Earliest Compatible Windows OS?

[Amak]

Hey mate you should be able to get a pretty decent laptop for 100 euro second hand on facebook marketplace.

I was able to grab a decent i5 with 8gb of ram for $100AUD (65 euro) last year, more than capable of running windows 10 as well as openttd.

However in terms of 'just something to run openttd' you should be able to grab something for free that can run it.

According to the wiki the min requirements are:
Windows 95/98 (Windows XP or newer recommended)
Minimum 233MHz Pentium with MMX equivalent or greater (500MHz+ PIII recommended)
64MB RAM (128MB+ recommended)

Also would be happy to chuck in a fiver for the fundraiser or send off some old ram.

[Taschi]

Amak,

The officual builds for current OpenTTD versions no longer support Windows 95/98. Wherever you found that information, it is out of date.

I'd like to stress again that running any machine that's connected to the internet with anything older than Windows 7 or Windows 8 is a giant security risk, so please don't.

[Eddi]

I'd like to stress again that running any machine that's connected to the internet with anything older than Windows 7 or Windows 8 is a giant security risk, so please don't.

both the windows versions you listed are already out of support, and thus have the same security risk.

[RhapsodyTTD]

Isn't Windows 11 a thing now? What about everything before it? *gasp* MY XBOX IS DOOMED TO DIE!

[Taschi]

both the windows versions you listed are already out of support, and thus have the same security risk.

Really? We still use 8.1 at work but we might be paying for extended support.

In any case - that doesn't mean using Windows 98 in the year 2021 is a good idea, it just means you should go to Windows 10 if possible, which will be supported for a couple of years into the future.

[Eddi]

Really? We still use 8.1 at work but we might be paying for extended support.

8.1 is different from 8.

[kamnet]

According to the wiki the min requirements are:
Windows 95/98 (Windows XP or newer recommended)
Minimum 233MHz Pentium with MMX equivalent or greater (500MHz+ PIII recommended)
64MB RAM (128MB+ recommended)

Also would be happy to chuck in a fiver for the fundraiser or send off some old ram.

BTW, you mind posting the wiki link for this? The OS requirement does need updated, but the processor and RAM are still correct. Any fairly low-end PC can run it.

[odisseus]

If you're looking for a cheap system for running OpenTTD, you'd better aim for some distribution of Linux. There are lightweight distributions that can run on an average 90s computer.

[RhapsodyTTD]

Is Linux able to be emulated?

[Eddi]

emulated on what? by what? for what?

[Taschi]

Is Linux able to be emulated?

If you are trying to ask if you can run Windows programs on Linux: yes, you can with a program called "wine", but how good that works depends on what software you're trying to run, and there can also be a bit of performance loss.

All of which is irrelevant for OpenTTD because OpenTTD can run natively on Linux.

[kamnet]

If you're looking for a cheap system for running OpenTTD, you'd better aim for some distribution of Linux. There are lightweight distributions that can run on an average 90s computer.

At this point, though a legacy system like a Pentium 3/4 or AMD Athlon isn't going to be any cheaper than an Intel i3/i5 or AMD Athlon 64 due to their rarity. Board, processor and RAM are going to float between 25-50 euro. Late 90s computers are likely to fetch an even higher price.

[RhapsodyTTD]

I managed to get a cheap laptop. Well, more of a notebook. Kinda useless for most games, but OpenTTD runs like an absolute dream. As such, this is my last post on this topic, which probably should be considered closed.

[luk3Z]

I managed to get a cheap laptop. Well, more of a notebook. Kinda useless for most games, but OpenTTD runs like an absolute dream. As such, this is my last post on this topic, which probably should be considered closed.

You may also try with Thin PC/Terminal/MiniPC for about 50~100$ (almost for free): HP T620, HP T520, HP T430, DELL WYSE 3030 (TDP 4.3W Celeron N2807) etc.
HP T430 has Celeron N4000 with turbo 2.6 GHz & graphics Intel UHD 600 (TDP 6W) - for me it is the best purchase.
I've just bought all of them this week for about 200$ (850 PLN). There is also HP T530 with TDP 6-10W CPU GX-215JJ 1,5GHz TURBO 2,0 GHz & GPU AMD Radeon R2E.
Don't buy terminals with Atom CPU or AMD without Turbo (like G-T56N) - coz they have slow CPUs. You may find them on eBay or polish allegro.pl
To compare CPUs check this:
https://www.cpu-world.com/Compare
https://cpu-benchmark.org/compare/
http://cpuboss.com/compare-cpus