Retro Computer Rigs

[glaman5266]

Anyone with a computer rig that runs an old OS? Modern or period correct doesn't matter, but I'm intrigued at the thought of running an old OS on newer hardware (well, newer than the OS anyway). I've got old lappys sitting around doing nothing, an old tower from 2006 that needs work, and just looking for stuff to do with them. I've got one lappy that's going to be reworked into a Linux machine, but that still leaves me with 3 other lappys to mess around with.

Any hints, tips, thoughts or experiences? Just looking for general info to keep the gears turning. I can do Linux installs easily enough, but haven't tried this with a Windows OS. Any potential hangups with running an older OS on new-ish hardware?

If you have an old rig, feel free to post a picture.

[SignOfZeta]

Running an old OS and old hardware makes more sense if you get the most maxed out old stuff you can. A Pentium 100 with 256MB of RAM and an SSD will run Office 97 so dang fast you wouldn’t believe it. And the period games will run better than you remember if you have the absolute hottest period gear that you couldn’t afford when it was new. Like…Dual Xenon level stuff.

The modern internet isn’t kind to legacy stuff. All sorts of stuff won’t work if you have an EOLed OS. There is a new version of “secure” these days and your old stuff just ain’t in it, I’m afraid. It kind of sucks.

Similarly, I’m not sure there’s any way to run DOS on like an i7 or whatever. Modern CPUs and chipsets are really different. There is also HDCP which I’m sure is a PITA on stuff that’s too old…

I do have some old-ish computers I still use but only for certain jobs. I have a 2008 MacBook that is dedicated to running Traktor 2.5 with a Kontrol S4. As long as I never update anything it will always kick ass at this. I also have an old Mac Mini that I sometimes use when I need to run PPC era stuff…which is pretty rare. I think I last fired it up because it’s the only thing in the house that can read Photo CDs.

[Seajay]

As far as older versions of Windows go, runs fine. Usually it is much more tedious trying to run newer OS on very old hardware.

The only call out is that modern CPU's with efficiency cores significantly benefit from Win 11 or current Linux distro's because the scheduler works correctly.
The last Win10 package I think had a scheduler that worked better with efficiency cores, but anything previous would treat E cores the same as P (performance) cores so you'd see weird performance behavior.

[glaman5266]

"As far as older versions of Windows go, runs fine. Usually it is much more tedious trying to run newer OS on very old hardware."

Yeah, that's how I got into Linux. Most of my lappys are Win7 through Vista era, and I can run Linux Mint on those with little issue. But to have a WinXP machine again would be amazing. My favorite Windows OS.