Taking a New PC to the 90s (Time Travel Hypothetical)

[DD_OneZero]

If you were to take a new computer back in time to the 90s with all the limitations that time would bring, would it work?

I was wondering about this this morning, and I figured that there would be no better place to ask then here!

I'm keeping the definition of 'new' up for interpretation since one person's completely fine gaming rig is another one's slowpoke grandma-machine.

Other than that, any OS is allowed since I'd love to hear how your favorite would do here!

My main wonder is about stuff like google, would you have to install and older version? Could you? Would the computer EXPLODE?!?!

Thank you for your time :D    

[lakes]

I think how well this would go would depend on the backwards compatibility of your OS or if your browser is meant for older hardware. Windows is supposedly extremely backwards compatible. So I'd imagine your average Windows PC would have an easier time than say, MacOS or Linux. You would probably also have to use browsers meant for older hardware like Dillo browser or NetSurf which are 2 examples of old hardware supported browsers meant for MacOS, Linux and BSD. Dillo also runs on Windows, but I've been told the installation on Windows is more complicated. These types of browsers tend to also strip websites of more modern Javascript & CSS but still work on modern operating systems and hardware.
However most old websites still work in modern browsers so long as they have HTTPS support. So even if you use a browser meant for modern hardware, it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

[shaggy]

Yeah, such pc would mostly work. Assuming we talk about amd64 platform.

- cpu is backward compatible, and could run kernel from the 90s, be that linux or windows.
- gpu can also run in VGA compatibility mode
- usb can run in compatibility mode - but usb appeared in 1996.
- output from gpu would be difficult, it would be best to bring gpu with VGA output. There was no hdmi until like 2003
- ethernet phys can usually work in 10mbit compatibility mode as well

You would not be able to achieve full potential of the hardware due to missing drivers, GPU would still probably be faster, but not nearly as fast as it could be with drivers. Same goes to CPU but to lesser effect. But no software could use new sse instructions for example. And I think multi core would not work, meaning you would have single core cpu.

And if you can run kernel, then you can run almost every software for that time, since software doesn't care about hardware. It cares about kernel and its ABI.

[edit]

Oh yeah, one thing that would probably blow up. SATA/nvme. It does not exist. There are no drivers for that, meaning you can't use drives. So you better bring some ide to pci to pcie controllers xD

Also 4gb of ram is max what you could use. PAE in linux was implemented near year 2000. But that's not an issues since in those time you could literally fit everything inside ryzen L3 cache xD