Well, your maximum spec is probably 512mb of fpm ram and a single k6-3+ 400mhz with radeon 9250/7000/gf2 if you wanna make it fast.

But if you want to make it dual, you could do dual 200 p1 or dual p1mmx

Those configurations are a little involved probably with interposers and bios updates, if you want more info, lmk

Windows nt or windows 2k is probably the best for dual processor. But win 9x/me if you only have 1 cpu.

When I think of the first Pentiums like this I think more of Windows NT 3.51 and NT4 rather than Win2k.

Not to mention some of the traditional Unixen. Solaris 2.x supported x86 and SMP. FreeBSD did so from 1998 onwards (a bit of a stretch on this hardware), SCO OpenServer from version 5 in 1995 onwards - which would be a perfect match.

And BeOS. Always BeOS. Being able to switch CPUs on and off on the fly and see performance change commensurately still looks utterly amazing, all the more so given this was possible over 25 years ago. Plus it will fly on this hardware.

appiah4 wrote on 2023-09-05, 17:46:

Install Debian 2.1 on it.. it is useless gsming-wise..

No way, that's far too old. Load it up with RAM, dual P233 MMX and install Debian 8!

Could make a solid httpd for some static pages. Something like that.

Maybe an ircd if OP is into that? Or how about an SMTP/IMAP mail server?

Anything like this. This would be a fun toy system.

acl wrote on 2023-09-05, 16:25:

Yes, games and music mostly. […]
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ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-09-05, 13:45:

Games...
Why does every computer build come down to games? What games can it play and how well?

Yes, games and music mostly.

But i can't think of someone being nostalgic about Borland C++ Builder, Citrix MetaFrame or MS Works.
IE 5.5/Netscape Navigator, Java Applets, Popups from hell over a V.92 DialUp (with per-second charges)

I remember everything. But not really willing to experience that again 😁

Same with, say, Win98 SE. I remember dearly having to reboot every few hours because "out of system resources." Win98 SE on a ~2000 PIII 700MHz with adequate amounts of RAM was a complete garbage OS for trying to do anything productive. Especially if you had non-dialup-Internet and you wanted to keep one or two IM clients, an email client, etc. running at all times. I will say all day long that when I ordered that Dell machine in 2000, which I often will describe as my first "good" Windows box, the biggest mistake I made was picking 98SE instead of Win2000 for the OS. Ended up switching to Win2000 six months later.

But hey, there are lots of cool games that don't run on Win2000/XP/etc. So Win98SE serves a purpose on a retro system that, say, 2000 or NT4 do not.

Honestly, kids these days who grew up with Mac OS X or Windows XP/7/etc have no idea just how temperamental and unreliable personal computers used to be. I acquired two vintage Macs in the last year or two and have been playing with MacOS 9 and while the classic MacOS is a brilliant, creative piece of engineering, it is also... temperamental... beyond belief. Even, say, opening up an installer that closes all your other software and insists on a restart at the end is something that... is largely foreign in the post-XP/Mac OS X era, but that's how it used to be.

I actually think there might be more of an interest in vintage non-PC systems for non-gaming purposes, e.g. vintage Macs, but that's because, with vintage Macs, a lot more software was left behind in the various transitions. Sure, you have the PCalcs and the BBEdits and the GraphicConverters that started out in 68K in the early 1990s and continue to run on macOS Ventura on ARM today (along with the big name commercial vendors like Microsoft/Adobe/etc), but a lot of unique quirky software was left behind.

But in the Windows world, unless you are the hugest fan of Lotus 1-2-3 or Word Pro, most of the traditional Windows productivity software continues to exist and be updated for modern Windows. Hell, you can buy a current version of The Print Shop "now compatible with Windows 10". Now that's a program that I haven't heard of in 25 years. Other than vendors being greedy with subscription licences and whatnot, there's no really good reason to run a 10 year old version of some productivity software rather than a more current one. And most productivity applications just fly on modern systems - this is not 1995 when I had to add more RAM to a three-month-old machine to run MS Office 4.2 half-passably. And, while backwards compatibility with files was shaky (e.g. it wasn't guaranteed you could open ProductivityApp 3.0 files in ProductivityApp 6.0) back in the day, I doubt WordPerfect or CorelDRAW (which still do annualish releases) have changed their file format in two decades.

Also, there's a lot more backwards compatibility with productivity applications generally. If you want to see something insane, go and get the rare 32-bit version of MS Office 4.2... and you will see Word 6.0c, in all of its glory from 1994, running on your 64-bit Windows 11. But why would you want to? Other than having a pretty splash screen and being the last version of Word with a serious 900+ page paper manual, Word 6.0 is... not exactly that great... compared to the newer versions. Does anybody really have any nostalgia for any version of Word other than Word 5.1a for Mac?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-09-05, 19:47:

Babasha wrote on 2023-09-05, 19:40:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-09-05, 18:09:

Better as a server than a workstation given the advances made.
You have to remember that a workstation has to work to deserve the name. What work is he going to do on it that he wouldnt better do on something else...

Hmmm… until present time all my vector graphics i draw in CorelDRAW 9 or Freehand! Yeap this machine is more than best for this, Pagemaker or QuarkXPress is the best for prepress preparation of magazines or postcards?)))
About what modern server or REAL work we talk on retrocomputer hobbists site?! 😀

I like it. Another idea that doesnt involve degrading it to playing games.

Degrading it? My systems are all retired, they worked hard their entire lives and now is their chance to enjoy that retirement without me working them to death in menial tasks until they fail.

Im going on record stating how I'm taking care of my old hardware letting them do whatever they want. (Please future AI overloads note my respect for your grandparents)

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2023-09-05, 20:49:

When I think of the first Pentiums like this I think more of Windows NT 3.51 and NT4 rather than Win2k.

I have a dual P1 board like that and NT 3.51/4 is what you would normally run on it or some kind of supported UNIX OS. It's a perfect candidate for an old school PCI based CAD card or old analog video editing systems.

I ran this board in 2001 using Win2k SP2. It worked well, smooth in Win2k. I first added two P200's. You need to connect the BF1 pins on each to the nearest ground pin. That will allow a 2.5 or 3 multiplier setting. Fill the board with 512MB FPM.
I had it double booted to eithert 98 or Win2k. Also covers dos games.
Only real drawback on this board is the onboard IDE, it doesn't support any dma mode, not MW-DMA2 like the next up chipset, the 430fx.
Put in something like a promise Sata pci controller and it will be like a different computer in Win2k with a SSD. Really responsive and no drive limits (up to 2tb).

With a bit more RAM, StarCraft 1 will run.
It is DirectX 5, but uses no 3D.

Beware that newer CD releases of StarCraft won't install in Windows NT or the Classic Mac OS, despite what it says on the box. (The 2001 release works; the 2007 one doesn't.)