I've started a little side project to see what can run on a very low-end PC.
Thanks to the refurbished market (think eBay), these components can be scored dirt cheap.

So far, here are the specs of my Low Spec Testing Rig:

CPU = 1.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 single core (looking to downgrade to 1GHz single core)
RAM = 1GHz (looking to downgrade to 512MB)
Operating System = Linux Mint 17.3 64 bit with Cinnamon desktop
Graphics = Nvidia GT 610 1GB (looking to downgrade to Geforce 8400 512MB)
Hard Drive = 250GB

Anyone else have such projects they're working on?
Give us the specs!


So far, what runs:

Retro City Rampage DX (GOG)
ZDoom with Brutal Doom v018a mod
Quake III Gold via ioQuake3 for Linux with hires texture mod
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (Humble)
Garou: Mark of the Wolves (Humble)
King of Fighters 2002 (Humble)
The Last Blade (Humble)
Din's Curse (GOG)

All of these puppies run pretty damn smooth. Din's Curse gets an occasional frame rate drop, but nothing hindering gameplay.

Actually, you can tell the kernel to use only 512 megabytes of memory by adding mem=512M to the kernel command line.

By doing this, you are overriding the kernel's autodetection of RAM and lying to the kernel saying you only have 512MB of RAM instead of the actual amount you do have.

(Note that telling the kernel that you have more memory than is actually physically present will result in the system not booting.)

so this is considered a PROJECT nowadays? i know, i know - and rainbows are made of urine clouds

Not exactly a project, but I do have an old rig kicking around. Been thinking it might be interesting to dust it off and see what it will run. Can't recall the GPU or what it has for RAM, but the chip is an Athlon 64 3200+ (single core)

It's a project in that I deliberately downgraded components to see what a modern OS can run on older specs. I intend to go even lower just to see what I can get away with. Not sure if I wanna run the risk of monkeying around in the BIOS. I ain't that good.

Oh, I didn't mean what you're doing isn't a project. I meant that my rig isn't a project, as it's just lying about and I've not really done anything with it yet, nor decided what I want to do with it.