Windows XP on an i486 processor, seriously? Yes, a totally crazy German programmer managed to run this good old Windows XP SP3 on an Intel i486 processor as old as Methuselah. We’re talking about an ancestor that dates back to the end of the 80s, a time when I was still fresh 🙂
This genius modder has therefore managed to fiddle with the innards of XP directly in assembler to make it compatible with this prehistoric CPU. But be careful, before you start, you should know that the thing only speaks the language of Goethe for the moment, and is not without bugs, which may give you cold sweats…
For your information, this technical feat is based on the modification of the cmpxchg8b opcode, an instruction that is not supported by the 486 CPU. The secret lies in replacing this opcode with a series of instructions that are compatible with this processor. This requires advanced assembly and CPU architecture skills. For example, rewriting functions like ExInterlockedFlushSList in system files (ntoskrnl.exe and ntdll.dll) to omit this problematic opcode and avoid the famous BSODs (Blue Screen of Death) is a titanic task, but that’s the beauty of hacking!
Now if German and masochism don’t scare you, you can try the experience by going to get the ISO of this Frankensteinized XP on Archive.org. It can be fun to resurrect an old PC and breathe new life into it, but I would have warned you: beware of the backdoors and other crap that lingers on this kind of prehistoric OS that is no longer updated.
In short, this story of the revival of Windows XP on i486 is both technically fascinating and completely perched. In any case, it’s funny 🙂
