Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-10, 04:42:

What is the Best OS to support dual Pentium Pro 200mhz CPU’s ? Intel PR440FX motherboard. […]
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What is the Best OS to support dual Pentium Pro 200mhz CPU’s ?
Intel PR440FX motherboard.

WinNT 3.51 or NT4.0 or Win2000
Onboard Adapted SCSI, USB and Audio, and Ethernet.

The best OS depends on what you want to do with the machine. Win2000 will be the most modern, with USB support and such, but it will also be the slowest. NT 3.51 will be the fastest, but it is arcaic.

What OS would you think would run most stable ?
And have built in drivers ?

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-10, 06:02:

What OS would you think would run most stable ?
And have built in drivers ?

I'd say the best bet would be Win 2000, followed by NT 4.0.

Id' agree 2k and below is the realistic range.
2k is the only one that has proper support for USB and drivers will be easiest for this OS but it's right at the end of the PPro's working life.
NT4 is probably nice middle ground
But come on, join me in a NT3.51 anniversary build 😉

The title should have been "what is the best Windows OS for a dual PPro"!

Cause the answer concerning compatibility and driver support is this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20000815094229/ht … list_intel.html
But it all comes down to what you want to do with the computer anyway...

Or maybe OPENSTEP can be a good candidate too:
http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/next/h … tibility_1.html

My first thought would be to look at some lightweight Linux distros, but I see that is not an option.

Best hassle free OS - Windows 2000. Don't even bother with NT 4.0, due to barely supported PnP and device manager.

Windows 2000.. 🙄 It's mentioned because of its lack of activation, isn't it?! 😉

Windows XP Pro is the right answer, of course. Silly question. 🙂

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aYQgYJdS1EE

Edit:

USB support

Sure.. Since when does W2k support USB 3.0 cards? Win XP does, with the manufacturer's drivers. In ca. 2010 even USB 3.0 PCI cards were made.

Edit: No offense guys, but we're living in the 2020s by now - not 2005!
USB 2.0 is nothing to be proud of anymore. It's a lame old duck. In fact, it has been since the late 2000s. If you can't get USB 3.0 to work, why not get Firewire 800 to work? Hm?
That was an alternative on the Power Mac platform on OS X Tiger, for example. 🙂

What is the point of USB 3.0 on Pentium Pro system? Even 2.0 is really pushing it and most likely you won't get full speed anyway.

XP Pro is what I run on mine

2k would also be a good choice if you don't have at least 512MB RAM for XP

If you're in the mood to explore new and exotic compatibility problems, apparently WinFLP still supports multiple processors.

But these are discussions that have been had before.
2000 VS XP

I test and/or run Win2K by default on dual cpu systems, about all my Duals have been tested at one time or another on Win2K (S5-S7-S8-Sl1-Sl2-S370). On my Pr440FX it's quite snappy, probably the 2 PPro overdrives and 1GB ram helps 😀.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-10, 06:02:

What OS would you think would run most stable ?
And have built in drivers ?

You still have to answer the earlier question. What do you want to use it for?

If the intended purpose is running anything Internet facing and in a server role, using any version of Windows that can run on such a machine is probably not a good idea .

Jo22 wrote on 2020-07-10, 12:35:

Windows 2000.. 🙄 It's mentioned because of its lack of activation, isn't it?! 😉 […]
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Windows 2000.. 🙄 It's mentioned because of its lack of activation, isn't it?! 😉

Windows XP Pro is the right answer, of course. Silly question. 🙂

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aYQgYJdS1EE

Edit:

USB support

Sure.. Since when does W2k support USB 3.0 cards? Win XP does, with the manufacturer's drivers. In ca. 2010 even USB 3.0 PCI cards were made.

Edit: No offense guys, but we're living in the 2020s by now - not 2005!
USB 2.0 is nothing to be proud of anymore. It's a lame old duck. In fact, it has been since the late 2000s. If you can't get USB 3.0 to work, why not get Firewire 800 to work? Hm?
That was an alternative on the Power Mac platform on OS X Tiger, for example. 🙂

XP will crawl on this, XP sp2 is unbearable on faster systems, I remember upgrading someone on an athlon 650 Compaq /w 512mb pc133 to XP back in 2005 from windows me, and it just sucked even with 512mb if ram it just wasn't snappy, I'd hate to see sp3 on a ppro. No 2k makes alot more sense.

XP SP3 (fully updated with all non-SSE2 POSReady 2009 updates I might add) runs just fine on my 2xPPro@233MHz system with 512MB EDO RAM

it's not sluggish at all really

Windows 2000.

PERIOD. End of discussion.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-07-10, 04:42:

What is the Best OS to support dual Pentium Pro 200mhz CPU’s ? Intel PR440FX motherboard. […]
Show full quote

What is the Best OS to support dual Pentium Pro 200mhz CPU’s ?
Intel PR440FX motherboard.

WinNT 3.51 or NT4.0 or Win2000
Onboard Adapted SCSI, USB and Audio, and Ethernet.

How much RAM will it have?

USB support (like others have mentioned) is best in W2K, but still possible to work on NT4. Used a DEC/digital HiNote portable Pentium notebook with one USB 1.0-port and NT4 between 1996-2000 (worked great, but Plug & Play with PC Card was not working until upgraded to W2K).

Never had NT 3.51 on any computer with USB, but my guess is that it will not support the USB port.

That leaves NT4 and W2K. I think the choice depends on how retro and historically true to time you would like to be, and how much RAM you will have.

W2K will consume more RAM, but will be able to support more hardware and software.

NT4 will run faster if you have less RAM, but will also be more historically correct for a Pentium Pro system (even if NT 3.51 would historically probably been the most typical OS running on Pentium Pro). NT4 is historically great with PII/PIII, and for W2K I would definitely prefer (from historical point) to pair it with PIII or Xenon.

Good luck with the system, and please post pictures when done!

I love 90'ies desktop SMP systems, and dual PPro systems are quite cool as they are more rare than dual PII/PIII system. 😀

luckybob wrote on 2020-07-11, 03:21:

Windows 2000.

PERIOD. End of discussion.

Why? BSD or Solaris might be interesting options depending on OP's knowledge base. A huge amount of PPro and similar gear was used to build many of the bigger mid 90s internet server infrastructures.