Hey hey I posted from a late 90's/early 2000s PC again! · 4:45am May 30th, 2020
And this time, it's actually running smooth enough that writing this blogpost doesn't place an awful amount of lag on the system!
Here's the end specs for anyone who may be interested:
- Motherboard: Asus P5A-B
- CPU: AMD K6-2 @ 450MHz
- 512 MB SDRAM
- GPU: Nvidia Geforce FX5500
- HDD: Quantum Bigfoot 19.2gb
- Sound Card: Sound Blaster AWE32
- Additional hardware: NEC 5-port USB 2.0 card
- PCI to PCMCIA adapter (for wifi and stuff)
- A CPU cooler that sounds like a quadcopter trying to reach escape velocity
Software:
- Windows XP SP3
- Browser: Pale Moon 27 (essentially a backported Firefox)
- LibreOffice 4.2 (because my Office 2000 and Office XP CDs wouldn't cooperate)
- M I N E C R A F T (at under 1 fps, of course-- the best way to play!)
- Java 6
Once I find a quieter CPU cooler and a good case to put this thing in, I plan on using this system as a no-frills, no distractions writing PC. I get distracted waaaaay too easily on my main PC to do much in terms of writing, so most of what I write tends to happen late at night on my Surface Go, which is weak enough to not really be all that great at anything beyond mobile games. Even then, sometimes I find myself getting pulled into some good ol' Angry Birds every now and then.
...Geez, this computer's actually handling writing long blogposts pretty heckin' well! Now if only the iPod Classic I nabbed for myself as a graduation gift worked as well for playing music :P
And yeah, it's got this weird squeaking sound that comes up while playing music no matter what I try. I've already contacted the Ebay seller about it and I'm currently waiting for a response.
Anyhow, this PC that I have yet to name will be sitting offline 99% of the time, because... y'know, Windows XP and all. And before you ask, yes, I tried several Linux distros on the system before opting for Windows XP. Almost every modern distro has since dropped support for the AMD K6, and the couple that do still support it are mind-numbingly slow, to the point where I actually managed to install and run Windows 7 on this same PC in less time than it took to simply install one such distro (Mageia 7, and later tried 6 out of curiosity.)
Windows 2000 was also originally the OS of choice for this system, but absolutely none of the graphics drivers I tried were playing nice with it, and Pale Moon wasn't having any of it either, so I chose XP for app compatibility, even though it's a bit laggier. :P
Also, I was originally gonna move the 5.25" floppy drive from my Archiver PC to this one, but I've since decided that it'd be a better option to stick with the 3.5" drive since most of the software I have on floppies is in that format.
Minecraft? Load up GOG on there and get some classic games on it!
You could probably play Half Life, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Morrowind, Oblivion, Diablo I & II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Monkey Island I & II. Maybe get Angband and Moria and Nethack, Zork and half of Infocom's library of games. How about the original Magic the Gathering computer game from 1997? I bet it could run Civilization III. Torchlight I & II should run on XP SP 3. Baldurs Gate I & II, Planescape Torment, Neverwinter Nights...
--Sweetie Belle
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I've got a boxed copy of Baldur's Gate 1 from my aunt. ;)
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Go for it! You don't really need "enhanced edition" or anything, and Baldur's Gate was fun!
(And of the above, Moria, Nethack, and Angband are free, and you can grab Zork 1-3 for free easily enough, too. Activision had them up for free download at one point. They probably don't any more, but if you release something for free, it's free, even if you take it down years later...)
--Sweetie Belle
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Neato. Though, given the goal of this build is to be distraction-free, I think I'll resist the temptation to load up those old CDs. XD
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No! Stop it! This is supposed to be your writing PC!
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y e s
UNLESS
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If I was building an XP machine, it waould totally be a distraction-ee pc.
I'd suggest this text editor, but I'm not sure you'd be able to get it running on XP...
https://github.com/zyedidia/micro
--Sweetie Belle
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I'd be more concerned about the CPU architecture it requires. I did mention that my main issue was finding an OS that had a good library of (somewhat) up-to-date applications that was still compatible with an i586 architecture.
Most programs these days require at minimum an i686 architecture out of their usage of CMOV and SSE instructions.
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Yeah, and I just looked at the two installer programs it says to install with for Windows, and both say Windows 7+.
Pity, I've been trying it out lately, and it's like nano, but nicer in various ways. Of course, I usually want a gui, but a command prompt based text editor would be pretty distraction free!
--Sweetie Belle
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Heh. Yeah, I was thinking about throwing my copy of WordPerfect 6 onto the system, but I went with LibreOffice instead since I still want to be able to access things like my planning docs that I make in Microsoft Word.
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There is that, I suppose. micro does let you do split-screen with multiple text documents, and has syntax hilighting, though I suppose that's really only useful if you're programming in it.
You could, of course, put both LibreOffice and WordPerfect on it. Load WordPerfect when you are writing, and head over to LibreOffice when you need to look at planning docs. Or import those into google drive and load 'em from the browser.
--Sweetie Belle
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Maybe.
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i.imgur.com/MSO3k.gif
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I have been bapped.