This is already a fairly old article, but I’m pretty confident it never made OSNews’ front page. In this article, the author proves that Windows XP can be installed, and ‘run’, on processors with as little as 8MHz. “The target of this project was to find the weakest system where you can run Windows XP. Keep in mind, that Microsoft official requirements are a CPU with 233 MHz an 64 MB of RAM. But that had to be beaten!”
That is amazing that WinXP will run on an 8MHz comp. I never thought that numbers like that would be possible on WinXP. Is there any similar Linux experiment? Boggles the mind, but I’m sure you could get Linux working on a 1 MHz comp…. LOL
Maybe I should go fetch my 45MHz comp and start underclocking….
–ZaNkY
Boggles the mind, but I’m sure you could get Linux working on a 1 MHz comp…. LOL
Maybe I should go fetch my 45MHz comp and start underclocking….
A few years ago I was still using a 386 sx/25mhz with 16mb ram as a file server. It was using linux to share files to windows machines over samba. It would use the full 15gb drive and beable to use it without any problems, although the BIOS would only see drives up to 500mb. I had to manually enter the drive settings.
I’d run the machine headless, and just ssh into it when needed, useful when downloading files overnight as the machine wouldn’t use too much power and was very quiet.
I’ve since moved to a bigger 233mhz (fanless) machine with 256mb ram due to the 386 motherboard only having one ide port and the case not having enough space for the amount of harddisks i wanted to use.
The text console on 1 MHz … perhaps.
Anyone willing to try X.org and GNOME/KDE on an 8 MHz? Haha.
No problem, GNOME/KDE versions from 1999 and XFree86 v3 …
Typical tactic.
No, let’s compare apples to apples, and oranges to oranges — nice try though.
Since Windows XP was released in 2001, it would be a pretty fair test. To test the newest KDE/Gnome, you should rather compare it against Vista.
No Sir, latest GNOME/KDE just come close to XP in terms of features. We don’t compare OS’s based on release dates but based on functionality.
If you want to compare Vista, you should compare it with latest release of OSX.
No he’s comparing systems released from roughly within the same time period. These are apples and apples.
😛
–bornagainpenguin (who wonders how you like those apples?)
I go by functionality/level of technology, not release by year. Everyone knows that X.org/KDE/GNOME are behind Microsoft in terms of functionality/tech.
XFree86 3.x is comparable to XP? Apples to oranges.
Everyone knows that X.org/KDE/GNOME are behind Microsoft in terms of functionality/tech.
That’s an opinion, not a fact. For example, I believe that current X/KDE/Gnome is ahead of Microsoft in functionality and technology. So your statement (“Everyone knows…”) is clearly false.
However, the point is moot, as I believe it is extremely pathetic to turn this very nice hack into a Linux/Windows flamewar. And I don’t care who started it – it takes two to tango.
Or even a Windows/Amiga OS flamewar.
Linux is the kernel, so you can do your daily jobs without a window manager or Xorg, can WindowsXP do that?, NO. WindowsXP may run but it’s useless. I cannot run the 25 mile marathon but give me a year and I’ll do it, but how useless is that!
Edited 2006-01-29 15:25
Response to SlackerJack:
Windows XP has a kernel as well. You install the server edition and you can simply telnet or ssh into it to do your job.
A kernel in itself is not useful without the other utilities. Linux is useful because of bash shell and other GNU utils.
And for your information, the guy was able to launch full explorer, let aside simple command line apps like ssh etc.
Sometime try to increase your knowledge before giving such baseless statements, just because you have a bias for linux.
Edited 2006-01-29 19:15
That was on slashdot a while ago, they had got down to 21Mhz, great to see that they’ve got even lower!
How long it took them to get to the GUI…. 2… 3 Years perhaps…
How long untill Internet Explorer comes up… another 4 years perhaps!
intersting I guess…
:p
It takes 30 minutes to boot at 8Mhz. And the CPU is at 100% just to run the desktop.
At 20Mhz, the CPU was busy at 63% just to run the desktop.
So we can safely say that Windows XP steal 16Mhz of your CPU just to run the desktop. It’s a small number I would say… Impressive.
Very useless artical, but Linux can run in the console, use links for web, mutt for email and irssi for irc. All I can say is they must have alot of time on there hands.
It’s called an “experiment”. Look up the definition.
Fantastic! This article isn’t about linux though.
This is child’s play. The real test will be to see whether these hardware hackers can get Vista running on an 8 GHz rig.
Yes, Vista will run on a 8 “Ghz” computer.
What that last guy posted was called “SARCASM”, clearly you missed it.
The guy must have too much spare time…
Ran on a 7.18Mhz CPU, and ran (admitidly with nowhere near as many drivers/network stacks etc) off floppy faster than a sub 1000Mhz PC running Windows XP.
Progress, don’t you just love it?
(admitidly with nowhere near as many drivers/network stacks etc)
Case closed.
Yeah, I do love progress.
All the things I can do on computers in modern OSes now beats whatever old Amiga crap you’re still holding on to.
But dosn’t it worry you that modern computers are so powerful, and yet so slow?
Also, why the abuse? And for your information I’m using Modern Amiga crap, thank you very much.
Also, why the abuse?
Because, well, this is Linux is Poo.
Because of the snobby attitude. “Oh well … AmigaOS could do all of that in the CPU power that Windows XP uses idling!”
Well then, Mr. Snob, how about you step back a little and consider what ELSE Windows XP does, and how much more advanced things are now than in the past?
Modern computers are powerful, but slowness only depends on your perspective. What part are you talking about when you say they’re slow?
Slow(er):
When I turn it on and till I get to a usable OS
When I open “My computer”
When I open a folder, any folder. (or Draw, amiga pedants)
When I switch it off.
Did I say that Amiga OS (I specifed, for no good reason) 2.04 could do all (XP?) can do?
In fact, I put in the bit that it didn’t anything like as much.
Turn it on == It’s called S3 suspend. Modern computers, right? Use it. Instant on, instant off.
Open “My Computer” == What’s faster than instant? I fail to see the problem.
Open a folder == See above.
Turn it off == See above.
Even with “Instant off” is still sits there for a few seconds telling me it’s shutting down. That’s still slower.
Open “My computer” in an instant? I did mention a sub 1000Mhz PC didn’t I?
Of course the strange thing is, many users are probably use to these slight but constant little delays. as they wait for the computer to catch up with them.
for example on the 750Mhz 256 Meg PC at work, say renaming a file, I now can press the right mouse button, and move the pointer to where the option that I want to select in the time the Contect menu takes to come up.
Maybe I’m just too fast for this world. (I know about F2, thanks)
No, wait, I’ve been trolled havn’t I?
Oh boo hoo, so it sits there for a few seconds as it tells other hardware in your system to power down. You don’t have to sit there in your chair waiting. Freakin’ nit-picky moron.
A 400 MHz Pentium II with 256 MB of RAM will run XP comfortably. Anything more powerful than that, and XP will fly. I don’t know of this delay in context menu pop-ups.
Please, get a clue.
“Oh boo hoo, so it sits there for a few seconds as it tells other hardware in your system to power down. You don’t have to sit there in your chair waiting. Freakin’ nit-picky moron.”
‘It’s slower’ I say, ‘It what way’ he says, I tell him, he say’s ‘waiting a few seconds isn’t a problem’.
Of course it’s nit-picking. It’s compairing a 20 year old OS running on very low hardware to 6 year old OS running on Very good Hardware. There should be performance/usability differences, and there are. There should be speed differences, there are, it’s just not the right way that’s all…
“A 400 MHz Pentium II with 256 MB of RAM will run XP comfortably. Anything more powerful than that, and XP will fly. I don’t know of this delay in context menu pop-ups.”
Really? must just be me being too fast. My bad.
“Please, get a clue.”
I’ll try!
Please tell me how the 3-second delay when going into standby makes your life difficult.
Really, please do. Most normal people will click Standby, then walk away. Are you concerned about the extra 3 seconds of power draw that will be on your power bill? Or is it all about “WELL AMIGA DIDN’T DO IT SO THERE”?
Here’s a f–king clue: AmigaOS and your Amiga hardware didn’t do S3 suspend, and it didn’t have as many pieces of hardware and ICs to deal with. I’d rather wait 3 seconds and have Windows do things *right*, then no wait at all and just have Windows all-out cut power to my components.
It sounds like you need a good beating with the clue stick.
Comparing the speed difference between the Amiga500 and, say, 400mhz PII, XP should boot in less than 1 second from cold boot to usable desktop =)
Edited 2006-01-30 14:59
S3 Jea right. You only pray to have the same number of ons and offs.
Next time try not to buy Ching-Chong-Wang-brand motherboards made by a guy in a shack somewhere in the poorest district of North Korea.
All of my systems, ranging from a Duron 1.2 to an Athlon 64 do S3 just fine.
…
edit: Improved Grammar.
Second Edit: Removed post, as it was ‘unhelpful’
Edited 2006-01-29 23:13
The point to remember with Amigas are that they were doing twice as much of the stuff we take for granted today at more than ten to fifteen years before the rest of the world caught up.
They’ve a reason to be smug IMHO!
–bornagainpenguin
Then, not now.
Think about it realistically … try to sell someone an Amiga with the argument “They did 2x more 15 years ago!” is pathetic. No one gives a damn, because the computers of today can do 5x more.
“Don’t buy that Athlon 64, buy the 386DX, because it was the first with an integrated FPU!” <– Same argument, same lack of logic.
Mr. Poo, how about you step back a little and consider this: it is not important what a given OS can do. What counts is how much the _user_ can do with a given computer.
If AmigaOS allows a user to do everything he wants to do, then AmigaOS is the perfect OS for him.
(for the record: I’ve never even touched an Amiga in my life. yet.
I don’t see what the big deal is.
So, Windows XP installed and ran on a Pentium Overdrive @ 8Mhz. Hurray.
I’m sure you can take a Linux distro and achieve identical results. (run on a similar low end system).
Hey wait, Windows 98SE could do the same & would run way better than XP in a lower end system.
Why even install XP on such a low end computer? It isn’t usable in everyday life.
What did this experiment prove?
Linux, Windows 98SE, OS/2, BeOS 5, & other OSes could run under the same configuration. And some of these other OSes would run way better than XP on this type of system.
To note: I really like Windows XP & use it regularly, but didn’t see any importance to this article and my remarks reflect this stance.
Edited 2006-01-28 20:53
You successfully missed the point, by about the same distance the Sun is from the Earth.
When dealing with Hacks, To ask why – is to not understand.
@Kroc
Was it me that missed the point or you?
Windows 98SE would also install on an identical configuration and be more usable @ the same time. You could actually do something with Windows 98SE afterwards.
So, Windows XP installed & booted, but you couldn’t do anything practical with it.
If I could take a 1 Litre engine and put it into a big, heavy vehicle to show that it could move it. What would that prove? That the 1L engine could move a big vehicle, though with super slow acceleration, but could do it? Now, if that 1L engine could produce the same acceleration (& speed) as the bigger engine, then that would be something else.
Just because you can do it, why would you? Just so you can show that it can be done? Most people will run Windows XP on P4, P3, P2 & Athlons. So, the article served no practical purpose other than to satisfy general curiousity – which appears to have been important to you.
Maybe you are looking @ installing Windows XP on your Pentium 8Mhz system too 🙂
Ok, now I understand.
Sorry, but I still think it’s you missing the point.
Sport served no practical purpose
Art serves no practial purpose.
Music serves no practial purpose.
messing about trying to run OS on totally inapropriate HW servers no practical purpose.
They do it because they can climb that mountain, sorry, because THEY find it fun to do.
Wonder if they’ve got girlfriends?? (Crumbs, says a man on a OS bullitin board)!
I get it AmigaRobbo. They did it for fun & to satisfy the general curiosity.
I still think it didn’t provide anything usefull, but you’re right, that we all do different things for fun and to satisfy our curiousities. And they did this test because it was fun for them.
But I’ll disagree on the rest because they actually do serve a purpose:
Sport – competition, to show who is better @ playing the game, who will emerge victorious; We are competitive @ heart.
Art – Visually appealing – to show off beauty or ugliness, an expression of thought & feelings, to show the world one’s interpretation of an event or object.
Music – created for relaxation, enjoyment, an expression of creator’s mood to affect the listener’s feelings & attitude.
“All art is quite useless.” – Oscar Wilde
But I think we’re drifting OS here…
dude, typing “at” requires two keystrokes, typing “@” requires holding shift and pressing a key, there is no shortcut in typing @. This is OSNews, not an AOL IM.
There are many possible motivations behind this
– Curiosity.
They want do know if it can be done
– Fame.
The page was posted on OSNews and probably many other sites as well.
– Challenge.
From the article, It seems like they had to try a lot of hardware configurations with a lot of tweaking.
“Was it me that missed the point or you?”
Nope, it was you. See post above.
Edited 2006-01-28 22:41
Just because you can do it, why would you? Just so you can show that it can be done?
Yes. That’s exactly why.
I myself found the experiment quite enjoyable to read about. And I really don’t see this as a “XP requires less resources than Linux” kinda thing either. I’m both a Windows and Linux user, by the way. It was a hack, a challenge, and if someone had asked me if it could be done, I probably would have said no. So it’s quite amazing for me, in a completely useless way.
And that’s just fine. Not everything needs to be useful in life, you know…
I’m sure they did it because they found it fun and enjoyable to do.
They seem happy enough!
there’s odd things people do for their jollies, well, you’re on the internet, I’m sure you can find examples of them.
Doesn’t XP check the specs and then refuse to install?
I think the article is a bit fuzzy on whether it was INSTALLED while the machine was running that slow. For all we know, it was installed on a P4 and the HD was physically connected to the underclocked Intel Overdrive machine for the test and screenshots.
“The installation was made with the help of nLite during the night.” – I’m not familiar with that process – alternative setup for XP?
No big hurdle really – these are just some people with old hardware in the closet and have nothing better to do with it. I can relate
Edited 2006-01-28 22:03
I was think about how they got XP on the Hard drive, assuming it’s installed on a different MB, wouldn’t it throw a barnie (sorry, I mean go wrong) if you attached it to a different Mobo?
There is a certain registry tree you can delete to force it to auto-redetect hardware after a motherboard type swap. Doesn’t always work but it hasn’t failed me personally yet. Actually, in every instance I’ve done a mobo/proc swap the systems booted. it complained, and took two or three reboots to install all the drivers (automatically expect network/video obviously)
Haven’t had the same luck with Linux. It ate my desktop once. hehe. No disrespect to Linux (i use it daily)
There is a certain registry tree you can delete to force it to auto-redetect hardware after a motherboard type swap. Doesn’t always work but it hasn’t failed me personally yet. Actually, in every instance I’ve done a mobo/proc swap the systems booted. it complained, and took two or three reboots to install all the drivers (automatically expect network/video obviously)
Neat trick. I’ll research more for it as I needed something like this one of these days. It could prevent me from hosing my WinXP setup when I switched the mobo.
Haven’t had the same luck with Linux. It ate my desktop once. hehe. No disrespect to Linux (i use it daily)
It’s the exact opposite to me. Linux seems to be more tolerant to hardware changes. Most distros run by default some sort of hardware detection during boot (ala kudzu) that changes system settings accordingly to the respective hardware changes. Mepis survived flawlessly my mobo change. Windows XP didn’t.
XP seems to have number of kernels tuned for particular CPU/MOBO combinations on its installation cd. They are selected during installation but, I guess, can’t be changed afterwards.
“XP seems to have number of kernels tuned for particular CPU/MOBO combinations on its installation cd. They are selected during installation but, I guess, can’t be changed afterwards.”
1. The HAL/kernel combo’s are specific to 6 different scenarios on 32bit:
Standard PC – (Non ACPI/Non MP capable)
MPS Uniprocessor PC – (Non ACPI/MP capable w/1 CPU core at install time)
MPS Multiprocessor PC – (Non ACPI/MP capable with 2+ CPU’s)
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface PC (ACPI/Non MP capable)
ACPI Uniprocessor PC (ACPI/MP capable with 1 CPU core or HT disabled at install time)
ACPI Multiprocessor PC (ACPI/MP capabe with 2+ CPU cores or HT enabled at install time).
2. You can change the HAL/Kernel combo quite easily through the device manager.
This is indeed cool. It tells how well XP performs even under low memory conditions. Think about it, 8 MB RAM and the full UI of windows is functional.
There is so many features in XP and loading all that stuff on such an under powered machine is amazing.
I can see the anti MS crowd, saying whats the big deal, but honestly, ask yourself, if it was Linux with GNOME on 8MB machine, wouldn’t you feel proud?
Generally that’s only matter of swap space available and your time. I’m not sure the default 2.6 ker. would boot on as little as 6M but I used to boot RedHat 6.x on 6M machine.
Given the source availability you could compile all the stuff with 586 instructions stripped and try to run it on 386SX.
I’ve run XP on systems with 64MB to 1.5GB and it is always interesting to run Task Manager and see how each core program’s footprint changes accordingly. It is a good sign, and has other advantages. On that 64MB machine it had been running ME and an upgrade was necessary to get things working properly — after they saw the new system and ran it for a week or two they went and upgraded the RAM themselves at Fry’s.
Firefox could learn more than a little from this lesson.
By the way, 98SE does not exactly purr on an 8MB system. I put it on a laptop with 5MB of RAM and it also achieved 100% activity while “idle”. In my books XP is a modern marvel …at swapping.
Still, it was weird to see he had loaded MSN — that is a memory dog and quite unnecessary. He must be a glutten for punishment.
I remember having an old Zenith computer and trying to install Windows 98 on that thing. It had a 100 mhz processor and a whooping 16 mb of RAM.. but the problem was it was a 80486 DX4-100, and not a Pentium. That thing could not handle Windows 98 at all! It took forever to boot W98 and was just too sluggish to get anything done.
Too bad they couldn’t get a true 486 processor to boot Windows XP, I really wanted to see the results.
Don’t get me wrong; the 486 processor was a great processor for the DOS age, but the Pentium processor in my opinion was so much better.
that’s strange. i installed win 95 on intel 486dx2 66 and it worked quite good. it was installed with ie 4. it booted in 36 SECONDS. you maybe forgot to turn on TURBO switch.
Oh the machine could boot Windows 95 fine. I am talking about Windows 98. With all the junk MS added, it killed off the reasonable w95 functionality for older processors.
that’s way, i said that i installed version with IE 4.0 integrated. this is very close to win98 (not sr2).
Brings back memories hehe. I used to run linux on a 386 with 8mb of ram… herculese monocrome graphics and etc etc. When I upgraded to a 486 I lost 4mb of ram… (8 slots on the 386, 4 on the 486). Good ol days
It doesn’t seem that the experimentors are out to make a point, but their results tell us that modern OS’s have so much extra baggage and overhead. Most of our hardware is used for frills. It also stands to reason that the kernel and gui framework for XP is rather stable. I bet that some of the driver engineers, given a specific hardware platform, could make it run quite smoothly with those same specs.
Meanwhile, I’d welcome if PG could find a way to reduce most of that overhead for the rest of us.
kolibri would probably run much better on a similar setup…
here’s a screenshot i just took, it’s still quite snappy at ~48MHz with 20MB of ram…
http://maeboard.net/r/imgboard.php?res=38
One thing I don’t understand is how they got the processor to work at 8 MHz. The article isn’t quite clear, and the pictures make it look like one mobo is plugged into the other via an ISA slot, which would make it run at the speed of the ISA slot (8 MHz?). Is this possible?
Wow, this is one of the most interesting experiment I’ve seen recently. Instead of overclocking, they underclocked various CPU down to 8 MHz… Just imagine how much you can spare on cooling in an enterprise where people just watch their screen and do nothing else than talking to their neighbor…
First of all, it’s an impressive experiment, yes. And it will probably run at 500Khz too. I can’t see why an OS should stop running (or even crash) when a certain clock frequency isn’t met. It’s different with RAM, here you need a certain space, if the machine is too short on memory, the system will most likely panic. (but the test machine had more than 32MB of memory installed anyway)
The only issue I could think of with underclocked cpu’s could be interfacing with certain hardware. There are pieces of hardware out there which are quite timing sensetive, and when the cpu is simply too slow, timing problems are likely to appear.
But about the official minimum cpu speed of 233Mhz: This value is probably assumed the minimum to do some serious work.
cheers
Joe
But I’d be more impressed with Vista if it gave all the features of XP/2000 but ran it on lower specified Hardware, maybe turn the cute little fade effects off by default and all that.
But as I say, I know that’s not the way the world works, just saying it would impress me more.
Not going anywhere in a while…Grab a snickers!
I’d like to see him try to do a stage 1 install of Gentoo on that machine. I’d bet it would take months to complete.