so what board did you try to install it on? the first video is an emulator so disregard it, the other videos show ss7 boards with ACPI cabable BIOSes, which is what win7 apparently requires. try a BIOS update.

auron wrote on 2021-02-04, 04:08:

so what board did you try to install it on? the first video is an emulator so disregard it, the other videos show ss7 boards with ACPI cabable BIOSes, which is what win7 apparently requires. try a BIOS update.

I’ve tried every version I can find. I’m on a 430tx motherboard 256mb ram k63+

It has a bios update and doesn’t complain on this board about acpi compliance. But on my other one it does. I have the latest bios on that one and can’t figure out how to patch it for acpi

so you got it to work on the 430tx board? you could try using that install on the dual socket board, i suppose.

ACPI is mentioned in the 430tx specs, while 430hx predates it.

auron wrote on 2021-02-04, 04:20:

so you got it to work on the 430tx board? you could try using that install on the dual socket board, i suppose.

ACPI is mentioned in the 430tx specs, while 430hx predates it.

hx board crashes as it's loading says not acpi compliant
tx board gives an error after language setting says it needs 512mb of ram

Next problem will be SSE.

Windows XP needs Pentium CMPXCHG8B instruction. So absolutely no 486.

Windows 7 needs SSE so absolutely nothing before Pentium 3. Little bit cheating, and it will run without SSE, but still need a P6 microarchitecture, so at least Pentium PRO or Pentium 2.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-02-04, 09:36:

Next problem will be SSE.

Windows XP needs Pentium CMPXCHG8B instruction. So absolutely no 486.

Windows 7 needs SSE so absolutely nothing before Pentium 3. Little bit cheating, and it will run without SSE, but still need a P6 microarchitecture, so at least Pentium PRO or Pentium 2.

The first non-Intel processor to include SSE is the Thunderbird Athlon, which comes in Slot A and Socket A variants. Even the fastest and latest Socket 7 processors, the AMD K6-2+ and K6-III+, lack SSE.

But if you install Windows 7 SP1 (slipstreamed if necessary), it will boot on a Pentium 90. That CPU doesn't even have MMX!

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 15:02:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-02-04, 09:36:

Next problem will be SSE.

Windows XP needs Pentium CMPXCHG8B instruction. So absolutely no 486.

Windows 7 needs SSE so absolutely nothing before Pentium 3. Little bit cheating, and it will run without SSE, but still need a P6 microarchitecture, so at least Pentium PRO or Pentium 2.

The first non-Intel processor to include SSE is the Thunderbird Athlon, which comes in Slot A and Socket A variants. Even the fastest and latest Socket 7 processors, the AMD K6-2+ and K6-III+, lack SSE.

But if you install Windows 7 SP1 (slipstreamed if necessary), it will boot on a Pentium 90. That CPU doesn't even have MMX!

this confuses me, sp1 removed the requirement?

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-04, 15:15:

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 15:02:

But if you install Windows 7 SP1 (slipstreamed if necessary), it will boot on a Pentium 90. That CPU doesn't even have MMX!

this confuses me, sp1 removed the requirement?

According to this post on BetaArchive, the problem is that RTM Windows 7 attempts to write a microcode register which is not present on the P5C.

In the description, they reference KB980358, a KB article relating to the issue. As it turns out, it had been a bug that was patched with a hotfix and one that is included in Service Pack 1 for Windows 7. Another hint comes in the fact that the hotfix only updates mcupdate_GenuineIntel.dll, which presumably controls the built-in microcode updates for Intel CPUs... Reading from/writing to an unimplemented MSR on an Intel CPU will usually cause a general protection fault. Windows doesn’t expect this and bugchecks as a result.

One other thing - I totally understand the urge to do something like install Windows 7 on a dual Pentium 233 board just because you can. Keep in mind that there are other things which will severely limit your enjoyment of Windows 7 on that platform. You will probably find the accelerated Aero Mode graphics unusable, even if you have a DX9-capable graphics card, because the minimum CPU requirement for that is 1 GHz. You will be stuck with older or niche web browsers, since Chrome now requires SSE3 and Firefox requires SSE2.

If you're looking to have fun with the dual Pentium 233 in particular, try Windows NT 4 SP6 or Windows 2000 SP4. They will run very nicely on that platform with multiprocessing, and you'll even be able to play some games on Windows 2000. You can go really crazy and install the DirectX 5 beta on Windows NT 4 - I did this back in the day, and it actually worked for a bunch of games.

I would also recommend trying BeOS 5 PE - it will love that system.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-02-04, 09:36:

Windows 7 needs SSE so absolutely nothing before Pentium 3. Little bit cheating, and it will run without SSE, but still need a P6 microarchitecture, so at least Pentium PRO or Pentium 2.

the ton of videos of win7 running on k6 would suggest otherwise. k6 does not have the full p6 instruction set afaik.

auron wrote on 2021-02-04, 16:21:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-02-04, 09:36:

Windows 7 needs SSE so absolutely nothing before Pentium 3. Little bit cheating, and it will run without SSE, but still need a P6 microarchitecture, so at least Pentium PRO or Pentium 2.

the ton of videos of win7 running on k6 would suggest otherwise. k6 does not have the full p6 instruction set afaik.

Specifically, the K6 lacks CMOV. From an instruction set point of view, it's a Pentium MMX (+ 3dNow if it's K6-2 or later). From a micro architectural standpoint, it's a lot more like a P6, which is why it was competitive.

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 16:13:

One other thing - I totally understand the urge to do something like install Windows 7 on a dual Pentium 233 board just because you can. Keep in mind that there are other things which will severely limit your enjoyment of Windows 7 on that platform. You will probably find the accelerated Aero Mode graphics unusable, even if you have a DX9-capable graphics card, because the minimum CPU requirement for that is 1 GHz. You will be stuck with older or niche web browsers, since Chrome now requires SSE3 and Firefox requires SSE2.

If you're looking to have fun with the dual Pentium 233 in particular, try Windows NT 4 SP6 or Windows 2000 SP4. They will run very nicely on that platform with multiprocessing, and you'll even be able to play some games on Windows 2000. You can go really crazy and install the DirectX 5 beta on Windows NT 4 - I did this back in the day, and it actually worked for a bunch of games.

I would also recommend trying BeOS 5 PE - it will love that system.

what is beos? unix? linux?

i discovered that ubuntu 10 and fedora 14 are supposed to work. gonna try them now

well just like everything else ubuntu 10 failed to load got hung up booting setup

trying again with no acpi option and all the other options whatever they mean 🤣

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-04, 18:18:

well just like everything else ubuntu 10 failed to load got hung up booting setup

trying again with no acpi option and all the other options whatever they mean 🤣

Ubuntu also wants cmov if I remember this correctly. You might have better luck with something like gparted i686 version.

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-04, 18:14:

what is beos? unix? linux?

Neither. BeOS is a multimedia-focused OS that almost became Mac OS X. In the 90s, Apple gave up on making their own next-generation OS in-house (see the Copland debacle) and decided to acquire one instead. They were choosing between BeOS and NeXTSTEP - Be was run by Jean-Louis Gassée, a former Apple executive, and NeXT was run by a certain someone with a complicated Apple history named Steve Jobs. They chose NeXT, and Be found they couldn't compete with Windows or Mac OS and folded.

Near the end, they threw a Hail Mary pass and released a free-to-use version of BeOS for x86 machines called the "Personal Edition." That's how most PC users who heard about it got to try it. Compared to contemporary competition, it booted faster, ran smoother, and just felt very modern.

Enough people fell in love with BeOS that, when it died, an open-source clone project sprang up immediately called Haiku. 20 long years later, and Haiku is nearly production-ready. It runs most BeOS apps and has been modernized and updated.

Oh very cool about the beos and haiku I may give haiku a try as it’s more modern. Would it work on 586?

So I got the installer for debian 8.11.1 to run all the way through. But it gives me an error attempt to read or write outside of disk.

Ugh..

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-04, 15:02:

The first non-Intel processor to include SSE is the Thunderbird Athlon, which comes in Slot A and Socket A variants. Even the fastest and latest Socket 7 processors, the AMD K6-2+ and K6-III+, lack SSE.

Just a little correction: The first AMD processor to include SSE on desktop is NOT the Thunderbird Athlon but Athlon XP /2nd generation Duron (Palomino, Morgan). Original Athlon and Thunderbird only included subset of integer SSE named MMX+ or extended MMX by AMD (these new instructions were the ones that used MMX registers since Athlon lacked SSE/XMM registers). Available floating point SIMD instructions were restricted to 3DNow, 3DNow+.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_MMX
https://softpixel.com/~cwright/programming/simd/mmxext.php

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-05, 08:18:

Oh very cool about the beos and haiku I may give haiku a try as it’s more modern. Would it work on 586?

The release notes say Haiku requires a Pentium II or Athlon, which strongly implies that it needs CMOV. I'm guessing neither of your Socket 7 platforms will work. You would need actual BeOS. If you're wondering if you might like it, grab the Haiku live ISO and boot it in a VM or on modern hardware to see what it's like.

If you really want to use a truly modern OS on this platform, your best bet might be FreeBSD. The 32-bit version only requires a 486. You won't have to worry about unpatched security holes or troubles connecting to HTTPS websites.

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-05, 18:51:

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-05, 08:18:

Oh very cool about the beos and haiku I may give haiku a try as it’s more modern. Would it work on 586?

The release notes say Haiku requires a Pentium II or Athlon, which strongly implies that it needs CMOV. I'm guessing neither of your Socket 7 platforms will work. You would need actual BeOS. If you're wondering if you might like it, grab the Haiku live ISO and boot it in a VM or on modern hardware to see what it's like.

If you really want to use a truly modern OS on this platform, your best bet might be FreeBSD. The 32-bit version only requires a 486. You won't have to worry about unpatched security holes or troubles connecting to HTTPS websites.

I was looking at freebsd wit great interest but it seemed like it's only for super advanced users of which I am not command lines scare me sometimes 🤣

I can download it and check it out.

the latest version will work?