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Windows IT

Windows XP Can Run On an Intel CPU From 1989 Thanks To Dedicated Modder (techspot.com) 58

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those of us who came of age in the early days of personal computing, the names "Intel 486" and "Windows XP" evoke a nostalgic whirlwind of memories. The 486 was the hot new CPU of the early 90s, while Windows XP became a household name and Microsoft's most popular OS over a decade later. But did you ever imagine these two icons of different eras could be merged into an unholy union? Well, start brushing off those vintage 486 rigs, because a modder has actually made it happen. Going by the name Dietmar on the MSFN forums, he has somehow managed to get Microsoft's beloved Windows XP running on the ancient 486 architecture.

It's worth mentioning that these two were never meant to coexist. The first 486 chips hit the market way back in 1989, while Windows XP landed over a decade later in 2001. The 486 represented a major breakthrough when Intel unveiled it in 1989. Packing over a million transistors, it remained Intel's primary x86 chip until the arrival of the Pentium in 1993. Such was the processor's longevity that Intel continued manufacturing it for embedded systems until 2007. Still, 486 systems were simply too underpowered to run XP, which needed at least a Pentium-class processor from the 586 generation - or any compatible chip that ran at 233MHz or higher. Meanwhile, the i486 could only do 133MHz. It also needed at least 64MB of RAM and at least 1.5GB of storage.

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Windows XP Can Run On an Intel CPU From 1989 Thanks To Dedicated Modder

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  • Now imagine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @01:37PM (#64491207)

    If people like this were involved from the start, imagine how much more efficient our programs would be.

    • by boulat ( 216724 )

      Last OS I had running on my 486 DX4 was Windows 95. This was on 16MB of RAM in ~1996.

      Upgrading to XP would've been possible on Pentium with at least 64MB of RAM but after that things get blurry.

      At the time it was Netscape Navigator using gigs and gigs of RAM before it was cool.

      • I once had to deploy XP on a whole office's worth of computers that were built for 98. I spent a lot of time optimizing, but in the end the lack of RAM did them in - they were hitting the drives constantly for swap space. We were swapping about 1.5% of the drives every week while waiting to get better hardware.

        I had the imaging process down pat, though. I could get a computer back in service in under 15 minutes.

      • by haruchai ( 17472 )

        Was that Navigator?
        Or was it the integration with their Communicator suite that caused the bloat that drove many away & kickstarted the Phoenix project that eventually became Firefox?

        • Phoenix/Firefox were developed from the Mozilla Suite, which was an entirely different code base from Netscape Navigator/Communicator 4.x.

    • Now. imagine a beowulf cluster of these people.

      • Not hard to imagine, since the dude is Germanic like the original Beowulf.

        • Not hard to imagine, since the dude is Germanic like the original Beowulf.

          Noting that Beowulf [wikipedia.org] is an Old English poem (most likely) written in England.

          • Noting that Beowulf [wikipedia.org] is an Old English poem (most likely) written in England.

            And English is a Germanic language. Germanic story about a Germanic hero written in a Germanic language, triple fit.

      • A nerd orgy sounds almost as unlikely as military intelligence, but way more fun.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      From what I can read, it takes 4 hours to install Windows XP on a 486. People just don't appreciate the difference between Doom (ran well on a 486) and Quake (ran well on a 586 (Pentium)).

    • Nothing about this would make our programs more efficient. This is literally a story about ignoring the benefits and efficiencies brought by modern architectures in the name of performing the world's slowest Windows XP boot.

  • I have a Vortex86SX (advertised as 486SX compatible) and a Vortex86DX, the latter I don't know what instructions it supports but it runs Debian just fine. Might be fun to try and see how close this weird chip is to a 486SX and if I can resurrect one of my old WinXP licenses to quasi-legally run this obsolete OS.

    • which linux kernel do you have on it?

    • Apparently that's a Pentium clone .. though I could be wrong (five minutes of googling = my entire knowledge of it) .. https://www.vortex86.com/news/... [vortex86.com]

      • Apparently that's a Pentium clone ..

        It must be. There's official drivers for 98/2000 and XPe. https://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/vo... [dmp.com.tw]

        The older one I use ("SX" version) only has 98 and CE drivers available. https://www.dmp.com.tw/tech/vo... [dmp.com.tw]

        I mainly run FreeDOS on that older one because Linux takes a long time to boot. It chugs away at "decompressing kernel". The cache performance is quite bad (write-thru). Sadly the box is usually packed away, as DOS doesn't see much use in my house.

        which linux kernel do you have on it?

        It's running Debian Squeeze on the "DX". I don't have access to it

  • by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @01:47PM (#64491233)

    The leap from 1989 to 2001 was so much larger than the leap from 2012 to 2024. The latest and greatest in 2012 were Intel Ivy Bridge processors. A high-end Ivy Bridge processor can easily run Windows 11 and the vast majority of modern software without issue.

    • The jump from the 486 to the Pentium is greater than any jump from the last decade. My daily driver is a Xeon E5-2667 from 2014, and paired with a RTX 3060 I can run Cyberpunk in 1080p on Ultra at 70-90fps, and it's a processor from a decade ago. It's like running Windows NT in a 386 with great performance, not "to show it runs."
    • There are still massive improvements happening in the CPU space, it's just that the consumers of those improvements have changed. We used to dream of 387s, 486DX2s, Pentiums, Athlons, etc. to run our games and productivity software better but after a while those use cases hit the point where things stopped needing much additional benefit. Now CPUs are gaining things like AVX-512, NPUs, video acceleration, QAT, etc. which greatly improve the issues encountered by OTHER people whereas us for whom faster polyg
  • by Anonymous Coward
    You think the 486 and Windows XP are the early days of personal computers? Really?
    • by micheas ( 231635 )

      You think the 486 and Windows XP are the early days of personal computers? Really?

      And you now know you are old :)

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @01:58PM (#64491261)
    Hacking a cpu from the 80s is a nice hobby, but i'd rather we save millions of computers from landfill by hacking out the new sse4.1 requirements of Windows 11. Microsoft is really trying to fit a 10 year lifespan into computers, despite well looked after computers lasting longer than that. I'd also ask Open source projects to keep Windows xp and 7 support in, as you are open source you have no commercial reason to do planned obsolescence.
    • It's not really a big deal. There's no problem with a 486 runninig Windows XP (or 7 or later), with a few tweaks. Yes, Windows XP required more memory - but the 486 can do this. The 32-bit 486 can address just as much memory as your later 32-bit pentiums. The result is that the OS is slow, but that is expected.

      There was no real technical reason that Window XP couldn't be on i486, except that "support" was removed for it. Removing support for 486 is not the same as adding code that forbids 486, it just mea

    • The other side of the argument is that normal programs are leaving efficiency and performance on the table because they have to be compiled for 10 year old CPUs. Gentoo users have a point, natively compiled programs run faster. The old versions of windows that run on your old CPU probably were the same. They COULD have taken advantage of your CPU better but were compiled to support pentium3s. At some point it's better to just move on and benefit the majority. Normal programs are not going to maintain multip

  • by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @02:00PM (#64491273)

    For those of us who came of age in the early days of personal computing, the names "Intel 486" and "Windows XP" evoke a nostalgic whirlwind of memories.

    Windows XP launched in 2001. While I think the case can be made for drawing the line even earlier I feel like at the barest of minimums something considered to be from the "early days of personal computing" should at least be from the 20th century.

    • by xack ( 5304745 )
      We're getting old. Next year there will be adults younger than Windows Vista. The "ipad baby" generation are already teenagers. I've already used the phrase "second quarter of the 21st century" in my writing.
      • by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Eh, I'm not sure how much age has to do with it. It strikes me more as just plain old ignorance.

        It's tricky to call out a date as what constitutes a personal computer is debatable but if we call 1975 a conservative estimate for the beginning of "personal computing" then 2001 is right at the halfway point between the beginning and now. In the context of time I dont think anyone calls something right in the middle as "early" unless they dont understand what they are talking about.

    • I remember being excited I got an early copy of XP in September when it wasnt supposed to come out until October.

      Woooo

    • Early says of personal computing would certainly include S100 board micros; predating even the IBM. But that's not even early days of computing that occured before "personal" got involved.

  • nostalgic? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kwerle ( 39371 )

    I don't think that word means what you think it means. I challenge you to find *anyone* who is nostalgic for XP & the 486.

    • by slaker ( 53818 )

      One of my ~20 year old students is big on retro-computing. I gave him a Sparc 20 to play with and I've been helping him with his personal project, which is to get a fully stable dual CPU 486DX/50 working. There's a lot of experimentation with it because finding parts from that time period that will tolerate the 50MHz system bus has not been easy. I'm not sure it would've been easy even in the mid-90s.

      • It's a great way to learn, but make sure he gets skills that can translate to a modern job/societal contribution too.

    • I have to say I'm a bit nostalgic.

      I remember having a 386 when Doom came out. It ran, but at under 10fps. When I got to play it on a 486, it was like "woah, this is so smooth!" The 486 was the first step towards a PC that could really do multimedia.

      Windows XP may be a clunker by today's standards, but it was night and day better than Windows 98 or *shudder* Windows ME. It was the first consumer version of Windows that you could plausibly run for more than a day without crashing. It also was the firs

      • Windows XP was the long awaited merge between the cheap but not-quite-good-enough Windows home variants (up through Windows 98) and the expensive but professional Windows NT. Remember, Windows 98 still had DOS under the hood, with all the baggage that came with it; whereas Windows NT 4 had the GUI from Windows 98 but was more stable and had professional features.

        • Windows had DOS under the hood all the way through windows ME. That came out in the year 2000- after windows 2000 had already come out. As one might expect, it was a buggy mess of an OS given that it was trying to run modern multimedia features on what was essential 1980s tech.

    • by Scoth ( 879800 )

      Me? The 486 was about the pinnacle of DOS gaming. Lots great games in franchises that continue today (Doom, Quake, Civilization, etc) came out during the 486 era, and a lot of folks around my age remember the 486 era being a time of great progress and improvement in games, computing power, and the like. My first internet experiences in the '94-'95 timeframe were on the family 486. I keep a 486 running for retro gaming on.

      XP I have a little less nostalgia for specifically, especially since I'd migrated to Li

    • by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      XP was clean, compact, and efficient. It didn't randomly download and install apps I didn't ask for, it didn't change settings every time there was an update, or randomly add features I didn't want or remove stuff I depend on. It didn't search the internet when I look for files on my local machine, or require me to have a Microsoft account to log in.

      So I think nostalgia for XP is valid.

    • by kwerle ( 39371 )

      I guess I'm heavily biased. When the 486 and XP were peaking I had a NeXT slab. It all looked like crap to me.

  • I am a serious collector and enthusiast of vintage computing systems, but I do have to say that the words "beloved Windows XP" have never come out of my lips. :)
    • I am too. "beloved Windows 2000", yes, "beloved Windows XP", uh, no. I had to heavily mod XP to make it work the way I wanted. It was a turd but I managed to polish it.

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @03:28PM (#64491551)

    Personally I prefer to wear a ballgag and a rubber gimp suit and have the wife beat me. But hey each to their own, some people's sick fetish is staring at the Windows XP loading screen for hours on end waiting it to load on a system it was never intended to run on. I don't judge. This is a safe space.

  • Well, the 486 does have protected memory for Windows XP support.
    Provided it has enough memory it will run just fine.

  • Slashdot was a website 6ish years before Windows XP was released.
  • Well, somebody had to say it.
  • Please. "Microsoft's beloved Windows XP". Nothing from Micro$oft could ever be "beloved". A more accurate term would be "behated".

    Reminder: Bill Gates should burn in Hell.

  • I used to have an IBM 8580 system which originally used a 386DX processor (the top spec model was clocked at 25MHz). IBM had a licensed clone of the 486 called Blue Lightning, and produced a CPU upgrade. It was a small daughterboard fitting into the 386 socket. The Blue Lightning was clock-tripled (like the Intel 486DX4, which came a couple of years later) so ran internally at 75MHz. That means I could now run Windows XP on that machine from 1987, if my parents hadn't sadly junked it. (It ran NT 3.51 v

    • by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
      On second thoughts, it would be hard to get enough memory. The IBM 8580 I mentioned could take 64 megabytes and perhaps more (I had 56 megabytes in mine, scattered across several weird upgrade cards). But the PC-AT... I don't know that even with a 486 upgrade installed you'd be able to install and directly address more than a megabyte.
  • At last, I can can finally get those older Windows programs that seem ridiculously fast on a current machine to run more like modern software!

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