Too slow

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

The previous talk about users trying to run XP on a too slow computer brought back an amusing memory. A few years ago I worked as an in-house technician at Best Buy (long before they bought Geeksquad). We once had a customer who brought a computer in wanting to upgrade it so he could play I think it was Quake. This was about 8 years ago when a PII/450 was the new hotness and there was much debate if the K6-2 or the PII was a faster CPU.

Anyways, this guy brings his system in inisting on having us upgrade it. It took a bit but I finally managed to convince him that there was no possible way to make that computer play Quake or Quake II maybe. Quake, if you don't recall, would barely play on a 486 and would bring even a Pentium to it's knees pretty handily. This guy was running an old Packard Bell 386sx/16. Sorry, not happening.

Comments

[jarad.livejournal.com]

I can do better. Once I had a couple phone up saying they'd bought a computer in an auction and wanted to fit a CD-ROM drive to it. Told them to bring it in.

An hour later they wander in with a genuine dumb terminal (not even a Wyse-style terminal), and asked to have a CD-ROM drive fitted to it. Funnily, I never saw them again after telling them it wouldn't be possible...

[fragbert.livejournal.com]

I had a 368sx/16 once, it was my first PC.

Wolfenstein 3D slowed it down, Doom made it overheat. This guy wanted to play Quake. Riiiiiight.

You should have taken one look at it and said, "I'm sorry, sir, but Quake hasn't been released for the Gameboy."

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Easy.

$3000, including:
1) Labor cost of copying old data over to new PC
2) New PC

"And we'll throw in a new case for free!"

Most things are possible - or at least simulatable - with enough money. At least then they're only arguing over the bill, not their own personal misinterpretation of obscure technical details.

Had one too.

[warlockd.livejournal.com]

You could play Doom on it atleast.

Humm I can't remember if you had to use "low quality" mode or not.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Well it's been several years but I think he was stil on Windows 3.x actually.

How about Windows XP on a 20 MHz Pentium 1?

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

I kid you not (http://www.winhistory.de/more/386/xpmini_eng.htm).

Actually, looking through the page, they appear to have gotten it lower still. How about 8 MHz on a Pentium overdrive chip (socket 3 486 board) and only 20 MB of RAM?

The boottime of this system is extremly long, 30 minutes!
After 13 minutes you can see the first icons, but there are 17 minutes more,
where you can do nothing, before you can start "working".

Of course the cpu is alltime at 100% all the time, there is no real idle mode: