I have two 1.8Ghz T42s in great condition that I was hoping to use with the upcoming Windows 8, but then I discovered that CPUs without PAE (Physical Address Extension) and the NX/XD bit (Execute Disable Bit) are not supported anymore!

I believe that both my T42s have Pentium M Dothans (SL7EN) CPUs which unfortunately don't support PAE or NX/XD. HOWEVER, I do know that there are a few 400MHz FSB Pentium M Dothans that should support these features plus all the later 533 MHz FSB, C0 stepping Pentium M CPUs. Also, The 2.1GHz Pentium M 765 SL7V3 should support the necessary features.

I have found a link to a guy that supposedly installed Windows 8 Consumer Preview on an old T42:
http://www.legendaryreviews.com/windows-8-consumer-preview.html

Has anyone tried to install Windows 8 Release Candidate on a T42?

If you had a CPU with those requirements, I believe it would be similar to a T42 running W7.

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=102931

What GPU do you have?

The GPU in my T42s are the 64MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, but that is the "least" of my worries.

I have read that CPUs are now required to have PAE and NX/XD to be able to install "Windows 8" and the old Pentium Ms found in the T42-series support PAE according to Intels website, but only a few of the old Pentium Ms support the NX/XD bit.

Since the NX/XD bit cannot be enabled in the T42 BIOS, Microsoft has provided the following potential workaround:

Download the Windows 8 Release Candidate ISO and burn it to a DVD or create a bootable USB flash drive.
Boot from the media that you created. If your CPU does not support NX you will see a code 5D bluescreen before setup starts.

This workaround may succeed because Windows contains two installers: the end user installer (setup.exe at the root of the Windows DVD) and the commercial installer (setup.exe found in the \sources directory of the Windows DVD). The commercial installer runs when the PC is booted from DVD/USB media and does not perform the NX/SSE2 checks and attempts to enable NX/SSE2 on supported systems.


I am hoping that someone will try to install "Windows 8 RC" on a T42 maybe equipped with a SL7V3 or a SL8QZ CPU - or maybe even a later 533FSB CPU taken from T43-series.

Any success with a 400 Mhz pentium...
I have a T41 with a 2Ghz processor...and a 32*1024*1024 bytes graphics memory.
T41 1.5 Gb 160Gb 14" windows 7

I am going to try it later this month.

I have T42's. I have purchased a dothan 750 ($3.95) to try it experimentally in my T42's. The 7x5 Dothans REALLY DO NOT have the NX feature - it was missing from the VLSI design! You need the NX memory-protection feature - it is heavily used by the Win8 kernel for security reasons and to verify that the CPU supports SSE2 !! (7x5's support SSE2 but not NX!)

If this works o.k. on my Dothan 750, I will buy 780's which should run at the equivalent of about 1.7 Ghz (= 2.26 * 400/533). I am not going to depend upon overclocking to run this OS. Dothan 780's as "pulls" from other laptops cost about $40-$50/ea. Total OS upgrade cost = ~$80-$90.

The ATI 9600 / FireGL-T2 (same guts) was a best-selling graphics card from ~2002 until 2005 or 2006, I expect it will be supported for another 3-5 years by ALL operating systems.

I have not experienced any issue on a t42 15" with the x300 video card and a 1.8 pentium M processor.
I ran windows 7 on these for a while without issues windows 8 is slightly faster.

Huh?

X300 was used in T43, not any of the T42 models...

The fact that you were able to run W8 leads me to believe that your machine has a T43 board and/or CPU...

Heads up! Pentium M 765 is NOT compatible with Windows 8. I am not sure why yet, but its not.


http://ark.intel.com/products/27596/Int ... 00-MHz-FSB

Yes - for one processor *only* it is compatible - that is the Intel M 765 SL7V3 Dothan.

Why only this last processor of the 400 MHz FSB series (715, 725, 735, 745, and 755) has 32-bit PAE, NX/XD, and SSE2 enabled, is beyond me.

As a partial trial, I dropped in the 533 MHz FSB 780 SL7VB realizing that the higher FSB speed would de-rate the whole CPU in being forced back to 400 Mz. The "test bed" had the ATI Radeon 7500 GPU, 2 GB of high-quality RAM, 100 GB 7200 RPM drive (Travelstar)

In actuality, the T-42 did run with 780 and was "as slow as molasses". The BIOS is clearly not written for this type of situation. In trying to use the Win 8 RTM Upgrade Assistant, the system was failed as the hardware was too slow.

I then swapped that for the 765 and passed the compatibility tests quite quickly (I'm guessing several minutes).

So... final answer - only the last of the (715, 725, ... 765) series works and appears to be as fast, if not faster, than XP.

No, I have not formally benchmarked it. I did run CPU-Z and the readout appears as expected. I also ran CPU-ID's HW Monitor and CPU temp using Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste was 33 - 37 degrees C / 91 - 97 degrees F.

Three other thoughts:
1. Recall that the T-4x series was *before* the Windows key. You can simulate it with Left Control - Escape. Some have remapped the Right Control key to the Left Windows key scan-code 0x5B or the Right Windows key scan-code 0x5C (see for specs http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/1/161ba512-40e2-4cc9-843a-923143f3456c/scancode.doc)
2. Classic Shell is a freebie that immediately gets rid of the Metro UI and allows you to choose between Classic, Vista, whatever, and restore the Start key (see http://www.classicshell.net)
3. Fences is a great Desktop organizer that groups icons (see http://www.stardock.com)

That will make a lot of sense as back then I replaced the motherboard with an unknown motherboard marketed for a t42p.
Purchased it cheap from ebay could not find a FRU seller was not very experienced with it either.

I have tested the 765 on two different boards (T42 and T42p) and it did not have PAE/NX active. How did you managed to get 8 running?