My first job was building computers with old parts. A guy needed MS Word for work but didn’t want to buy a new computer or upgrade his 386SX (25Mhz iirc). It had like 20MB of disk and I don’t recall the RAM. So he asked me if I could try. So I did. I managed to install DOS, Windows 3.1 and MS Word. I don’t remember how long it took to boot, but I remember that it would take 6 seconds for a pressed letter to appear on the screen.
You forgot to press the turbo button!
And now it takes 12 second for a single character to appear on the screen!
(Pressing Turbo button actually slowed down the CPU AFAIK).
Yep…
With the introduction of CPUs which ran faster than the original 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 used in the IBM Personal Computer, programs which relied on the CPU’s frequency for timing were executing faster than intended. Games in particular were often rendered unplayable, due to the reduced time allowed to react to the faster game events. To restore compatibility, the “turbo” button was added.[4] Disengaging turbo mode slows the system down to a state compatible with original 8086/8088 chips.
If you had used the dos version of word it should have been fine
I could probably shave a few seconds off that if it was written in assembly
if it was compiled then probably a few days
Now run Doom on it.
I feel like running doom is much less of a challenge
Doom barely ran on my Packard Bell 386
Doom has even been ported to 8088
If we have a discover aliens the first thing we’re going to do if they have computers is try and run Doom on it.
Nice, now run Linux on a tube computer!
You’ve just given someone an idea. Next step: a Babbage difference engine.
