Let's run Win10 on really really old hardware

I work for a large visual effects company. Our workstations are all 2 CPUs. 14 cores per CPU or more. 192GB of ram or more. For hundreds of artists. :)

shaocaholica said:

I work for a large visual effects company. Our workstations are all 2 CPUs. 14 cores per CPU or more. 192GB of ram or more. For hundreds of artists. :)

22 years ago I worked for company that had an application that required 10 CPUs to run. This required three separate computers. Two each had 4 CPUs and the third 2 CPUs. We used Dell Servers since that was the only way to get more than two CPUs per computer. The three computers also had special shared RAM that was connected with fiber optics. That way the computers could share data using this RAM. Maybe 18 years ago we changed over to using three Dell workstations with two having 2 CPUs and the third having 1 CPU. They were faster and a lot cheaper than the Dell servers.

Note the Dell server Xeon CPUs used a slot (Slot 2) instead of a socket. Each one was about as big as a paperback book.

Computers have come a long way in the last twenty years.

I'm actually hunting for a dual slot2 Xeon workstation. I know those Xeon heatsink and packaging assembly is massive.

shaocaholica said:

I'm actually hunting for a dual slot2 Xeon workstation. I know those Xeon heatsink and packaging assembly is massive.

Our standard computer either had 2 or 4 Slot 2 Xeons. I don't remember how much they cost. I think they cost between $15,000 and $20,000 each. One total system cost over $70,000.

We had one special Dell computer that had 8 Slot 2 Xeons. I think that set us back $100,000. Note the Slot cartridge had cache RAM mounted on the board in addition to the CPU.

Berton said:

Your description reminds me of the Pentium II, installed a few back in the later '90s.

I think they might have Xeons based on the Pentium II. They were bought in the mid to late 90's.

CountMike said:

I had Pentium 200 pro quad MB but only 2 CPUs on it and with SCSI disk, it was awesome for that time.

I would love a dual Pentium Pro workstation as well if I could get one working. I had one long ago but lost it in a basement flood.

CountMike said:

SCSI drives were SSDs of their time.

SCSI and IDE used basically the same hardware internally. Some SCSI drives had faster RPMs which gave a speed improvement. SCSI made more sense with servers where users could access them from multiple computers at the same time.

IDE drives maxed out performance because their parallel interface was limited to 100 or 133Mbps. No real improvement was made until they switched to the SATA interface which started at 150Mbps and topped out at 600Mbps. SATA drives now are limited by the internal speed of the drive not the SATA interface.

The first SSDs also used the SATA interface. Because of that they are limited to its speed not their internal performance. They top out at just less than the SATA 600Mbps interace.
SSDs that now use the PCiex4 interface were finally able to take advantage of their internal speed. You see a lot of these drives capable of 3000-4000Mbps.

A lot of motherboards use the M.2 interface instead now. Depending upon the motherboard it may support SSDs that use the SATA interface, PCie interface, or both. Note that M.2 drives that have the SATA interface still are limited to its speed of 500-600Mbps.

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shaocaholica said:

I would love a dual Pentium Pro workstation as well if I could get one working. I had one long ago but lost it in a basement flood.

If you had the computer and all the other parts to make it work then all you would need is Windows 2000 Pro. I have a feeling that you would be disappointed by its performance.
One time I tried to use a computer I had not used in 5 or 10 years. I found it painfully slow. I didn't remember it being that slow when I first got it. It's all about what we are used to at the time.