VOGONS


First post, by Baoran

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I was not sure if I should ask this in hardware or software side of this forum but I decided to go here since it is about running software.
What is the lowest spec pc you can install windows XP on? I know official minimum requirements are 64MB of ram and 233Mhz pentium cpu, but does that mean that it would still install in any pentium system like 60Mhz pentium with 64MB ram?

Reply 1 of 10, by BitWrangler

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There was "slower" though it was 2.5 mhz faster.... 63Mhz Pentium Overdrive for a 486 board, then you could also disconnect the fan to kick it down to 37.5Mhz.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 10, by Error 0x7CF

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Slowest of which I'm aware is an 8MHz Pentium OverDrive. XP will likely "run" on any system with the pentium instruction set. It'll be slow, but it will boot. I wouldn't rule out later service packs or updates accidentally requiring 686 instructions though.

https://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_en.htm

Old precedes antique.

Reply 3 of 10, by BitWrangler

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... and they said my PCI Geforce 6200 would be no use on a 486 board, the fools! Muhahahaaa... muhuhahahahahahaHAAAAAAA!!!!!

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 4 of 10, by mrau

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isnt the cyrix 5x86 almost like pentium instructionwise? anyone tried that for xp maybe? imho its ok to go low on cpu, but memory should be available to not kill the hard disk

Reply 5 of 10, by Baoran

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Main thing I am wondering if it has any checks during installation that the computer meets the 233Mhz system requirements.

Reply 6 of 10, by shamino

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Baoran wrote on 2021-12-01, 05:21:

Main thing I am wondering if it has any checks during installation that the computer meets the 233Mhz system requirements.

No, it doesn't try to check the clock speed.
It used to be a competitive sport for people to find the slowest systems they could get XP installed on, just to say they did.

Reply 7 of 10, by Sphere478

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You can get one of the beta releases to work on a 486.

If you have less than 128mb of ram you will probably be on the page file whenever a game is open. That said it will probably boot on very little ram. There are people who got windows 7 to boot on like 96mb of ram was it? So, if you told me xp booted on 32mb of ram it wouldn’t surprise me.

Getting xp rtm to work on a pentium 75 shouldn’t be a big issue. Pretty slow though..

Sphere's PCB projects.
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Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
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SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
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Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 8 of 10, by Tetrium

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-01, 03:42:

There was "slower" though it was 2.5 mhz faster.... 63Mhz Pentium Overdrive for a 486 board, then you could also disconnect the fan to kick it down to 37.5Mhz.

You mean 25MHz? Iirc disconnecting the fan of the s3 POD set it's CPU multiplier from 3.5 (in case it's the 83MHz POD) or from 2.5x (in case it's the 63MHz POD) to 1.0x. EDIT: Both POD63 and POD83 used a 2.5x multiplier ENDEDIT So in essense the CPU frequency will be whatever the FSB is running at.

And iirc in this particular case of the slowest WinXP system ever, the FSB could be set to 8MHz.

I remember reading this story some years ago, someone already posted a link and I distinctly remember them having used the Asus PVI-486SP3 (mispelled on their site as Asus PIV-486SP3 for some reason, I assume it's just a typo) for this project.

Last edited by Tetrium on 2021-12-11, 20:48. Edited 1 time in total.

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My retro rigs (old topic)
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Reply 9 of 10, by rmay635703

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The POD 1x trick is well known, often wondered what a POD on a 66mhz bus with good cache and a 66mhz compliant PCI Video card would look like in tests.
(Similar to the 200mhz 5x86 benchmark everyone loves)

I had a PPRO running XP W/ 384mb of ram.
And I’m aware of folks running it on the original pentiums

I have to guess it feels like running Windows 95 on a 386sx-16 with 4mb of ram

The funny part with older systems both for Win 2k and XP is that the hard disk controller or even motherboard chipset were usually the main roadblock to getting the thing to install as no compatible driver would exist and the system would barf, anything OPTI was about the worst when trying an NT flavor

Last edited by rmay635703 on 2021-12-01, 16:56. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 10 of 10, by ronyket

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Used to run Windows XP in 2005 on a Pentium 200 MMX, with 64 MB RAM, it was pretty slow, but when i put 128 MB on it, got way better.