solid years! I got it in 2010 midway through college as a freebie and used it for school-related stuff and "light" browsing until 2018. Would have probably gone an extra year, but the HDD corrupted some OS files, so that was the end of it... at least as a "main" laptop. I've since restored this laptop and still use it for looking up datasheets online (under Windows XP SP3 with Serpent and New Moon browsers) and burning/copying CDs.

-- HP Pavilion 8756c: Intel Pentium 3 850 MHz @ 850 MHz, 384 MB of RAM (the max the mobo can take), 30 GB IBM Deskstar, Windows XP SP2 + security update. <-- similar to the C600 laptop above, this was my "main" desktop for the first 2-3 years in college, spanning from approximately 2009 until late 2012. Past 2012, I relegated it as a secondary PC. Just as a reference, back when I got this machine in 2009, I could still watch Youtube with it at 360p without chopiness, using Opera 10 (Presto Engine) and later Firefox 24 with forced Flashplayer plugin (instead of the "new and efficient" HTML5). Of course, it all quickly went away as the web kept getting more bloated every day, like it still does today. Web-browsing aside, I had no problems using this PC for any college-related software. Of course, this was also the time before online classes and video courses were popular. But in terms of software, I did all my coding, circuit designing, and word typing on this machine, and it was FINE at it. It was also fine for 480p/DVD video watching.

-- custom Pentium 3 PC with 933 MHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, 100 GB HDD, Radeon 9600 (prior cards were Radeon 7200 and 7000), and Windows XP SP2. <--- this one has a different use from the above 2 machines. For many years, I used it as a data backup PC - mainly holding only a copy of important files, pictures, and music, mirroring my main PC. And also used for some retro gaming too. Latest games it has are Mafia and Need For Speed Underground, both of which work acceptably well at 1024x768, thanks to the Radeon 9600.

Apart from the 3 machines above, I have 2 more P3 machines and also an Athlon slot-A based rig from the same era and performance range. These were used for messing about it, mostly... and torrenting, back when that was popular. 😁 (So yes, all of these were also connected to the Internet and used for light [torrent site] browsing.) All XP SP2 machines too.

So to put it in less words, I think I've had enough Pentium 3 machines with Windows XP (SP2) that I can say it performs fine with it. 😀

momaka wrote on 2024-09-07, 21:40:

For Windows XP SP2, 256 MB will be... adequate to run the system, but not let you multi-task or open too many programs at once (or one RAM-heavy program.) 384 MB (128 + 256 MB stick for boards with only 2 slots) will be a little better. But if you can, try to go for 512 MB right from the start. More than that would be better... but probably unnecessary. And here's why: you really only need more than 512 MB if you plan to browse the (basic) web (yes, you can do it with a Pentium 3 and 512 MB of RAM, and it isn't the most terrible of an experience, though certainly one that requires a bit more patience) -OR- if you intend to play some 2003 and older games. In case of the former (browsing the web), I don't see many people building retro PCs particularly for that reason, so I imagine that won't be your case use here. And for games newer than 2003 - those will not only be heavier on the RAM but also on the CPU and GPU too. So with that said, going past 512 MB on a P3, IME, is not really worth it. Also, as VivienM mentioned above, going beyond 512-768 MB of RAM can actually become quite a challenge, because Intel i810/i815 chipset is limited to 512 MB of RAM, and 440*X is limited to 768 MB.

One observation on RAM: OWC (seller of all kinds of interesting things for Macs, including vintage ones) is selling brand new 256MB PC133 SDRAM DIMMs for $8.79USD/pop + shipping. They also have 512MB DDR1 for US$7.99.

(Note to mods: I am not affiliated with them other than being a happy client who bought some RAM for a vintage Mac laptop.)

I don't know who else sells RAM for vintage machines and at what prices, but when you can basically max out any vintage system's memory for that small a cost, I think any PIII being used for anything other than 98SE should have 512/768MB (depending on chipset). Probably costs more to try and buy a PATA cable than to max out the RAM...

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:52:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:40:

Who is making it out to be something it wasnt? It did have a 19 year life span. Ive read up on them too, and their uses. […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:22:

Commercially sure .. but even then it wasn't exactly talked about or even supported terribly well outside of the server sapce.

I've read a lot about Itanium so lets not make it out to be something it wasn't .. it was a bomb in every way and a 19 year life span on contract based life support . .does it really count when even your own parents forget you exist and move on?

Thank god AMD had the right sense of mind to simply attach x64 extensions to x86 and not try to reinvent a perfectly good wheel.

Who is making it out to be something it wasnt?
It did have a 19 year life span.
Ive read up on them too, and their uses.

X86-64 was without a doubt the best way to go in the consumer space because it was so much cheaper and easier to roll out.

It was doomed to failure in the consumer space because it was incompatible with everything else that had come before. So no carrying over any of your old software to it.
Its not a system that will ever find any fans in a place like this because you cant play games on it in the same way as any x86 system.

If you have read up on it then you will know it did find its uses in certain places. And it was those places that kept it alive for 19 years.

HP was paying Intel to keep Itanium alive, That is the only reason it lasted 19 years . .MONEY and Hubris and certainly not sales of very niche server systems.

Still lasted 19 years though.

In the arena it was used it it wasnt the the failure you make it out to be.
Everywhere else it was, sure, but it did find its uses in a spercific arena.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-07, 16:13:

A 19 year lifespan is... low... for what it was intended to do. […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 14:34:

Yeah it bombed so hard it only had a 19 year life span!

A 19 year lifespan is... low... for what it was intended to do.

Look at its competitors - the IBM mainframe architecture (now zArchitecture) has been around for 60 years. AS/400, now IBM i, has been around for 35 and still fully supported. That's the sphere Itanium was supposed to play in first - super-serious, more-serious-than-*NIX, business systems. The kind that run custom code for big corporations, infrastructure projects, and other things that aren't measured on a 10 year lifecycle.

And Itanium was intended to be, at least by HP, a platform that would take its super-serious platforms and those it acquired (indirectly) from DEC forward infinitely. Instead it crashed and burned within 10 years and stumbled along for a while.

The irony is, Itanium really proved the wisdom of the 'nobody ever got fired for buying IBM' crowd. If you picked AS/400 in the early 1990s, great, fully supported, you have a forward roadmap. If you picked VAX, well, congratulations, I hope you enjoy running OpenVMS on your x64 hypervisor after DEC/Compaq/HP dragged you through Alpha and Itanium.

19 years isnt bad for an utter failure.

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-07, 16:28:

Well, it was intended to do something more similar to what Apple (and in other ways IBM and others) etc had done before - replac […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2024-09-07, 15:40:

It was doomed to failure in the consumer space because it was incompatible with everything else that had come before. So no carrying over any of your old software to it.

Well, it was intended to do something more similar to what Apple (and in other ways IBM and others) etc had done before - replace a platform with a different one. Put in a software emulation layer that lets old applications temporarily run, and move forward. Get rid of all the legacy junk (BIOS, MBR, ISA, all the stuff integrated into south bridges that's emulating a 1981 IBM PC, etc).

But the PC world doesn't evolve the way Mac world (or IBM world) does. In Mac world (or AS/400 world, or IBM mainframe world), the hardware and the OS evolve together - you don't make a PPC Mac pretend to be a 68K Mac in hardware to boot System 6 because, well, System 7.1.2 with a 68K emulator ships the same day as the PPC Mac and no one expects the PPC Mac to boot any OS prior to 7.1.2. The PC world evolves through a series of ugly hacks that basically let new hardware pretend to be faster old hardware until the software evolves enough to take advantage the newer hardware's abilities. You see that, for example, in the number of 386s that went to the e-waste pile having never run a protected mode OS (just DOS 6 and maybe Win3.x), and the number of C2Ds that went to the e-waste pile having never run a 64-bit OS. And amd64 was consistent with that model.

If AMD hadn't come around and provided the PC industry with a more typical transition path to 64-bit (i.e. 'add a secret 64-bit mode to processors that run 32-bit software better than yesterday's processors'), who knows what would have happened. I suspect Itanium would have still flopped. The problem, really, is that if you are Dell or Lenovo, you want to sell computers today that run your customers' software better/faster than their existing 3-5 year computers do, and a transition with an emulation layer doesn't do that unless the new architecture has a seriously huge performance advantage over the old.

Apple has a relationship with both their customers and their developers where they can say to people buying the first-gen PPC or Intel or ARM machines "yes, performance on your old software will be a little worse than if you had bought our flagship last year, but don't worry, the ecosystem will recompile their code and you'll get great results from this hardware in 6-18 months." PC ecosystem doesn't work that way, and certainly Dell/Lenovo/etc are unwilling to put their necks on the line on the assumption that the rest of the ecosystem will fully support a big architectural change in 6-18 months.

Here are the key intended use cases for Itanium CPUs:

1. Enterprise Servers
Mission-Critical Applications: Itanium processors were primarily aimed at large-scale enterprise environments running mission-critical applications such as financial services, telecommunications, and government operations. These applications required high availability, fault tolerance, and robust performance.
Database Servers: Itanium was designed for enterprise-level database workloads, such as those involving Oracle Database, SQL Server, and IBM DB2. These servers needed to handle large amounts of transactions and data processing with high throughput and reliability.
Data Centers: Itanium targeted data centers where large-scale virtualization, database workloads, and high-performance computing (HPC) were needed.

2. Scientific Computing and High-Performance Computing (HPC)
Technical Workstations: Itanium was initially marketed as a solution for technical and engineering workstations used in industries like oil and gas, aerospace, and scientific research, where floating-point computation and high-level data processing were essential.
Supercomputing: With its 64-bit architecture and support for parallel processing, Itanium was also targeted at supercomputing environments that required large-scale simulations and complex calculations.

3. Mainframe Replacements and UNIX Workloads
UNIX Servers: One of Itanium’s primary goals was to replace traditional RISC-based (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architectures such as IBM’s PowerPC, Sun Microsystems’ SPARC, and HP’s PA-RISC, which were commonly used in UNIX servers. Itanium was aimed at providing an alternative to these systems while running UNIX-based operating systems like HP-UX and Linux.
Mainframe Migration: Itanium was also marketed as a platform that could offer mainframe-level reliability and scalability, serving as an alternative for companies migrating from proprietary mainframe systems to more open computing environments.

4. Scalable Multi-Processor Systems
Large-Scale SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) Systems: Itanium was designed to scale well in systems with many processors, making it ideal for large-scale shared-memory multiprocessor (SMP) systems. These systems could handle workloads requiring massive parallel processing, such as scientific simulations and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

5. Virtualization and Consolidation
Server Consolidation: As part of its high-end enterprise target, Itanium processors were also aimed at enabling server consolidation, allowing multiple virtual machines to run on fewer physical servers. This was intended to reduce the cost and complexity of data centers by using virtualization technologies.

6. Software Development for 64-bit Architectures
64-bit Application Development: As one of the early 64-bit architectures, Itanium was intended to encourage the development of software that could take advantage of larger memory address spaces and improved performance for certain types of calculations (such as floating-point operations), particularly in technical and scientific applications.

Thank you all very much for your help and participation in the discussion. I didn't expect so many valuable comments. This forum is great.

My friend told me that he a long time ago had Pc with Celeron 500mhz, 128mb ram and WinXp.

Apparently Windows XP worked fine for his Pc, but only with SP1. After installing SP2, Windows XP was running slowly.

I think about P3 800mhz, 512mb ram and GF2mx, GF4Ti4200 or Radeon 9xxx. Depending on what I will find cheaper.

I don't want to connect the Internet to this computer but apart from a special program for download drivers from the Internet, I don't have any idea to completed drivers.