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Is XP classic/vintage yet?


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Is XP classic/vintage yet?


Maybe. Maybe not. It certainly isn’t DOS, but also not that far away either. And it’s likely to have been the best OS MS ever created. At least till they fix the crap GUI shit they’re making today. 

Trying to develop some criteria to determine whether to retire my 2 XP rigs. 1 of which is a daily driver.

 

The hardware isn’t sentimental, but some XP software is very much so and I want to keep that going forward.

 

Which introduces the question of virtualization, What’re the better choices for bringing XP over to Windows 11? Which ‘visor is recommended? My needs are USB printer support and light D3D 9 gaming.
 

I figure I want to transition over entirely to 11 by mid-summer.

 

I skipped..

NT/2000- lousy gaming support.

Me - didn’t we all?

Vista - buggy and too new.

Seven - kinda campy.

Eight - didn’t make sense.

Ten - sorta skipped it. Nothing mission-critical happens there.

 

Thoughts and comments invited.

Edited by Keatah
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22 minutes ago, Keatah said:

At least till they fix the crap GUI shit they’re making today. 

You can fix it yourself in 5 minutes it takes to install Classic Start Menu

 

I used to be an XP-or-bust luddite, but that was circa 2016 and I thought I'm quite hardcore back then. I honestly don't see how one can run it as "daily driver" in 2022. Isn't most of the stuff broken, or at least an endless hassle to do?

 

I'm not touching the 11 until it's absolutely necessary, hopefully it will take many years still. The 10 would be the best MS OS imo, if not for telemetry. But this can be nullified using a couple of third party programs.

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I figure it is close enough to Classic/vintage/retro, being slightly over 20 years old. I actually broke out a WinXP system out of storage, because I had recently played some more modern versions of Sims 3 and an Android port of Heroes of Might&Magic and wanted to play the originals on a proper system.

 

Also discovered that I really need a Win98 computer was well, because some of the Sierra/Lucasarts PnC games I wanted to play don’t work well with the audio drivers in the XP.

 

That being said, I don’t have much experience with virtualization. I only use VMWare, but only for “serious“ work. I am interested in responses though. PCs were bulky back in the day.

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My thought is it depends upon what service pack level of XP. But then, for most people, XP is XP.  XP support ended in 2014, so I would not call it "vintage" or "classic."  Just old.

 

I use VirtualBox and Hyper-V to virtualize XP, but I also do not play any games so I cannot answer that part of the question.  However, for USB, VirtualBox will be the best bet between the two.  FWIW, I pay an annual support fee to continue running Windows 7, but that will end soon, and I find its Windows XP compatibility is mostly good.  XP mode (which is Virtual PC, an ancestor to Hyper-V,) works okay for most applications.

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Don't have to jump ship just yet, there's still a few web browsers that *mostly* work with current websites:

 

https://msfn.org/board/forum/201-browsers-working-on-older-nt-family-oses/

 

You'll notice the threads dedicated to Humming Owl & ArcticFoxie's hacks of 360 Extreme Explorer, Feodor2's beta of Quantum/Rust-based Firefox, and Roytam's UXP-derived (although becoming more obsolete) builds.

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Honestly I have zero nostalgia for XP since I skipped over it at the time, plus I felt that PC gaming in the early 2000's was the Dark Ages since it was all shoddy Xbox ports and Eurojank.  Plus any old Windows game I can run on 64-bit Windows 10 after some tweaking (some more than others).

 

But maybe in the future once I get my memory upgraded I might run XP and other OS's in VirtualBox for the same reason I run Atari computer emulators.

 

And...that also means investing in 3rd party anti-viral & malware protection as well, plus I sure as heck wound't do any web browsing in that unprotected enviroment.

Edited by MrMaddog
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21 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

plus I felt that PC gaming in the early 2000's was the Dark Ages since it was all shoddy Xbox ports and Eurojank.

Yeah I think this was the era when I gave up on PC gaming,  because it seemed like every game was broken or at least took a lot of effort to get running well.  And you'd have to do things like downgrade your DirectX to specific version or check the vendor support site to see if they issued any patches and update them yourself.

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11 minutes ago, zzip said:

Yeah I think this was the era when I gave up on PC gaming,  because it seemed like every game was broken or at least took a lot of effort to get running well.  And you'd have to do things like downgrade your DirectX to specific version or check the vendor support site to see if they issued any patches and update them yourself.

 

Odd.   I have some fond memories of that era.

 

GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Battlefront, Need for Speed 27...  I have a shelf of CDs and last year I got an itch to play them.  Tried running them on my Windows 10 gaming laptop but ran into all manner of compatibility issues.   Found myself on some pretty sketchy websites downloading patches and drivers and in the end I abandoned the effort.

 

Next I tried to repurpose an old Sony Vaio laptop from some years back.  XP loaded okay but could not recognize a good deal of the hardware.   Fine if you want to play Minesweeper.   Need for Speed however wasn't having it.

 

Instead I got myself an old Dell Optiplex 760 SFF desktop.   Its pretty compact.  Designed to run Windows Vista, Dell has done a good job of providing backward compatible drivers for older Windows releases.   I guess because businesses often rely on some pretty old software.  I added an NVidia 6300 GPU.  That was pretty cheap and it came with drivers for XP.  The Optiplex has a built in DVD-ROM which my current laptop does not.

 

And it plays all of my CD based games.   I do need to rely on DosBox though to play DOS games on it.   Doom/Doom II will run under XP but the sound is corrupted.   Under DosBox they play as expected.

 

But I am Interested to know if there is any virtualization option that can handle the graphical demands of games like GTA3.

 

 

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4 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

GTA3, Vice City, San Andreas, Rogue Squadron, Star Wars Battlefront, Need for Speed 27...  I have a shelf of CDs and last year I got an itch to play them.  Tried running them on my Windows 10 gaming laptop but ran into all manner of compatibility issues.   Found myself on some pretty sketchy websites downloading patches and drivers and in the end I abandoned the effort

I didn't play those particular games but the effort you mention looking for drivers and patches --  that's what I ran into constantly,  that or maybe my hardware needed an upgrade even though that wasn't clear from the specs.   It got to the point where I stopped buying PC games because I didn't want to spend the entire weekend trying to get it to run properly.

 

12 minutes ago, oracle_jedi said:

But I am Interested to know if there is any virtualization option that can handle the graphical demands of games like GTA3.

Seems to run OK under Wine:  https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=936

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Yes the dark ages. I've said it many times before. Seemed to occur with the advent of 3D cards. New and undefined standards abounded. Each new card being a 1-year pass (or time-limited dongle) to experience the newest the industry had to offer. Any upgrade or change seemed to break software that came before. Think stuff from around Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Or Quake II and III. 1998-2005'ish.

 

Changing a graphics card (Matrox, ATi, nVidia, S3, 3dfx) from one to the other meant not only new drivers, but those d3d versions and settings. And changing games from one to the other meant changing graphics card driver settings. And in some cases different driver revisions. All of it very tedious. Would you like 9x516db5 or 9x516dr2? Because 9x522edr (the latest) didn't work with the game you just bought home. Then there were the Forceware and Detonator driver series for the GeForce - I have nearly 15 versions archived with comments on which worked best with which game.

 

It got bad enough they had to make profilers that "I-Spied" what was running and loaded game-specific settings. But that's not all, there were 3rd party tools like Detonator Destroyer to facilitate easier driver swaps. And CoolBits to enabled "hidden" features in drivers that worked with some games, but not others. Hz tool to keep watch over monitor refresh rates and nHancer to do god knows what. Did I mention some of these needed certain version of .dotnet? Enough already!

 

Nvidia's constant driver update started with the tail-end of the TNT2 chips and continued on for years after that. Slowing only in the GTX 9 and 10 series.

 

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5 hours ago, oracle_jedi said:

But I am Interested to know if there is any virtualization option that can handle the graphical demands of games like GTA3.

The latest VirtualBox versions offer some kind of 3D video interface.  It breaks Windows 10 desktop rendering when I turn it on.  Though that could be a function of my hardware and OS setup.

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Windows XP was supported for home users until 2014 and extended POSReady2009 updates kept going until 2019. This is one of those cases where despite being released a long time ago, support for it wasn't ended until fairly recently and therefore it shouldn't be considered classic/vintage yet.

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Windows NT4 had a similarly long run, for many of the same reasons. Despite not having PnP, it was a very solid OS, and made it through *SIX* service packs.

 

For the purposes of this discussion though, I would consider NT4 to be vintage/classic, and XP "merely obsolete".

 

 

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No. XP can't be vintage because it's for PC's and PC's can't be vintage. "Vintage" or "classic"=8 bit. I guess maybe some 68000 and similar stuff could be considered sort of classic like. I just consider them old.

 

XP is the best PC OS ever, and I will probably keep my Samsung Q1 series and Viliv UMPC's long after I dispose of my Windows 10 junk. But I will never consider them "classic" or "vintage."

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XP is the best (in my personal opinion) Microsoft OS ever created. No bloat, no bullsh*t. Just a fast good GUI that works as it should. I have a machine that I use for real work (archiving stuff and more) that is offline of course and that is running XP because it just works and works well.

 

Is it "vintage"? Well I have to say yeah. I mean it is many generations back. How many? Four now? Five?....unless you start counting Windows 10 build numbers....

 

But, vintage or not, it is still entirely usable even today. This is a situation in which while it is old it still does the job. That can't be said for many other operating systems of this age. It still handles modern Windows file systems (NTFS and exFAT if you have the update available before M$ so graciously removed it from their servers) and it runs faster than any modern OS on a Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM. The only downside is that you cannot use it on most new computer hardware very sadly for various and obvious reasons (no 32-bit support, no drivers).

 

I did not mind Windows 7 honestly...it could be manipulated into something of an experience that sort of resembled XP. But everything afterward....by God.

 

In my eyes XP was and still is the echelon of Microsoft GUI based operating systems. Everything afterward was to add needless eye candy and bloat (and online stores, and stupid start menus...etc)

 

 

Edited by eightbit
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  • 2 weeks later...

This is a relative question that depends on which generation you're from.  Those of us consider the 8/16-bit home computers that weren't PC compatible to be classics because we grew up with them, while zoomers say Windows 7 PC's and PS3's are vintage because that's what they grew up with.

 

Personally I don't consider PC's themselves to be "special" like Atari's, Commodores or even pre-OS X Apples because they just don't have the uniqness the 8/16-bit micros have.

 

Sure you can change the version of Windows and internal hardware but they will still be PC's because that's the industry standard.  Like I said before, I had more nostigia for the PC games than I did for the PC's themselves.

 

But if someone had fond memories growing up with HP's running XP's, well I'll respect that then...

Edited by MrMaddog
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4 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Personally I don't consider PC's themselves to be "special" like Atari's, Commodores or even pre-OS X Apples because they just don't have the uniqness the 8/16-bit micros have.

 

Sure you can change the version of Windows and internal hardware but they will still be PC's because that's the industry standard.  Like I said before, I had more nostigia for the PC games than I did for the PC's themselves.

 

 

 

If we take the Amiga, it is running Workbench. I am extremely nostalgic for Workbench. I might be nostalgic for "looking at the computer itself", but mostly for what it was running. The ST, the GEM desktop. Commodore 64, BASIC and the commands...the look of the software...the feel of it...etc. I can keep going.

 

So, really, when I think about it I am nostalgic primarily for what the hardware was running. The OS and the games.

 

Secondly I am nostalgic for the hardware. The upgrades, addons, "oddware"...all of that good stuff.

 

 

That said, regardless of the "standard", there are PC's that can natively run Windows 3.1 and others that cannot. Some can run 95 or 98 while others cannot. I am nostalgic for all of those OS experiences. Games of course as well. Some PC's can run games that others cannot. Absolutely I am nostalgic for playing games on period accurate hardware and having them run the way I remember them running on the real hardware.

 

I also think PC hardware is very nostalgic, but I am looking on the inside....not the box. I don't find ANY particular model (HP, etc) nostalgic (OK, well maybe the cowprint Gateway accessories...loved that!). I find a particular CPU or motherboard chipset nostalgic, video and sound cards from specific manufacturers, or other hardware of various time periods. Hence why I build my own using hardware I loved and remember.

 

I guess you really have to be into vintage PC hardware and it helps to have been there at the time in that field when a lot of this stuff was released for true personal nostalgia. It's why you see stuff like Adlib Gold sound cards go for $3K on auction sites. For just a sound card. People are very nostalgic for PC hardware (or something they REALLY wanted but never got their hands on like the aforementioned Adlib Gold) ...and the whole craze may be even more extreme than anything else right now in the vintage computer arena. Unfortunate for somebody like me that just wants to use and play with this hardware and remember the good ol' days but does not have that sort of coin to spend. My personal "grail" is the Quantum 3D Obsidian X-24 card. I had it when I worked at CompUSA in the 90's and it cost me a few weeks of paychecks...but I sold it years later like a dummy. I'm fairly certain I will never own that card again unfortunately due to its rarity and value today.

 

If you are looking at HP's and Compaq's and other run of the mill PC's from the outside and saying "I'm not nostalgic for that"...well you are not really getting it. Not saying "you" personally mind you. I am just saying in general most people into vintage PC's are not really looking at the box on the outside and feeling nostalgia for that. I mean, maybe in some cases perhaps, but I think the real nostalgia in the PC vintage arena is for internal hardware. 

 

I grab (or used to when they were available to me!) all sorts of run of the mill old desktop and tower computers with that excitement of "what will I find inside?". That was always the drive for me. I have found all sorts of great hardware I was nostalgic for inside of run of the mill PC's and would apply that found hardware to my own personal computer builds. That was so awesome! But now, that well at least in my area is completely dry. You'd be lucky to find that crap 90's HP tower somewhere.

 

 

 

 

Edited by eightbit
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On 4/16/2022 at 1:42 AM, eightbit said:

XP is the best (in my personal opinion) Microsoft OS ever created. No bloat, no bullsh*t. Just a fast good GUI that works as it should. I have a machine that I use for real work (archiving stuff and more) that is offline of course and that is running XP because it just works and works well.

It is. And I do real work daily with XP and Office 2003 like document preparation and other technical stuff. Eventually it will age and become obsolete. But will be remembered as the best for its time and then some.

 

Win 10/11 are pretty good under the hood in that they support later technologies and seem stable. But I still find some file management stuff tedious. Made that way because fucking mobile shit. Microsoft really needs to learn that mobile and desktop are two different modes of computing - and put a hard stop on anything "phone". They failed miserably with Motorola Q and anything thereafter for the following 10 years. They failed because they kept trying to blur the lines between the two dichotomies. Merge them even. So no.

 

On Metro.. I hated that. I said it before and I say it again. Thankfully some of it is going away. And some webpages are becoming less harsh with less sharp angles and less high contrasts - not only in colors but in shapes. We're not there yet. But it's better than 5 years ago.

 

On Vista & 7 Aero.. Aero was so campy and clear "plasticy looking". Dotcom campy. Lawnmower Man VR campy. A waste of CPU and GPU resources still in a time when power was still at a premium. Windows 3.1 and 95/98 looked more professional than 7 & and Aero. Not unlike those horrible clear G3 & G4 PowerMacs and iMacs. The ones that were either partly transparent or even 2x worse, the ones that were wrapped in that fugly acrylic shit. It yellows and tans over time. And looks and smells like old-man-nursing-home trash and those 2005'ish aero-look cars that melted in the sun. Where everything had to be rounded somehow. I tell you! A Beige Box PC, cleaned up, still looks better. The BB PCs at least look like a MACHINE of some sort. And hide nothing. Make no apologies. They set the tone straight away. Not half-melted Apple garbage - trying too hard to be progressively designerish.

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On 4/26/2022 at 6:00 PM, MrMaddog said:

This is a relative question that depends on which generation you're from.  Those of us consider the 8/16-bit home computers that weren't PC compatible to be classics because we grew up with them, while zoomers say Windows 7 PC's and PS3's are vintage because that's what they grew up with.

Yup. It's a moving window of a sorts. Sometimes of variable size too. But constantly moving it is.

 

I grew up with the VCS. But nowadays I'm finding the balance tip from "sitting in a retro wood paneled room" to recalling the good times that surrounded the actual act of playing the games themselves. All the little cultural things. And perhaps it is those cultural things and domestics that are the truly nostalgic things. Just so happens that videogaming is trigger for all those other things.

 

I always (as of the past 10'ish years) try to lend some sort physicality to emulating things. So far I've settled on SSD cartridges. The last PC I put together has two slots specifically for that. Like a MAME cartridge. Or astronomy/astrometrics/astrology cartridge. And so on. It's an experiment more or less.

 

On 4/26/2022 at 6:00 PM, MrMaddog said:

Like I said before, I had more nostalgia for the PC games than I did for the PC's themselves.

This was and remains magic. Though we may not have thought so at the time, it was fun and cool to go to the store (of which there like 8 or 10 in my area) and see something new on the shelf, pick it up, and read the box. Then pay for it. Then take it home. All the while imagining what it might be like.

 

As kids of the 70's getting cartridges - our parents and grandparents made the whole day a special one. Trips to McDonald's, the park to shoot off model rockets. Trips into the city to see the museums, while on the way picking up loads of junkfood for fattening pleasure gorges. Coming home to play the stuff. Anticipating the next BSG, BRITTFC, ST, episodes. Exploring math with a red-led pocket calculator. Reading about microchips. And so much more.

 

I remember bringing home some planetarium software called RedShift by Maris. It was as exciting as getting cartridges with gramma in the 70's and 80's. This time I'd be looking forward to what new calculations and computations it could do instead of the new sounds & graphics we lusted over in the VCS, Intellivision, and Colecovision days. All the same, just a different point of focus.

 

Planetarium programs like that were more the exception than the norm and each one was good experience. Complete opposite of bringing home game after game after game. Something different. Something sophisticated.

 

The PC is but a means, a vehicle, for doing the software.

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On 4/13/2022 at 12:32 PM, Keatah said:

Is XP classic/vintage yet?

 

Presumably not, depending on one's definition of "classic" -- especially if we start counting from the end of XP support, rather than from its actual appearance years before. If it's vintage by one criterion or another, however, it would be fitting, as I prefer older stuff anyway, and I haven't downgraded to anything that came after XP, even 7. I have an XP tower and two nearly identical back-ups just in case, and everything that I use runs perfectly: recording software, several emulators, WordPad, etc. I'm a big proponent of not fixing something if it isn't broken.

 

It's not so much a stubborn refusal to move beyond XP; I've just never seen any reason to spend the money, since everything works and nothing new that I want has come out requiring a later OS.

 

You've made an interesting point above, Keatah. By those of us who were born years before "PC clones" became ubiquitous, modern computers are often used as vehicles or conduits, rather than due to any particular interest in the PCs themselves, or some intense affinity for Microsoft, Intel, etc. as companies -- at least not on the level that we enjoy pursuing our interests in the pioneering companies, and the ways in which their games and systems work.

 

More modern computers -- 1994 onward, would you say? -- are actually emulators, rather than entities in and of themselves: not only in terms of emulating older consoles and computers, but also emulating typewriters (with word processors), tape recorders (with Audacity, Garage Band and so forth), ledger books (with spreadsheets), written letters to friends, relatives and pen-pals (with e-mail), canvases (with Paint and the four million other artistic tools), newsletters and magazines (with weblogs and enthusiast sites) and, as Douglas Adams pointed out when the Internet first became popular, brochures.

 

 

 

Edited by Chris+++
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