A CPU ahead of its time: The Pentium Pro

[@omfgbunder2008]

You installed windows without a mouse... I know a tabber when I see one. 😂

[@bitsundbolts]

Hehe, yes. I had to look for the PS/2 mouse and procrastinated as long as possible 😂

[@awilliams1701]

@@bitsundbolts back in the day I had a 486 without a mouse. We got one eventually, but it took a few months. I learned how to use win3.1 without a mouse. It wasn't fun. Ironically here I am with win11 on my work computer and I still close programs by double clicking the icon on the left left corner. I'm not sure why I'm more prone to use that than the "X" but I am. It doesn't work on everything. VSCode doesn't work with it. Notepad++ does though. Even normal win11 notepad with it's tabbed documents still does it. lol I've seen a few programs that don't have an icon there that still work as well. I think windows explorer used to work before tabbed mode was added.

[@JohnSmith-mf3dh]

You use a mouse when installing Windows? These unters and their mice...

[@user-ro1cc8tz6d]

nowadays you're lucky to have your tab's highlighted

[@briansouth9325]

Ah, you must be young lol

[@tony359]

"a friend at the scrapyard"... I need such a friend :)

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha, absolutely! But it took some time to build up this friendship. The same guy I asked to rescue that Apricot machine... You know how that story ended 😅

[@tony359]

@@bitsundbolts You got a Lemon instead!

[@zorrzdxqwetti6482]

Друг на свалке 😂 знаем мы эту вашу свалку в Эмиратах.. Шарджа 😂

[@joonglegamer9898]

I remember when I went to Animation School. One of the staff working with accounting was more interested in 3D animation instead of Classical animation. He showed me his new Pentium-Pro that he paid a fortune for. He was an Early 3D studio Max user when it transitioned to "Max" from 3D studio, and I was totally blown away how simple it was to work with polygons in real-time.

[@lennyvalentin6485]

Pentium Pro ran Duke Nukem 3D like greased lightning too! :D It was the fast superscalar core and tightly coupled L2 cache that did it. But not really affordable though... Ugh! :)

[@rjmaas]

I bought a 200 MHz PPRO in 1997 running NT4 and later W2K. I used it for many years. I still have it and couple of years ago it was running fine.

[@melange78]

I scrapped mine at 2010 when I left the country.

[@bakebook]

Too bad the same can't be said for new intel cpus lol

[@rjmaas]

@@bakebook Really hope Intel get their act together. Competition is good for all of us

[@habibal-faraj8586]

The Pentium Pro targeted workstations and servers market. And Windows NT was the preferred OS for this CPU. It performed very well with 32-code, but when it came to 16-bit, the original Pentium was better. We can say that the Pentium Pro was the first intel CPU primarily targeting workstations and servers. Its full speed L2 cache was designed to perform best for this kind of work. The Pentium II Xeon was the true successor of the Pentium Pro. The Pentium II was optimized for both 32 and 16 bit instructions. The L2 cache was half speed and was moved outside the CPU chip to cut cost. And with the addition of the MMX instruction set, this CPU became the perfect successor for the original Pentium family. The original Pentium was used in workstations, because intel hadn't had a CPU targeting this market before the Pentium Pro. So The original Pentium was used both for home/business and workstations. So we may look at the Pentium Pro as successor to the original Pentium if we look at it from this angle. Otherwise the real successor to the original Pentium was the Pentium II, while the Pentium Pro was the first of a new class of CPUs.

[@lemagreengreen]

We all love the Pentium Pro, parts of it live on inside every Intel CPU still being made I think! Nice to see you saved one from the recyclers, it contains entirely too much gold and many have met their end in a beaker of aqua regia. On-package L2 cache was quite the party trick, a very expensive thing to do in its time and it remained so well into the early 00s when finally we got on-die L2 caches from AMD and Intel. I remember the fastest chips of the late 90s - the first AMD Athlons and Pentium 3's - with their L2 cache chips on cartridge right next to the core but still not integrated yet. Makes you realise just how big the advancements of that time were, what was once very expensive and low-yield became very feasible and mainstram in a matter of a few years.

[@grinderkenny]

Back in the days when this came out. I setup one of these with 2 chips and 128MB of ram, 1GB root drive, 9GB archive drive, 4GB dat backup running SCO Unix. with about 50 users and about that many printers. This system was super fast. SCO Unix took full advantage of this chip.

[@szilardfineascovasa6144]

That was a BEAST of a system back then!

[@erikhicks07]

That hard drive "crunching" really brings back memories. Lots of virtual memory swapping even when just moving the mouse.

[@debrascala4010]

❤ working so many years with Pentium Pro & winnt 4.0... a jump in the past.. good old days ❤

[@photoniccannon2117]

The Pentium Pro was Intel's first CPU with out-of-order execution, and was the grandfather of all of the x86 CPUs that we see today. It's hard to state just how critical of a CPU this was for Intel, it was an absolute game changer in terms of the performance-per-clock that could be achieved, and all of our modern Intel CPUs today can still be traced directly back to the Pentium Pro.

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah! First Intel x86 CPU to use a RISC core with microcode for the x86 ISA, IIRC.

[@georgH]

Agree! But then they wanted to push the MHz as selling factor with the P4 and screwed it... Until the pentium D and then core architecture scraped it.

[@photoniccannon2117]

@@georgH Yea, they basically went back to the Pentium 3 as the basis for the Pentium M, which became the Core Solo/Core Duo and eventually the Core 2 Duo when 64 bit arrived on the scene. They learned a hard lesson that more mhz, at the expense of IPC, is not always better.

[@veneroso3337]

Hard Disk ASMR. I miss the clicking but not the whine.

[@TheDeeGeeNL]

Fun fact SSDs and NVME's can emit a similar sound to HDDs without the whine when they're under heavy load. It's much more faint though, but it is there.

[@the_kombinator]

You're weird - it's a package sound. The whine is part of the soundtrack - it's like saying "I like Metallica but not the drums"

[@sidrfen]

Western Digital Raptor 10k rpm😍😍

[@TatsuZZmage]

I miss this it's a core memory of the 90's

[@lennyvalentin6485]

Newer drives with fluid dynamic bearings didn't have (as much of) the whine. The older drives with ball bearings could be pretty bad - I once had an early 7200RPM Quantum drive (with a whopping 16GB capacity!!! lol) that sounded like a tiny jet engine... Ugh.

[@ScottHess]

I was a NeXTSTEP developer at the time. My first i486 system was such a letdown. But my first Pentium 133 system was a real step up, and my first PPro system was the point where I realized that there was really no hope for the dedicated workstation-class systems. Intel integrating things into the chipset and forcing motherboard makers to stop making random stuff up really tightened things up and made it possible to build decent systems without having to spend days experimenting to figure out what would work.

[@mask-u5v]

Да ладно, старичек am5x dx4 133 был совсем не плох, даже достаточно хорошо гнался. И грелся🤣 Я его до сих пор не выкинул, это был певый комп, по этому мать с процем, памятью и жестким диском на 850мб лежат на полке, все работает до сих пор включал недавно😁 P.S. Ну как недавно, пару лет назад🤷

[@OpenGL4ever]

Did you work at NeXT Computer?

[@chrislowe3799]

I have a real "soft spot" for the Pentium Pro. It got a lot of undeserved flack when it came due to poor mixed 16/32-bit performance, but in reality that was not ever it's target platform. Many people did not understand how it was positioned, and maybe Intel didn't help with this confusing diversion between the P1 and P2. However, enthusiasts were keen to get their hands on them, with all that on-die full speed L2 cache proving too much to ignore! The lack of MMX did negate some of the performance gains for gamers though, but again, that was never it's target platform. Also, it's a really nice looking CPU with gold heat spreader! :)

[@RetroTinkerer]

I remember that when I wanted to get away from the weird issues I was having on my Socket7+ Cyrix 6x86 200 I started pricing options, and when I saw the difference between the Pentium 200 and Pentium Pro 200 wasn't really that much (both were around 600$) I went with a socket 8 motherboard not the smart upgrade-able move I thought it was, but even though a little later Pentium MMX were released I was very happy with my purchase. (until I understood that Socket 8 was a dead end, that pissed me off a little) I would had been better off with a high quality Socket 7 and had the K6 path open, but I didn't had that info. BTW That Pentium Pro was awesome alongside my Rendition Verite and VooDoo 1!

[@phipli]

I bet it was a beast if you compiled with optimisations specifically for it. It looks like it had better MIPS/MHz compared to the competition at the time.

[@lemagreengreen]

Yeah, it found its place amongst those in the know at least. I think Intel should have used a different brand name really, it wasn't a chip that was really of much use to home users so the Pentium name wasn't really required to sell it. Of course every geek wanted one since every geek knew how significant it was. Still, it made its impact and parts of the architecture live on to this day. Also interestingly the method of construction is kinda back? the whole chiplet design we're seeing now being used to boost yields of very large and complex designs. Not quite the same as the Pentium Pro of course but it's a similar concept.

[@AncapDude]

PPro works very well on DOS gaming. MMX instructions were not widely implemented in games so you can ignore them.

[@soundspark]

@@AncapDude Perhaps many higher performance DOS games optimized to minimize the number of calls into DOS or BIOS and thus switch into 16-bit code?

[@3dfxlegacy]

The sound of old hard disks is the same of the music dance of 90s, you hate them, but you can't stop loving them

[@AncapDude]

I don't miss them at all when using silent SSD's and CF cards. I don't like clicky keyboards or mice either. So hell yes i love rubberdomes. The lower the noise the better. The only sound should come from the sound card.

[@3dfxlegacy]

I don't use SSD in retroPC but I love CF. I bought about 20 CFs of 1-16GB for €30-40 and I hope to have CFs until I die. You forget the weight in the retroPC, in CF is "almost 0". Anyway, this noise is lovely heheh

[@aaabbb-yb5vr]

I owned a Pentium Pro Server about 2004/2005, a local bank sorted out their old servers. It was a Siemens Primergy 561 with 2 Pentium Pro CPU's and 384MB of Memory. I used to run Windows 2000 on this machine. I'm not 100% sure, what I did with that System, but I think I sold it after I finished school.

[@wiintend07]

Fun fact: Mechanical pencils actually make pretty good retro CPU pin repair tools.

[@OzzFan1000]

I'm still using my dual Pentium Pro system as my Windows NT 4.0 Server for my legacy home network. I've upgraded it with dual Pentium II OverDrive CPUs with 512MB of RAM and U160 SCSI hard drives. The thing is rock solid and love it.

[@bitsundbolts]

Wow! Very nice! Especially on those two Pentium II Overdrives!

[@v12alpine]

I wonder if modern linux could work on that system?

[@lrakretor3426]

​@@v12alpine it could!

[@SledgeFox]

I watched the whole install process and enjoyed it... I need help! 🤪 Every of your videos is amazing, thank you very much!

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha, wow. Well, I have never seen the setup screens of this OS. I thought someone else would like to see it and that's why I included the entire thing. Good that it wasn't a total waste 😅

[@nickwallette6201]

I once watched a Tech Tangents video where he installed Office 97 from floppies. haha It was very zen, at least until the inevitable bad disk, which added just a touch of drama. My own NT 4 install experience wasn't quite this tidy, though. It was on a system that didn't boot from CD, so I had to use the three install floppies. I guess the boot CD sets up the environment differently, because I ended up experimenting with setup command line switches to work around the abysmal file copy routines it uses. Loading SMARTDRV first was essential... otherwise it took *a g e s* in the blue-screen portion, with the disk thrashing relentlessly the whole time. My guess is that it uses a tiny copy buffer, and only writes one or a couple clusters at a time, updates the FAT, then writes a couple more, etc.. With SMARTDRV doing its delayed-write magic, it moves along like you would expect. Definitely recommend it.

[@michaelturner2806]

From what little I remember of installing NT4 on newer hardware (Pentium 2 or so) it was imperative that you not try to install video card drivers when it prompts you to do so during setup. Leave it as standard vga or whatever it detects until after setup is complete. Then install the latest service pack. Then chipset drivers. And only after that, video card drivers. I also vaguely recall that you could use the same trick to copy the \winXX\ directory to the hard drive first, boot from dos with smartdrv loaded, for a faster install and it'd never ask for the CD again. Just had to use the option to convert to NTFS when prompted. My local cybercafe in the late 90s ran nt4 systems running DirectX 3 and they played StarCraft pretty good.

[@nickwallette6201]

Ha! I just posted that on another comment. Without SMARTDRV, the install process is awfully painful. Looks like the boot CD does this for you (thankfully!)

[@T3hBeowulf]

In early 2000s, I worked at a railroad company that used a Pentium Pro system with 16MB RAM and Windows NT 4 to operate a massive printer in the marketing dept. The Pentium Pro seemed a bit overkill for the task but that 16MB of RAM was brutal. Most print jobs were in the 100s of MBs and that poor HDD just thrashed continuously because of page file swaps. Nice find! I completely skipped over the Pentium Pro era but I think if I were to visit it today, I'd try a flavor of Linux for comparison with the Pentium and Pentium II counterparts.

[@bitsundbolts]

Another Pentium Pro that was starved and suffered from too little memory. I also completely skipped Pentium Pros - I didn't even know they existed for a long time and always wondered what their purpose was after I found out. I went from a 486 to a Pentium II - so, technically I skipped two generations of Pentiums.

[@harvaldi]

@@bitsundbolts Me too! Straight from 486DX4 100mhz to Celeron 300A.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@bitsundbolts 386DX to 486SX to 486DX2 to Cyrix 6x86 to Pentium II, here. I had to go back in time to experience the Pentium and Pentium Pro. haha

[@JoeCensored]

Pentium Pro was awesome. I ran a 150, clocked at 180, for a couple years.

[@Nick_Rabbit]

Yes and yes :) Had a dual CPU P-Pro 200mhz that was pretty spicy for the day... I think I had it in a 'full size' tower as well so it was like a monolith

[@mjaerkens]

Transition from camera angle to onscreen view was pretty sick!

[@megahexs]

The install sounds was icing on the cake. I was transported 23 years to the past. Thank you!

[@danthompsett2894]

it kills me when these chips are sold in mass for gold salvage :( they deserve our respect.

[@OpenGL4ever]

For this reason, it is better not to spread this information. The Pentium Pros are worth much more from a cultural and historical point of view, it would be a shame to dismantle them for raw materials.

[@marisakirisame867]

Yeah indeed ( I've seen lots of them being salvaged for lil piece of gold but to prevent 'em, i looted all of them )

[@Ben24-7]

remeber that you could tell when a program was stuck in a loop or drive was on its way out you could tell by the sound the drive was making lol the good old days haha

[@isaiasprestes]

Amazing! Lovely video! I saw a Pentium Pro only once in my life. It was back there in 1996/7. My friend's mother, used to work in VARIG aerolines, and bought it in LA. The sales guy trapped her and she landed home with a Pentium Pro to replace the old Pentium 75 of the family.

[@BuckEtheAlien]

I do have experience with Windows NT and Pentium Pro processors. I actually installed Windows 2000 and a voodoo1 on a Pentium Pro 180 machine back in 2001 and it ran better than expected with 48 MB of RAM.

[@angeloturner4574]

The good ol Pentium 200! With a jazz drive! The sound when inserted was great!

[@titotech]

great content, thank you for hard disk sounds on installation

[@JamieBainbridge]

I had switched to NT4 after 98SE. It was so reliable and even had some limited DirectX support. I had switched a friend over to it as well. We then moved to Win2k which was equally good. When everyone else started using the NT kernel with WinXP it was like the world caught up with my secret. Then I switched to Linux and never touched Windows again lol

[@lasskinn474]

win2k was perfectly functional well into xp's life. problem with nt4 was that it used up way more ram than what was common when it was current, for me anyway. also it was the actual golden era of linux(drivers etc wise and with how much included software you got with the distros and you could irc and play mp3's at the same time on far worse hw than you could in windows of any flavor).

[@soundspark]

@@lasskinn474 You could run DirectX 9.0C on 2000. It could even run XDDM display drivers. And it was the first NT-style operating system to have plug-and-play, Device Manager, etc.

[@lemagreengreen]

I used it after trying 95 at home for a while, I quickly learned that iD made sure their games ran on Windows NT and that was pretty much all I needed to make it daily driver. Of course the stability compared to 95/98 made it very worth it as well. Windows 2000 quickly caught on even amongst gamers since by that time pretty much everything ran on Windows NT and there were a whole lot of benefits.

[@soundspark]

@@lemagreengreen The games they released at the time used ancient OpenGL and for software rendering low spec DirectDraw.

[@giornikitop5373]

@@soundspark at the time, opengl was miles ahead of directx, lighter, faster and easily extendible. also, all the design/3d/animation programs used opengl exclusively as it was a much wider standard that worked on many architectures, not just x86. up until winxp, directx was a pile of crap, overbloated and barely worked. when dx9 came around, that was the moment it would start to dominate.

[@GadgetUK164]

Brilliant video as usual =D I love watching all the videos you release!

[@bitsundbolts]

Thank you! Glad to hear!

[@wildorb1209]

I had an IBM PC Server 704 in my home lab for a few years, which was equipped with four Pentium Pro 200 MHz and 1 MB cache. Among other things, this was the dedicated Battlefield server for our LAN parties :-) Those were the days! But it also had three power supply units together with 1.2 kw of power. The 12 SCSI discs had to be staggered in groups of three so that there were no problems with the power supply. 😀

[@ShamblerDK]

Seeing those 64MB EDO modules is insane knowing how much they used to go for back in the day.

[@robert-ju1uf]

Thanks for all your videos. I really like to see things getting repaired, especially when someone else throws it into the trash. If you should have a Pentium Pro CPU in a good visual shape I would be very happy if I could get one. It is not required to work. Btw. Congratulations for making it to the IT news with your video about 16MB SIMMs! 🎉

[@bitsundbolts]

Thanks! I was surprised to see an article about those SIMMs, but I'll take it 😅 I have the four Pentium Pro CPUs shown in this video. I only tested one of them, but I believe they are all in working condition. They all have some scratches or discoloration on the golden top though. Very rarely I find items at the scrapyard that are in pristine condition.

[@YoyomaG6]

I played the whole thing through, it reminds me of the good 'ol days. The WD noise I actually miss, made me feel so productive, we really knew when the system was io or cpu contented in those days.

[@garydoc1459]

I still remember my first ever job leaving school working for a cheap computer company. I had a 386 to log information into excel spreadsheets and could type faster than the CPU could keep up, it was sooooo slow. After 6 months they upgraded me to a Gateway P120, what a difference that made.

[@malcontender6319]

So much gold in them little chips! I remember having the 200mhz pro and it being jut shy of the requirements for Diablo 2. P2's were crazy expensive too.

[@46three]

The first computer I remember using was an original Pentium based system running DOS. We went straight from DOS to Windows 95 on that system, and that was such a major revelation for me as a young computer enthusiast!

[@Blackrazor911]

Yes, I used Windows NT 4.0 back then and was very happy with it.

[@jfseaman1]

So many Windows NT 4.0 systems I installed. It was the late 90's and early 2000. eCommerce was exploding.

[@MisterRorschach90]

Many years back my uncle owned a computer building and repair shop. I saved up a bunch of money mowing lawns, working with my dad, and allowance to buy a computer. And he did not disappoint, I didn’t really know much about exactly what hardware was what back then, but all I knew is he said was this is basically as good as you can get right now. Years later I was still able to use the system when i7 processors were out. That’s because it was one of those fastest pentium 4 extreme CPUs. I remember getting a core 2 duo MacBook for school years later and even that was considerably slower. I know this is a different pentium, but I love those extreme pentium. It would be cool to have one from each generation.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Can recall lusting after the Pentium Pro when I got a chance to use a workstation running it. I probably used NT4 up until Windows 98. Also nice soldering skills.

[@epickh64]

This is an interesting video, I must say. There isn't a lot of content about the Pentium Pro, but still, my favorite processor remains to be the 80486, which is approximately 15 years older than me. ^^ One thing: you have a slight accent for the last vowel in some words: You stretch the last vowel of some words a lot. Your pronunciation still isn't bad as you seem not to be from an English-speaking country, but that part of your accent was definitely noticeable.

[@NowhereNear42]

Windows NT 4.0. My first love!

[@tlhIngan]

Wow that takes me back. It seems all NT4 machines sound identical when booting up.

[@smudgeone]

I was using an old workstation pentium pro as my first desktop back in 2004. It was saved from the recycler as I was graduating high school and all it needed was a quick repair to the power supply. The motherboard I have supports USB, and I was able to get a 15GB HDD working with it with some workarounds. The system actually ran pretty great with Windows 2000. It didn't game very well due to missing a graphics card and none of the MMX instructions. I still have it in the basement but it hasn't been powered in a very long time. I believe it is a 166MHz chip.

[@elaron2537]

A friend had a Pentium Pro 200 / 512kb with SCSI hard drives and it was a monster for its time. I've also worked with Pentium Pros professionally, they were sold as combined raster image processor (RIP) / print servers and graphics workstations. The RIP software was originally on Windows 9x but when they finally ported it and the specialized interface card hardware drivers to NT the devices shows their power. Pentium Pros were also really good under Windows 2000, especially as memory upgrades to 128MB, 256MB, and higher became cheaper. Such a great chip, and foundational for the successes Intel had throughout the Pentium II and III eras.

[@homeforobsoletetechnology]

9:59 Indeed. I had my internship last year at a small mechanical engineering company in my hometown. They had some fairly old machines to work on metal and after watching your video I'm very sure: It was Windows NT running on those machines! Its fascinating how those are still used today. It even supported Data Exchange via Floppy disk!

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha, nice! The ones I remember were controlling injection mold machinery that made plastic shells for Siemens mobile phones. And on another station, a machine used a laser to create the markings of Volkswagen keys. Pretty fun stuff.

[@whoshotdk]

Back in the day when computers were highly radioactive and came with their own Geiger counters.

[@AncapDude]

So that is a 256mSv CPU. "Cache" haha.

[@raineyjayy]

I love the Pentium Pro. Ahead of its time but clunky. I am sporting the overdrive version of this chip in my retro build. Love it

[@ErrorlVlacro]

Those HDD and CD drive sounds are 👌🏼

[@That_Stealth_Guy]

I loved my trusty old Pentium Pro 200 with 256mb of cache. That CPU gave me my first glimpse of Windows NT. I kept that system around for many years, even running Windows 2000 on it for a while. I never once had a BSOD on any system running Windows NT or 2000, which I can not say with any of my computers that had 3.11 and up on them. I loved the video outro. Listening to old WD HDD click away is very relaxing even to this day. Although I will NEVER go back to using HDD's , I would never get any work done waiting on them. Best part was seeing just 12 processes running after install. Try that with Windows 11!

[@bitsundbolts]

I was surprised to see the "modern" Task Manager in Windows NT. I wish they ported that to windows 95/98 though an update. That simple task list doesn't work half of the time or ends in a bluescreen.

[@That_Stealth_Guy]

@@bitsundbolts 👍👍 They did eventually port features like that from NT with WinXP. Which was sort of OK. Much better with XP 64 bit though, just lacked a lot of driver support.

[@nexxusty]

Best CPU ever made IMO. This CPU was absolutely amazing at the time.

[@RetroSwim]

Indeed! Any code that accesses the CPU registers by byte or word rather than dword (e.g. AH, AL, or AX instead of EAX) causes a significant performance hit on Pentium Pro. Also yes, I can't stop using Microsoft's data width jargon. Help me! 😅

[@AncapDude]

I did several DOS benchmarks and compared a PP200-256k to a P200MMX-256k. It was not that bad at all. It could even beat the MMX in some discliplines (eg. Quake).

[@HVDynamo]

I actually had a 200Mhz Pentium Pro system with 64MB of RAM that had been a workstation at my dads company. When they where getting rid of it I got the motherboard with CPU and RAM. It was my first build really as I had to find/buy the case and everything else to make it a usable computer. I ran Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, and Linux Mandrake on it through the course of it's life. The last thing it ever did was play a round of Starcraft at a random party where we needed multiple computers to have everyone play, that was in 2009. I have unfortunately recycled it due to needing to clean up space, but I did keep the CPU as a keepsake since it takes up much less space than a whole tower. Seeing this video makes me kind of regret getting rid of it :/

[@DeJotaGamer]

yeap...the sound of the hard drive and the way memory slots were designed really touched me too lol

[@Tbird761]

I've used a few Socket 8 systems, though admittedly they were already obsolete at the time. That said, their usage was closer to when Socket 8 was current than now is to then. I only ever really spent much time with the 200 MHz 1M L2 cache black tops. At the time, they were actually the cheapest Pentium Pro processors you could buy because scrappers wanted the gold caps from the lesser models. I ran a dual socket ALR motherboard as my pfSense router at the time.

[@johnjakson444]

In the late 90s my company got me a Pentium Pro NT4 workstation built on the cheap, the heatsink clamps were made of plastic to save a few cents, eventually one day I saw the fans flapping around holding on one edge, the Pro just slowed down a bit.

[@bitsundbolts]

Poor Pentium Pro :( I am sure it was suffering without a fan properly attached!

[@jamesrdgrs]

Can't wait for some of that sweet "Socket Drop" action. I could listen to old-school WD drives all day long. My first PC had a 512MB Caviar in it, brings back so many fond and frustrating times.

[@bitsundbolts]

I picked up around 5 drives the other day - I'll have have a look soon to see if they work and maybe what data we will find on them :)

[@subfloor2022]

I would love a "10 hours Windows NT Installation" video loop :)

[@fase216]

3:20 those kind of defects were pretty common at that time. They came from people trying to remove the CPU cooler's clamp with inappropriate tools, like screwdrivers and slipped off.

[@shawnstillman736]

I swear these old WD drives sounded like they had bad bearings when new.

[@zcomputerwiz]

I love the sound of old hard drives. Probably just nostalgia, lol

[@petereggimann]

Back in 97 I was responsible for a Proliant 5000 server with dual Pentium Pro running NT 4.0 Server and the corresponding MS-SQL server software. It was a beast! Tooting took ages while you had to wait for all the system tests, both CPUs coming up, RAM test and finally the HDDs spinning up. Beside of that, it was making a noise that made working in front of the server a pain in the *** I remember installing patches from Compaq and Microsoft was a frequent activity 🙂

[@TheDemocrab]

To be fair, tooting a server or workstation-orientated system still takes a while today. ;)

[@epockismet76]

I was in college getting my IT degree when I used win NT 4, though it was in my classes, or in work environments outside of school. I didn't make it my home PC OS until windows 2k came out, with directX built in, so it could play games. I think by then the amd K7 was out, I was a big budget PC fan, and loved how amd and cyrix helped bring Intel prices down, and made PCs more accessable to more people. NT 4 was awesom, and proof microsoft could make an actual OS that wasn't trash out of the box 🤪

[@RobertGrimm]

I never had one of my own but my high school did. We ran Linux on it, Red Hat 4.something, IIRC, and used it as a telnet and web server for the C and HTML classes. It usually had up to 16 users logged in from 68K Macs. I don't remember the clock speed or RAM but it was plenty of machine for that, even if everyone wanted to compile our simple programs with GCC all at the same time.

[@CoMmAnDrX]

I ran a dual Pentium Pro 200MHz 512K in a Compaq Proliant 2500 with 1GB of ram. It ran as my web and email server for my business for 8 years before upgrading to a dual Xeon 2GHz system.

[@AttilaSVK]

I never had a Socket 8 system, but a dual Socket 8 board would be nice to try. I had some experience with Windows NT 4.0 in 2000 or 2001, when I got a virus and my computer had to be re-installed. I didn't have any OS install CDs, so I asked the guy from who we bought the computer in 1999 to do it, but I asked him to split my 1.6GB WD Caviar 21600 in half and install Windows 98 along with NT 4.0. I recently re-built my first computer with the same parts as I got it with 25 years ago. (and that's why the WD drive noises were oddly familiar) Well, it's quite a trip down memory lane :)

[@davidschaper3238]

I used NT4 extensively and supported it at several companies. It's a pretty decent OS, but Windows 2000 was a huge step forward, mainly because it protects the system files with WFP. On NT4 you had to reapply the service pack and sometimes the roll up packages after many things to make sure you had the latest system files. Also, 16 MB is too little for NT 4. It'll run, but it really needs 32 MB in the original version and a lot more with SP6 (64 or maybe 128 MB, not sure, it's long ago). Someone else further down also mentioned you need to install the SP before installing any drivers, especially video drivers, this is indeed vital. Many video drivers require at least SP3 and will misbehave if you don't have it installed. I also recall installing the Intel Busmaster IDE driver made a huge difference, both for disk and multi-tasking performance (otherwise your CPU time will get eaten by PIO disk access).

[@MrJorgalan]

"My 386 CPU had 64 megabytes of RAM". I personally bought my 486 with 4 megabytes of RAM, and some even had 8 megabytes. 64 megabytes of RAM for a 386 CPU was completely overkill; it was normal to find configurations with 2 or maybe 4 megabytes of RAM. Finally, I'm not saying that this upgrade wasn't possible, but it's worth remembering that the price of 64 megabytes of RAM at that time, in multiple memory banks, could cost $2000 or more in 1993. Good video.

[@MrRuckusRCrc]

My Brother purchased a P-Pro 150 which we OC'd to 180Mhz and ran with a Cirrus Logic 5446 2MB PCI Graphics Card and a Diamond Monster3D 4MB. Ran GLQuake like a dream. P-Pro 150 would run games all day and night no issue at 180Mhz, but would lock up with MS Word from time to time. Only program that did not like the OC. Best of times.

[@matthewwijsma9978]

I was lucky enough recently to get a damaged socket 8 baby AT motherboard, some minor repairs, and someone helped flash a new BIOS chip for me, and it works! In a big Ol full tower case

[@soulmata]

I had several Pentium Pro systems I picked up in the late 90s/early 2000s to play with. I actually had 8 new inbox pentium pros, including some 1MB cache units, but I never opened them. I still have 4 of the 256kb units new in box unopened. I had a Tyan motherboard that was dual socket 8, but I was never able to get it to work right. I did use a 200MHz Pentium Pro system with Windows NT for a while, and then later moved it to Windows 2000, it mostly was just a curious thing, I didn't use it for anything serious. However my first job in the late 90s, Windows NT was the primary operating system for everyone, me included, so I used it quite a bit.

[@MrEszet]

I still have the 4 Pentium Pro CPUs with 512K of cache from a DELL PowerEdge 6100. All that’s left of it. Beast of a server!

[@awilliams1701]

sounds just like 150gb WD raptors (10K RPM). They are in my 2008 build. It's a core 2 quad. It still works. lol Or at least it did in 2021. That's the last time I powered it up.

[@quittessa1409]

I had a P-Pro system I got off ebay a number of years ago, haven't got the mobo or ram, but DO still have both of the 1MB 200MHz Blacktops it came with :D

[@epickh64]

That's a large CPU if I've ever seen one!

[@LellePrinter82]

I rescued a Pentium Pro single cpu computer in around 2015. It has a 200mhz with 128mb edo installed. Works fine with both Windows 98 and WIndows 2000. I don't remember the motherboards name. I replaced the boot drive with a 2gb ide flash memory and a 8gb ssd as storage. Works perfectly fine. I wonder if there is any lightweight version of Linux for it. Would've been fun to try it atleast. Great video as always. I love vintage electronics.

[@Волькаибн]

My friend had such a system working. The Pentium 3 processor is 600 , 768 memory and a SCSI disk of 18 gigabytes . The FAST AV Master Premier 4.2 capture card worked satisfactorily, but the final miscalculation took forever.

[@justwantedtoreply]

Used to have a Compaq deskpro with dual pentium pro. Which was awesome for the time. It also had 64mb memory. And yes I used nt4 as DC. Later I tried windows 2000 on it.

[@phillee2814]

I upgraded to NT4 from NT3.51 and lost count of the number of copies I installed through work, where I even had to reverse engineer part of the setup to handle a mass rollout of PCs for an environment in which fibre-ethernet was required, which was not handled by any standard install method which would work unattended. It did when I'd finished with it!

[@robertcox5948]

The oldest OS I used was DOS 1 on Zenith computer. The oldest I used on a regular basis was my 8088 with DOS 2.1. I Toyed a little with Windows 2 on a 286, and daily drove Windows 3.10 until 95 came out. I had to upgrade my 486 trom 4-8MB of RAM to run it. I used NT for years at home and at work.

[@gyorgypaczai7062]

Good to see somebody can solder in youtube 😊

[@bitsundbolts]

Thanks!

[@gyorgypaczai7062]

Just check it. I see this is not the first time. Thank you for the video

[@jeffm2787]

I had a dual socket pentium pro 1MB cache setup back in the day. Not sure of the board, but it used the plug in VRM's.

[@wysoft]

My first tech job was at a local internet company while I was still in high school, around 1999. I got to build out a Linux server on one of those mini fridge-sized, howling loud Compaq Proliant dual Pentium Pro 200 servers, with some ungodly amount of RAM that I don't remember, and a bunch of SCSI RAID drives. At the time it was the most impressive piece of hardware I ever got to play with. We had it running RedHat (maybe 5.2?) and it served out FTP and web content for customers - remember when people used to host their websites and share files on their ISP servers? Seems so long ago. I quit when I graduated, and they tried to stiff me on my last paycheck until my dad came in and threatened to take them to court. Fun times.

[@TheIceGryphon]

Oh it was a beast with Windows NT.

[@ernestoditerribile]

I used to build a lot of Dual Pentium Pro's for larger companies, during that time.

[@Alcochaser]

There were few rare oddballs out there. One was a Socket 8 slocket board. This allowed you to install a Socket 8 pentium pro into a 440FX slot one board. This was because socket 8 and slot 1 were electrically the same on the 440FX There were also Pentium 2 overdrives for Socket 8. It was a pentium 2 at 333 that fit Socket 8. The black Pentium Pro 200 was made well after the rest. Most are found in big old rack mount servers in quad cpu setups. Before Intel brought put the slot 2 Xeon

[@upgrade1373]

Thanks for the NT WD ASMR

[@pjasonq]

My first build was a 486DX system which I took to college. My major was graphics design which also included 3D modeling...so the 486 didn't cut it. In 1996...I collected all of the parts for my workstation build which included a Pentium Pro. If I'm not mistaken...the first OS I installed was Windows 95 but in 1997, I did install Windows NT 4.0 which was a very solid OS. I may have later installed Windows 2000 but I don't remember. I still have my Pentium Pro chip but I threw away the rest of the workstation.

[@l3lue7hunder12]

I got myself two golden P-Pro 200 CPUs and a dual socket motherboard, neither of which I ever managed to get running. Bought used for cheap, I am not exactly surprised though, especially after I had to bend-correct nearly every PIN possible.

[@DrYosh2]

I had a Toshiba Equium 6200M for a while. It was my dads computer originally. Had two socket 8s. Only one eas populated though. PP200. It started life with NT 4.0 on it. Eventually got 98SE and had a Voodoo 2 card added.

[@quantumfoam42]

I remember hearing about it when it came out, and it sounded exotic and interesting. I would like to have a single or even dual Socket 8 system for my collection, because I've never used one before. I do think that 440FX chipset held it back in some ways. I never knew until much later on that it was the basis for the Pentium II. Speaking of which, I'd like to have a Slot 2 system as well...

[@bitsundbolts]

Well, I still have another two identical boards, but I don't know if they work. I'll probably get them to people who are interested in them if I can get them to work. So, keep an eye out for my future content 😅

[@AncapDude]

I have this board with onboard sound and it works instantly under DOS with unisound. I Benchmarked some DOS things with 200-256, 200-512 and a P200MMX with 256k onboard cache. They are almost equal with some disciplines ruled by one or the other platform. Not that bad on 16bit at all and a good Quake CPU. Higher cache only adds some fractions of additional FPS. So don't worry the 200-256k is good enough. Don't tested NT/2K on it due to low RAM. Good platform either i love it escpecially these fat & heavy CPUs in my hands and this monstrous socket lever.

[@Baoran]

When I was in university in late 90s all computers in classrooms had windows NT 4.0 so I have used it quite a bit. Not a lot of games did run on it so when we cracked the admin password and got to install new software we spent quite some time testing which games we could get to run there.

[@bitsundbolts]

Haha 😂 great! But interesting that your university went with Windows NT. I guess with a special license, it wasn't too costly.

[@Baoran]

@@bitsundbolts They used domain login and tried to lock the PC and NT allowed you to set it up that normal users could not install their own software there or change any of the settings. That is something you cant do with win9x.

[@MrDookieDan]

I love the clicking so much.

[@tommymorton4939]

PPro 200MHz was my second computer, the first I assembled all by myself.

[@CkVega]

16MB was still pretty good in 1995, even for a workstation.

[@OpenGL4ever]

I had the same thought. It was just enough to run Windows NT 4.0 efficiently. And of course there were use cases where even more RAM would have helped.

[@allezvenga7617]

Thanks for your sharing