Anyone got a winxp (or earlier) PC at home?

[Arcadio]

Just for the nostalgia factor. The first pc I build back in 2004 still works, so I'm thinking of reinstalling XP and installing some of the old games I played on it. I regret throwing away my Win 98 pc because it was my first pc ever. I wonder how difficult it is to find drivers for a 2004 pc...

 

[whm1974]

Just for the nostalgia factor. The first pc I build back in 2004 still works, so I'm thinking of reinstalling XP and installing some of the old games I played on it. I regret throwing away my Win 98 pc because it was my first pc ever. I wonder how difficult it is to find drivers for a 2004 pc...

Very, unless you still have all the have driver discs needed.

 

[Kaido]

You might want to give unRAID a try. The LimeTech virtualization system in it lets you a pass hardware through to the VM so you can play Quake & stuff:

 

[spacejamz]

I remember camping out at COMPUSA to get a $98 pc with Windows 98....I have the driver disk CD and the manual with the Windows 98 key stashed in a closet somewhere...

 

[lxskllr]

I have enough parts to build an xp era computer, but no desire to. If you wanted to, I'd use 2kpro. No activation nonsense, and it's just about as modern.

 

[whm1974]

Why not use something like Linux Lite? That will better and will be up to date as well.

 

[Sonikku]

My first PC build was Windows XP. One GIGABYTE of ddr1 ram!! All for only $80 too. Kids today and their complaining about "only" getting 8gb for the same price!

 

[Kaido]

My first PC build was Windows XP. One GIGABYTE of ddr1 ram!! All for only $80 too. Kids today and their complaining about "only" getting 8gb for the same price!

My first build was the famous 1.4ghz Athlon "Thunderbird" with 1.5 gigs of RAM. It took me like six months of working at the pizza shop to save up for that in high school lol. At the time, that amount of RAM was massive. I was really into CGI & video editing & it helped tremendously.

These days, my default office PC builds all have 16 gigs, with 32 gigs (or more) optional for DCC workers. Both memory AND storage have gotten bananas tho...the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 comes in a 512GB flavor, and the expandable MicroSD slot supports up to a 512GB card, so you can literally carry a terabyte of solid-state storage around in your pocket these days. Amazon is selling single 14TB hard drives for $530 shipped these days. Not to mention Intel just unveiled a single 28-core Xeon chip. NVIDIA has video cards out with 32GB of VRAM. Samsung is selling 8K-resolution televisions. The hardware scene is pretty lit these days, yo!

 

[SKORPI0]

Bought a dell 6400 15” laptop from a thrift store for about $6.99 with windows xp. I still some old system build in the early 00s in storage with Xp.

 

[jwhorfin]

Win 3.1, 95, 98, 98ME, many XP's.... all still running!
The HD in the 3.1 machine sounds like a very, very old refrigerator when it runs. It's sporting a lightning quick 33mhz processor! I have a Quantum Fireball put aside and I'm hoping to mirror that one and keep it going!

 

[stargazr]

I have it on a VM for running a few old programs.

 

[nakedfrog]

I have a 486 running Win98. In theory to play old games on, but I haven't booted it in months. Fortunately it was free... just needed a fresh BIOS battery.

 

[PottedMeat]

got a old laptop with xp for obdii/car diag software and cables off ebay, very handy

 

[Oyeve]

I still have a Windows 3.11 PC with ISA voodoo2 cards. Occasionally play tomb raider with glide. Ah, the glory days!

 

[snoopy7548]

Not at home, but my lab bench PC at work is running Win2k. My co-worker's PC is running Win98 I think.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I don't, but I went to someone's house the other day and they're still using a PC I built them when I was a teenager, and it's running XP. Pretty sure it got upgraded, as I probably had originally put 2000.

It's crossed my mind to build a windows 98 machine for nostalgia, it was my first computer. Well technically my first was a windows 3.11 machine, but that 98 box is where I really got into computers.

 

[Iron Woode]

I built myself a Windows 98SE box. It runs just fine.

 

[NoTine42]

In February, I switched from using a Windows XP laptop to a server running Ubuntu as my print server

You should be able to still get XP updates until April 2019 thanks to the POSready program:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/registry-hack-enables-continued-updates-for-windows-xp/

 

[highland145]

Secondary machine at the office. It accesses my sql program on the primary and prints receipts. Dell gx270...2004ish(?) Got it for free.

 

[Midwayman]

My first one was on MS-DOS 3.1 and had 256k when I got it. No desire to go back to managing autoexec.bat and config.sys to get enough memory to run anything.

 

[bbhaag]

I have a couple of older Socket3(486) systems that I keep around for nostalgia. One of them runs WFWG3.11 with a POD83 and the other one runs Windows3.1 with a DX4-100. Theay re fun to play around with from time to time and my two boys get a kick out of me starting up DukeNukem.

The best part was when I got my first system I was so excited because you know it reminded me of my youth. Well my sons started to feed off my excitement much like dads and sons do. I will never forget the look on their faces when that DEC booted up for the first time. The old HDD whirling, then the A: drive system check, and then the B: drive system check grinding away like they do.

All three of us watched in wonder as the config.sys and autoex.bat file loaded and the commands scrolled down the screen much like a lot of us remember our first computers doing. They waited in anticipation like something magical was about to happen. Then when DOS 6.22 finally loaded they were met with a C:> and a blinking under score.haha

Then they said "Now what? What does it do?". I then went into explaining how you have to type in a command to make the computer do what you want it to. My oldest rolled his eyes and walked away my youngest stuck around for a little longer and even picked up the basics on how to change directories to start a game but even that was short lived.

The look on their faces when they saw a DOS command prompt for the first time was priceless and will be in my memory forever. It's hard to put into words but it was fantastic to see it.

 

[Lanyap]

I still use my Dell 8400 circa 2005 from a deal here.

EDIT: RossMAN is even in this Hot Deal thread.
https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...cd-monitor-or-499-dead.1573939/#post-15323160

 

[Carson Dyle]

I still have an XP box, although I don't use it much. I think I built it just before Windows 7 came out.

 

[mikeymikec]

Almost every game I care about on PC still works (or it did on Win7, I've only been running Win10 as a gaming OS for a few months), so I don't need an older PC for it.

The only casualties I can think of were pre-Windows, such as 'Fade to Black' and 'Z' (though I never really got into that one, it seemed like an entertaining premise though).

Other games have had updates like the original Tomb Raider, and with updated exes the newer TR games have worked with high resolutions on Win7.