Past-proof PC?

[Gamevet]

The L2 cache (along with L1) is pretty critical to any x86 CPU. Try disabling them sometime, the CPU will be utterly crippled.

I'm well aware of that. My i5-2500k only has 6MB of L3 catch, compared to the i7-2600k's 8 MB. My Q9650 has 12MB of L2 catch compared to the Q6600's 8MB and will perform better than the Q6600 at the same clock speed, but the Q6600 was still no slouch.

That Celeron I have performs somewhere between a P3 and a P4. There were older Pentium 4s that had as little L2 catch as that Celeron. It was good enough to run the likes of Halo and Star Wars: Empire at War with an FX5200 Ultra. It wasn't a gimped as a lot of those Celerons were, especially the laptop versions, but the laptop Pentium M was gimped as well.

[Niku-Sama]

Did i see stone one suggest installing windows me for legacy support?

Why would some one do this?

[Guntz]

I'm well aware of that. My i5-2500k only has 6MB of L3 catch, compared to the i7-2600k's 8 MB. My Q9650 has 12MB of L2 catch compared to the Q6600's 8MB and will perform better than the Q6600 at the same clock speed, but the Q6600 was still no slouch.

That Celeron I have performs somewhere between a P3 and a P4. There were older Pentium 4s that had as little L2 catch as that Celeron. It was good enough to run the likes of Halo and Star Wars: Empire at War with an FX5200 Ultra. It wasn't a gimped as a lot of those Celerons were, especially the laptop versions, but the laptop Pentium M was gimped as well.

Some Celeron-brand CPUs are definitely usable, they just tend to be pointless when better CPUs for any given socket are easy enough to get.

The Pentium M is hardly gimped, it's based on the Pentium III and is therefore a good CPU. Obviously, it's not as good as a C2D or other newer CPUs, but if you want to use something older than Windows XP, you're at the mercy of that all important driver support. C2D systems (laptops in particular) rarely have full Win9x support.

Did i see stone one suggest installing windows me for legacy support?

Why would some one do this?

Because Windows ME (OEM version) is good?

For years I bought into the Windows ME urban legend too, but then I actually tried it. I downloaded an OEM install disc, installed it on a few different systems and found it to be an excellent OS. It boots faster than Windows 98 SE, it has more built-in drivers, it has USB mass storage support built in, it has a faster and more refined Win32 layer and still has the 16-bit subsystem and MS-DOS manager for legacy support. I highly recommend Windows ME for systems too new for good DOS support, but too old for Windows XP. As in, anything with a Pentium M, or even a good Pentium III / 4 system.

All that Windows ME really lacks is Real Mode DOS, which over the years I found to be not very useful due to a lack of drivers in pure DOS when you are depending on WDM drivers for your system. After using Windows ME for almost a year, I can conclude the common complaint "Windows ME has trouble starting, running programs and shutting down" is a complete lie. Windows ME is no more unstable than Windows 98 SE, in fact I'd say it's better. If Windows ME is unstable on your system, so will Windows 98 SE, which means you need a different system. Windows ME works beautifully on intel chipsets, it helps if you download the right chipset driver from Intel's site.

I grabbed Windows ME from here. Be sure to get the OEM Full version, I've tried the retail disc and for some bizarre reason, you can't boot it from the BIOS.

https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-me

[RP2A03]

While I do agree that WinME gets a lot of undeserved hate, it should be noted that at least some older Maxis games such as SimTower and SimCity 2000 have a memory leak when running in WinME, but not Win95 or Win98. If I am remembering correctly this also affected SimEarth, SimLife, and I think (maybe) SimCopter.

[Gamevet]

Some Celeron-brand CPUs are definitely usable, they just tend to be pointless when better CPUs for any given socket are easy enough to get.

The Pentium M is hardly gimped, it's based on the Pentium III and is therefore a good CPU. Obviously, it's not as good as a C2D or other newer CPUs, but if you want to use something older than Windows XP, you're at the mercy of that all important driver support. C2D systems (laptops in particular) rarely have full Win9x support.

Here's where things don't make sense though. You will be graphics bound with that laptop, before you are ever CPU bound. And for the record, I just dusted off my old Dell Latitude D610; it has the 1.73 Ghz Pentium M with 1 GB of system memory. It has Windows XP Pro and the games I played on it were the original StarCraft, Railroad Tycoon 3 and the original Fallout. I've also used it for MAME, ZSNES and K-Fusion. There's no way that thing is running anything 3D from early 2000s. I do have an IBM Thinkpad T60 that I refurbished and gave to my wife several years ago. I've never tried gaming on that Centrino Duo based laptop.

The only reason I have that old HP Pavilion with a 2 Ghz Celeron is because it was only @ $400 in 2002. Like the laptop, it was graphics bound before I ever got close to overwhelming the CPU. Unlike the laptop, I was able to upgrade the GPU over the years from a Geforce 2 (64MB) to a Geforce 4 MX440(64Mbb) to an Geforce FX5200 Ultra (256MB). It ran Halo, Half-Life, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Elder Scrolls 3: Marrowind, Doom 3 and Grand Theft Auto Vice City. The Intel integrated graphics (64MB) ran 3D games like crap.

[Guntz]

While I do agree that WinME gets a lot of undeserved hate, it should be noted that at least some older Maxis games such as SimTower and SimCity 2000 have a memory leak when running in WinME, but not Win95 or Win98. If I am remembering correctly this also affected SimEarth, SimLife, and I think (maybe) SimCopter.

Hmm, yeah I have noticed that occasionally with Windows ME, but it's only worse if you have more than 512MB RAM, not that any version of Win9x has ever needed that much RAM.

Here's where things don't make sense though. You will be graphics bound with that laptop, before you are ever CPU bound. And for the record, I just dusted off my old Dell Latitude D610; it has the 1.73 Ghz Pentium M with 1 GB of system memory. It has Windows XP Pro and the games I played on it were the original StarCraft, Railroad Tycoon 3 and the original Fallout. I've also used it for MAME, ZSNES and K-Fusion. There's no way that thing is running anything 3D from early 2000s. I do have an IBM Thinkpad T60 that I refurbished and gave to my wife several years ago. I've never tried gaming on that Centrino Duo based laptop.

The only reason I have that old HP Pavilion with a 2 Ghz Celeron is because it was only @ $400 in 2002. Like the laptop, it was graphics bound before I ever got close to overwhelming the CPU. Unlike the laptop, I was able to upgrade the GPU over the years from a Geforce 2 (64MB) to a Geforce 4 MX440(64Mbb) to an Geforce FX5200 Ultra (256MB). It ran Halo, Half-Life, Star Wars Galaxies, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Sins of a Solar Empire, The Elder Scrolls 3: Marrowind, Doom 3 and Grand Theft Auto Vice City. The Intel integrated graphics (64MB) ran 3D games like crap.

I don't play graphically intensive games. The closest to that would be Serious Sam First/Second Encounter and Jedi Knight II. I'm happy if a computer can run Age of Empires 1. I am a very low-power kind of user. A new 2016 PC in my hands would be wasted.

I buy older laptops to exercise nerdy activities like proving Windows 9x can be installed on them, seeing what they are capable of and on occasion, dedicated use. I think a WinME netbook would be really sweet. Every now and then I also get laptops with exotic features, such as a Dell Latitude D600 with a 15" 1920 x 1200 monitor. This is a Pentium M system btw, with an Nvidia GeForce 4200 chipset. As expected, it's not really designed to do HD games, but the high resolution is great for things like internet and light photoshop work.

Why laptops? Because desktops take up a lot of space, which I don't have. It is also ends up being costly to obtain desktop parts online, which is my only option. Laptops are far cheaper comparatively speaking, are portable and don't take up much space. My favorite part is the "luck of the draw" aspect. Because laptops often had multiple hardware configurations, not to mention so many makes and models exist, it's exciting to hunt down a laptop with everything you are looking for.