XP IN ACTION -- We're baaaaccckkk!

Have not posted for a while. Previous post explained my fondness (obsession?) for the Thinkpad T42, which I still believe, in terms of form factor and ergonometics, was 20+ years ahead of its time. At one point I had over 15 T42s running XP in a network, and could take them apart almost blindfolded. The T42 maxes out ram at 2 gbs and, even with an Ebay-upgraded (compatible) processor, was sluggish at web browsing (but great for word processing and other tasks.). The bottleneck was, of course, the browser. XP HERO "FEODOR2" created the original MYPAL browser-mimic based on Palemoon, until the Palemoon people sent him a legal letter. Great camaraderie, guys!. After a brief disappearance, Feordor2 reappared with something called MYPAL68, a new "XP firefox mimic" -- but, even with the OPTIONS set to a a single "content process limit" it was still too much for the T42. So I reluctantly went back to his original (discontinued) MYPAL and watched year by year as fewer and fewer web sites loaded. This year, 2024, I had lost so many sites that I finally had to abandon the T42 completely. Ouch. However, before walking away from the XP OS as well, I decided to give Feodor2 one more try by installing MYPAL68 on a 2007 Thinkpad T61. Picked a plain-Jane T61 with low mileage (not a "T61 Frankenpad") rocking the original Core 2 DUO T7300 running at 2.0 GHZ, and 4 gbs of ram -- although XP can use only 3 gbs. Also upgraded the BIOS to the controversial, and hard to find, Middleton hack. The Middleton hack enabled me to install a Samsung EVO 500GB SSD. So, bottom line, I am writing this post from a T61 that, on boot, offers the user a choice of 3 boot partitions -- XP, WIN 81., and WIN11. (Install of WIN 11 on a T61 beyond the scope of this Forum). I have just now been testing the XP partition with MYPAL68 version 13.7.b installed -- and I am blown away by the performance! Like seeing an old friend again after many years. Even though MYPAL68 spoofs/mimics an "older" version of Firefox (much older!) 95% of my favorite sites load correctly, and even several of my banking sites are loading. (At least for now). XP in this setup seldom seems to need more than 2/3 of the 3 available gbs of ram, and core temp seldom rises above 65 degrees C. Even though SSDs are not native to XP, no TRIM, the partition runs nicely with no obvious sags or glitches. I did 3 or 4 registry changes to reduce writes (such as killing the pagefile and prefetch). The full 4 gbs of ram is available to the other two partitions, of course. I also use Ublock Origin to remove garbage from sites, which helps. Just before posting this, I was able to use VideoDownloadHelper in "browser mode" to download a mp4 video from a news aggregator site. To do that in 2024 with XP is pretty %$#% amazing. Props to Feodor2. Color me impressed.

 

You shouldn't need a hack to use an SSD on XP, I used a 840 Samsung without issues, but the lack of TRIM support is what made me reluctantly upgrade to 7.

 

Is there a way to use Trim on XP ?

 

Someone would have to create a hack.

 

O&O Defrag 17
works on XP
Has Trim
Has documentation.
Easy to find

 

Thanks

 

Doesn't TRIM have to be done at the OS level? How can an app subordinated to a non-TRIM OS do that?

 

I stand by the original post. If you check the reviews on O&O as an "XP trimmer", you will not be impressed. The Middleton hack was specific to the Thinkpad T61 -- not the XP OS -- being the very last machine made by IBM (before the Lenovo sale), and very eccentric. Thousands were sold with with an optional graphic card (Nvidia) which was guranteed to grenade on you, you just didn't know precisely when.These machines have a cult following even now, which is justified. As delivered, IBM in their infinite wisdom HOBBLED the bios such that, even if you installed a premium EVO SSD, you will still not get proper SATA speeds. Mr.Middleton, like Mr. Feodor2, was a real person who pushed back against the planned obsolescence. The BIOS hack still bearing his name is now the stuff of legend.

 

I heard that if you leave a few GBs unpartitioned on an SSD then you don't need to use Trim. Can someone confirm this ?

 

I have never used Trim on either XP, Win 7 or Win 10. I use 2X Samsung 850 EVO’s in a RAID 0 configuration as on my XP system. I use 3X Samsung 850 EVO in a RAID 5 for my back-up drives for that system. I used to - usually Ghost entire drive once per month. I have been using this system with these drives since late December 2014. So nearly 10 years. I always back up and dump drive back when testing new software, as I do not know if it is any good and if it has been written by idiots. My system is still as fast as it was 10 years ago. In fact my XP system is faster than when I first built it using 15K SCSI Seagate Cheetah’s in 2006. I just Ghosted system to solid state when they came out. I would Ghost to M2 but I have moved over to my own locked down version of Windows 10, that I developed for BP.

Only those people who are complete morons fill storage to more than half, as it will always slow the system down. Buy good quality drives and they will be fast and last.

For my Win 10 systems I still haven’t used TRIM. I Use Samsung 1TB solid state in Raid 5’s for main drive or M2 in RAID 5 drive for other 2 Win 10 systems. I have 6 workstations in total 5 Supermicro and one ASUS all dual CPU between 8 to 64 cores, some water-cooled others forced venting from air con basement at 10 degrees centigrade. Of course, for my main storage drives, I use Seagate Ironwolf on RAID 5 or 6. Varying in size from 16TB to 64TB.

On Win 10 systems I actually use Defraggler V2.22.995(64-bit) even on solid state.

I am sure there will be people that disagree and say they know much more about computers than me. But they can always offer to put their systems up against mine in a test.

I would offer one piece of Pro-Active advice. I have recently swapped a lot of my systems over to Adaptec 6805t RAID. (I will leave a picture for you) I have found this a brilliant and cheap RAID card. Since I bought 4 of these cards I tried one on XP just for a laugh. Obviously I used the 32bit Vista drivers and adapted those. Worked really well. Dirt cheap new on ebay. But then I don’t really take computing, as seriously as I did as I am retired.

Hope this puts your mind at ease. There is a huge amount of voices out there, all with different ideas.

 

Thanks for your reply. You mentioned you have a raid setup. I've always had a question about raid. What are the advantages of using a raid setup vs just using regular sata ports as achi ?? Does it give more performance ?

 

Yes, RAID provides a massive performance boost. People are using RAID even with M2’s. I do.

RAID 0 provides all out performance. RAID 5 and 6 will give you performance and redundancy. For those people that value their data.

There is far too much to cover and there is also a vast amount of information on the Web.