Pentium Pro without a doubt. If you owned one you were the envy of everyone that didn't. And those were mere amateurs. (or 16 bit users!) :biggrin:
Because it has served and earned this status.
Yeah, that box cost me a lot of $$$ back in the day. It is excellent for old games (up to Battlefield 1942) and web browsing (Firefox 8). Paired with a RAM drive, it is a pleasure to use. Boots up XP SP3 in less than 10 seconds, partly compensates for the lack of proper sleep mode... I do have a few modern systems nearby, this I love the most though, probably due to the amount of work I have put in to it over the years.@MagicCarpet, lovely, still got a PIII nice!
They cost close to nothing these days, why not? If you use appropriate software, I don't see a problem. I am sure, electrical bills for these systems are least of their worries, unless they run mammoth CRT screens too.Where my son goes to school/daycare, (he is 3) they still are using a fleet of old pIII rigs for the kids to play educational games on etc. They keep them running at all times, no telling how much in electricity they are wasting so that the kiddies can play some oldschool games :biggrin:
Power management was little but most equipment (pre P4) was fairly low power to begin with. The abundance of smaller (louder) fans in old systems could wrongly alarm of a sleeping beast under the hood.You also forget how much noise these old systems made, it's funny to actually be able to hear the harddrives spinning. You can tell they are going full out! No sleep settings or anything. But yeah...quite a few of the old dinosaurs around still kickin. I think I have some old pc133 ram around somewhere maybe they want a upgrade? ahhahah
Yeah, that box cost me a lot of $$$ back in the day. It is excellent for old games (up to Battlefield 1942) and web browsing (Firefox 8). Paired with a RAM drive, it is a pleasure to use. Boots up XP SP3 in less than 10 seconds, partly compensates for the lack of proper sleep mode... I do have a few modern systems nearby, this I love the most though, probably due to the amount of work I have put in to it over the years.
They cost close to nothing these days, why not? If you use appropriate software, I don't see a problem. I am sure, electrical bills for these systems are least of their worries, unless they run mammoth CRT screens too.
Power management was little but most equipment (pre P4) was fairly low power to begin with. The abundance of smaller (louder) fans in old systems could wrongly alarm of a sleeping beast under the hood.
I had a Hitachi drive that meowed every now and then... my friends kept looking for a cat. In response to my e-mail, Hitachi decided to send me a firmware update (they shipped a CD, in fact) that silenced it. Technical support *was* actually useful.
I'd keep that stick around. Some systems allowed up to 1.5gb of ram, you never know what you encounter next. Or you can make a keychain with it :biggrin: