Operating system for a P3 system
Hi everyone. I am looking to tackle the software side of things on my Pentium III build. I made a post yesterday asking about the hardware, and I am not certain in which direction I want to take the software. The machine is currently running a copy of Windows XP Pro with SP4 installed, and it runs quite well. Going online is a tricky situation (not even worrying about the lack of support for Windows XP and the security flaws), as the CPU isn't new enough to run modern versions of browsers such as Firefox or Chrome (at least the latest versions supported on XP). I'm not worried about getting online though, as I don't need to do so on that machine. What I am wondering is if Windows 98 SE or Windows 2000 would be a better bet. I'm thinking of a Windows 2000 and Windows XP dual boot, but I'm just not certain if that's the right thing to do. I plan to play some older games and test older software on this machine. I would greatly appreciate any insight anyone may have. The specs are listed below.
Motherboard: ECS P6S5AT ATX (Socket 370, PC133/DDR, AGP, PCI)
CPU: 1.26GHz Intel Pentium III
Case: Generic ATX case (nothing special)
Power Supply: Salvaged Dell 200W (probably will be replaced, it has a couple slightly bulging caps)
Hard Drive: 320GB Hitachi Deskstar
Hard Drive Controller: Adaptec ASH-1233 PCI
Memory: 1GB DDR400 (unsure of current speed, max memory of board)
Video Card: Nvidia TNT2 M64 32MB
USB: VIA PCI USB 2.0/FW400/FW800 Card
Ethernet: TP-Link 10/100 PCI Card
Comments
Windows 95 OSR2, 98SE or Me (using rloew's 48bit LBA and RAM patches, which are now free) dual booting with Windows 2000 with extended kernel.
You will be able to run up-to-date SSE compiles of roytam1's browsers like New Moon 27 (Firefox 38 ESR-based) and Serpent 52 (Firefox 52 ESR-based) on Windows 2000 once the kernel is extended (or XP SP3 and up). And you will still be able to run most games from 1997 onward in win2k. And win2k causes much fewer problems than 98 IME.
XP? The only thing you will really get from XP is "Open File - Security Warning" and "Hiding your unused notification icons..." at that point. In fact, some of the latest POSReady updates are incompatible with SSE-only machines.
OK, I will probably do a 98SE/2000 setup then. Windows 95 seems a bit old for a later system like this. I may end up putting in a second hard drive to keep an install of XP on for newer things. I don't have an issue with it, and it runs well on this system.
Most of the games that were designed for fast Pentium IIIs were geared to use Win 98SE.
I don't see any benefit to using 2000 instead of XP with a GB of RAM. A more limited system like a Pentium II stuck with 256 MB would be a prime client for 2000.
Use Windows 98 SE for sure. You'll get full advantage of it and will be able to run any game or software.