Okay, well guys I have yet another project to resurrect. My old windows 2k tower from my childhood. it has a pII with windows 95 and a 16mb video card with on-board "chrystal" sound card.
Perhaps a good time to upgrade it a bit first? PII is a little slow for 2k (though it's more about how much memory your system has).
No, it's a gateway 200 with windows 95. I'm going pure stock with one.
But a Gateway 200 is ~1997, its appropriate OS is indeed 95 or 98, installing 2000 on it is pointless, unless you want it to crawl. 16 MB of RAM is under the minimum of 32MB for Windows 2000, and even then you should be at least over the recommended 64MB...
IMO, this is pointless and borderline dumb. Get a good P3/P4 from around 2000-2002 for cheap as this IS an appropriate machine to run Windows 2000. What you are doing is basically like insisting on running Win98 on a 486, for the sake of going "pure stock with that one", whatever that means.
wrote:like insisting on running Win98 on a 486
Huh? You say that like it's a bad idea.
16mb of ram? I'd think twice about windows 95...
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
I have ever run 2000 in my Pentium 166 with 64MB RAM, and, well, it's so slow. 98 seems to be a great choice for an 1997 computer.
ps. ME also runs as slow as 2000, and it lacks NT-programs compatibility, so I'd better avoid that.
ps2. Dosquest stated that he had 16mb video card , not 16MB RAM... so I think the computer should have more RAM than 16MB, unless it has never been upgraded (my 1997 Pentium 166 comes with 8MB preinstalled).
wrote:I have ever run 2000 in my Pentium 166 with 64MB RAM, and, well, it's so slow. 98 seems to be a great choice for an 1997 computer.
Agreed 😀
For 97 I'd prefer 98SE (or perhaps NT4 if you're willing to go that route...for whatever reason 😜).
wrote:ps. ME also runs as slow as 2000, and it lacks NT-programs compatibility, so I'd better avoid that.
Personally I like using ME. It's definitely not as slow as 2k. ME runs fine on a 400Mhz any-cpu with at least 192MB ram.
ME should run fine with just 128MB and in theory it can run on less of course, but personally I try to give ME at least 128MB (though 192+ MB is better).
I've found 2k didn't run as I'd like till much more capable rigs, at which time I'd prefer XP anyway.
We had a discussion about 2k and it's usefulness and come to the general opinion that, nowdays, 2k doesn't fill any niche as well as ME, 98SE, 95 or XP do (apart from a very few very specific cases that have to do with hardware compatibility).
Apart from that, the only 2 reasons I can see for using 2k are:
1)For some reason you don't/can't use XP,
2)You want 2k
So far I've used the following OS's in this way:
95 - Only used once, on an old 486 rig of mine (unstable, but proly many causes)
98SE - Once or twice. I'm somewhat unfamiliar with 98SE and it requires more tweaking when out of the box (no USB mass storage driver is one major pain).
Usually I'll pick 98SE over ME if the board doesn't cache more then 64MB
And the cpu? Basically anything I can get away with 😜
ME - My favorite 9x OS. I typically use it on systems with at least:
400Mhz (ME runs fine on a 400Mhz Celeron and 400Mhz K6-III)
192MB ram (192MB is my personal limit, it's not for any specific reason apart from my own)
10GB harddrive, though ME can work on a partition thats at least 1GB (take 2GB jsut to be safe).
XP - My fav OS, preferred over ME for it's stability and because it's much more modern.
Tetrium's minimum system req:
800Mhz cpu (Coppermine or Athlon)
384MB ram (though >=512mb is better. 1GB is even better then that...etc 🤣 😜)
20GB harddrive, all reserved for XP if I intend to use it on the internet.
If no internet, then a 5GB to 10GB partition should be sufficient.
As you noticed, I'm not listing any graphics cards, because that depends more on your own taste. XP and S3 Virge PCI will run fine except for drawing windows more slowly.
If I were to use 2k ever, I'd probably pick a relatively fast harddrive (compared to the rest of the system, as 2k has a slow boot I think. ME has a fast boot and a VERY fast shutdown!).
cpu could be anything from, say, 166Mhz (but would prefer at least a 500Mhz Katmai or Coppermine) but 2k needs a lot of ram!
I'd probably try getting 256MB at the least.
Hmmm....I got an idea for a new topic me thinks 😁
wrote:So far I've used the following OS's in this way: 95 - Only used once, on an old 486 rig of mine (unstable, but proly many causes […]
So far I've used the following OS's in this way:
95 - Only used once, on an old 486 rig of mine (unstable, but proly many causes)
98SE - Once or twice. I'm somewhat unfamiliar with 98SE and it requires more tweaking when out of the box (no USB mass storage driver is one major pain).
Usually I'll pick 98SE over ME if the board doesn't cache more then 64MB
And the cpu? Basically anything I can get away with 😜
A note about USB on 98SE...NUSB 3.3 works great for that and fits on a floppy disk (like 700ish K)! Its at easy to install windows, then install NUSB 3.3 and away you go. I keep a 16GB USB drive with all drivers and apps and its the only way to go.
I never really played or installed ME on any of my own systems (until recently). I Have fixed a few ME installs for others in the past. It does have the plus of USB support but then fails a bit for drivers that tend to have issues. It seems to really hate my D-link NIC card drivers to name a few. Then the whole having to unhide DOS really stinks as it wouldn't work well for me. PCHealth wasn't worth the upgrade. Lastly It's not as easy to dual-boot 98SE with like XP.
For 2k, the drawbacks to me are unoptimized support for Hyperthreading and Multicore support. I always had performance issues with my P4 3.0E w/HT and games like Quake 4 supporting titles. Other drawback would be DOS again. I used Win2k with a P3 1.13GHz Tualatin back in the day with a Geforce 3 Ti200, loved it. Once I built my P4 3.0E and a Geforce 5700 Ultra I went XP and didn't look back.
As for the OP's specs, I'd PLUS one to 98SE.
wrote:A note about USB on 98SE...NUSB 3.3 works great for that and fits on a floppy disk (like 700ish K)! Its at easy to install windows, then install NUSB 3.3 and away you go. I keep a 16GB USB drive with all drivers and apps and its the only way to go.
I'm aware of this. Basically theres lots of tweaks around that make 98SE more like ME and tweaks that make ME more like 98SE. It's a matter of taste mostly I think.
