May 20, 2025, 9:41 PMWell, I'll be damned, it actually works!
Windows XP booted straight off of an NVMe PCIe SSD and bare metal!
This has got to be the fastest and most snappiest XP machine I've ever played around with :3
- May 20, 2025, 9:41 PM
Replies
- May 20, 2025, 9:44 PM
For those curious, the system is booted with the help of a USB stick containing @manawyrm 's NVMe BIOS OptionROM: https://github.com/Manawyrm/nvme-int13h-optionrom
And the installer ISO is patched to include a backported NVMe and USB3.0 driver through this package: https://zone94.com/software/operating-systems/123-windows-xp-professional-sp3-x86-integral-edition
May 20, 2025, 10:05 PM@snep@y.diskcat.com @manawyrm@chaos.social that is actually really cool, I guess some effort makes that possible. I wonder if there are enough backported drivers and stuff to daily drive it on modern hardware (ignoring the security and lack of software, I mostly mean if it's fully functional on modern hardware)
- May 20, 2025, 10:08 PM
@subroutine @manawyrm Honestly, I'm pretty sure with the OneCoreAPI and all updates from LegacyUpdate installed, you could daily an XP install!
This system is, driver-wise, fully supported, since 4th Gen Intel Core i/Xeon E3 v2 platforms still had drivers for the chipset available! Granted, it's not *modern* modern, but still pleeenty fast and usable. I do want to try a PAE patch to allow more RAM to be usable even on 32bit Windows, but I've heard it can be quite unstable. Hmm...
Manawyrmmanawyrm@chaos.socialMay 20, 2025, 10:13 PM@snep @subroutine I have the latest Nvidia GTX GPU that was supported on XP and I also have a big 16core Ryzen CPU on a mainboard with CSM support. One day I‘ll need to try and get this going, but it‘s very, very far back on my project list…
- May 21, 2025, 5:33 AM
@manawyrm @subroutine Understandable!
The last supported GTX is probably something in the 9xx line of cards, right? Or was there ever a driver for GTX 10xx cards?
- Manawyrmmanawyrm@chaos.socialMay 21, 2025, 9:02 AM
@snep @subroutine GTX7xx series is the last one
- May 21, 2025, 4:52 PM
@manawyrm Ohh interesting, just had a peek at NVIDIAs drivers page, I was thinking 9xx since NVIDIA is offering a driver for XP for the GTX950 and GTX960, but /not/ the GTX970 or higher, even though they're the same GPU architecture generation. Weird :neocat_think:
- Manawyrmmanawyrm@chaos.socialMay 21, 2025, 4:56 PM
@snep iiiinteresting! I've tried that with the 980 (because I have one here)...
Now I _really_ want to try that and see if the driver really doesn't work.
- May 21, 2025, 5:00 PM
@manawyrm Apparently it takes a few INF file edits to include the 970's and up device IDs in the driver package, but according to The Internet™, it should then work and be fully supported! If you do end up testing it out, let me know how well it worked :3
May 20, 2025, 11:20 PM@snep @subroutine @manawyrm but it already says to have PAE enabled?
- May 21, 2025, 5:37 AM
@littlefox Yup, but even with that, it still can only address 3.4 GiB of RAM out of the box! Thus, the few existing PAE patches come into play to allow up to 128 GiB of usable memory, even if individual applications are still limited to 3.4 GiB
- Manawyrmmanawyrm@chaos.socialMay 20, 2025, 9:44 PM
@snep Aaawwwesome! 😻 :blahaj:
- Manawyrmmanawyrm@chaos.socialMay 20, 2025, 9:52 PM
@snep I think you‘re the first person to actually use that bootloader (other then myself). I‘m super happy to see it working properly, especially on much newer and untested/unsupported hardware 🥰
- May 20, 2025, 10:06 PM
@manawyrm It's really quite cool, I gotta say! And allows for some fun experiments! Now I really wanna see how far XP can be pushed on both the newest and perhaps even oldest hardware I can cobble together, to which an NVMe can be attached to. Might go for my T61p next and get XP onto its NVMe, hmmm... :neocat_3c:
But either way, thanks for creating the bootloader and helping me get it to compile! I was missing one of the libraries and the 'git tag' command, heh... x3
John Kaprijohnkapri@mastodon.socialMay 20, 2025, 10:17 PM- May 21, 2025, 5:39 AM
@johnkapri I meeaaaann, there is an NTFS to BTRFS in-place converter by the same person that wrote the BTRFS Windows driver that's also in ReactOS, so, maybe perhaps it's as easy as installing the driver, booting something like Hirens Boot CD and running ntfs2btrfs from there!
I'll try it out on the weekend, good suggestion :3c