A Silly New Years Project: Windows 7 on a GX110 \ VOGONS

A Silly New Years Project: Windows 7 on a GX110

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First post, by detritus olentus

Posted on 2019-01-02, 05:58

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Because why not? I was off from work with nothing to do all day so I went over to Microcenter on the other side of Philly and picked myself up the cheapest SSD and a PCI SATA card. The process means having to install Windows XP and then launching setup from XP with the Windows 7 DVD. It didn't even take that long, I was expecting more lengthy install times but maybe the SSD helped with that. It it surprisingly usable everything considered (so long as it isn't graphically demanding) and I took it on-line briefly with a bridged connection from my laptop to check for driver updates. Was using the no SSE version of the backported New Moon (née Palemoon) for browsing which it does alright but multiple tabs start to bog it down. Have all of the operating system effects save for text smoothing shut off and the color knocked down to 16 bit. Managed to strip the home premium HP OEM key from my broken college laptop and use phone activation to make it official. Even tried a little cable management. And look at that outstanding windows experience index!

Specs: Dell Optiplex GX110
-Pentium 3 933MHz
-512MB PC100 ram
-16MB TNT2 graphics (its the only PCI I've got)
-120GB Inland Professional SSD (microcenter house brand?)
-SYBA SATA controller

https://archive.org/details/@detritus_olentus
Philly Burbs.

Reply 1 of 14, by appiah4

Posted on 2019-01-02, 10:17

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That poster in the background is incredibly fitting for this build's photo.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 2 of 14, by gca

Posted on 2019-01-02, 12:16

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Not as silly as you might think. I have had Win7 running on an IBM X20. As you can see from the (very poor, sorry) image attached it is even more underpowered than the GX110.

I didn't do this on purpose though. I simply swapped the drive from another machine and missed the prompt to select the boot device. Surprised it didn't BSOD immediately.

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Reply 3 of 14, by oeuvre

Posted on 2019-01-02, 13:54

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HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7

Reply 4 of 14, by detritus olentus

Posted on 2019-01-02, 17:26

detritus olentus Offline

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I simply swapped the drive from another machine and missed the prompt to select the boot device

I think I'm just as impressed by the fact that you moved a drive with an NT based windows to a new PC and had it boot as I am with the specs.

https://archive.org/details/@detritus_olentus
Philly Burbs.

Reply 5 of 14, by Errius

Posted on 2019-01-02, 22:01

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PCMark 7 scores plx

thx.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 6 of 14, by Mr. horse

Posted on 2019-01-03, 01:54

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Errius wrote:
PCMark 7 scores plx

thx.

ohh I have to second this.

No sir I don't like it!

Reply 7 of 14, by detritus olentus

Posted on 2019-01-03, 05:17

detritus olentus Offline

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I've never done it before, did I do it right?

https://www.3dmark.com/pcm7/1168987

https://archive.org/details/@detritus_olentus
Philly Burbs.

Reply 8 of 14, by Cbb

Posted on 2019-01-03, 08:27

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Dell's GX series are the great machines, but, as an owner of several older gx models, I can say that in this one the most valuable thing is the case. with another mainboard (bx/lx/tx/hx/fx/ppro based) and riser card you can get 4 isa and 4 pci slots (total 7, because one isa slot is combined with pci). for retrogaming it comes very handy.
I use in my gx1 800mhz p-3 or I can switch to 233mhz p-2 (350mhz @66fsb), so the system range is very wide. the only thing it misses is an AGP slot, c'EST la vie...
I don't have any faster slot1 CPU, but I'm still looking for p-3 1000/100 at reasonable price 😉

Reply 9 of 14, by oeuvre

Posted on 2019-01-03, 13:39

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Technically the onboard ATI uses AGP...

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7

Reply 10 of 14, by appiah4

Posted on 2019-01-03, 14:47

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oeuvre wrote:
Technically the onboard ATI uses AGP...

Yeah, and the GX110 has i752 on the AGP bus.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 11 of 14, by Errius

Posted on 2019-01-03, 14:58

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detritus olentus wrote:
I've never done it before, did I do it right?

https://www.3dmark.com/pcm7/1168987

I've never seen that before on PCMark 7. I have seen it happen on PCMark Vantage on certain hardware setups. I don't know if it's a bug or just does this by default on under-specced systems.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 12 of 14, by dr.ido

Posted on 2019-01-05, 13:53

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No pics, but I once installed Win 7 on a Via C3 800MHz with 256MB ram. I did have to install more ram to get it through the install, but once the install finished I pulled the extra RAM and it would boot to desktop without crashing. I still have one of the same systems in storage somewhere, maybe I should try it again. I wonder if I still have any Win 7 installers left that are old enough - I vaugely remember needing a patched installer to get past some known issue with 7 on that motherboard, CPU or chipset.

Reply 13 of 14, by PcBytes

Posted on 2019-01-05, 19:08

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I installed Vista and eventually 7 on a Pentium 3 1.2GHz w/ 512MB RAM so nothing exciting. It was a Dell Inspiron 4100 if I recall correctly.

Most of the stuff worked except no Aero functionality because Radeon Mobility 7000 GPU.

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 14 of 14, by StevOnehundred

Posted on 2019-01-05, 19:55

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detritus olentus wrote:

I think I'm just as impressed by the fact that you moved a drive with an NT based windows to a new PC and had it boot as I am with the specs.

A few weeks ago I moved an OEM XP installation from an SiS 761GX mobo to an Intel 945 mobo and was astonished that it booted first time. I didn't think such things were possible and was fully expecting to do a repair install to get it running.

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