My latest purchase cost me a whopping $1.50 plus shipping. It's a Fast Media Remote Control for my new Packard Bell, and it's kindof neat! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!
First of all, here it is up close! I received an infrared receiver that connects via the serial port, as well the remote and a manual. And, yes, it really cost $1.50... plus $8 or so to ship. With this remote, you can control the mouse and multimedia applications.
So, what inspired me to buy this? I saw it featured on the sticker on the front of the machine, and got curious!
Before trying this out, I took the opportunity to install a clean copy of Windows 98 SE on the Packard Bell, and also adjust the default screen resolution. Looking good!
From there, I found the "FMEDIA" directory on the Master CD that I used recently to install Windows '95 on this system, and installed it! This version worked pretty well, but didn't seem to want to control the volume. Wonder if we can fix that!
Why... yes, we can.. in a very odd way. What did I do? I found a NEWER Packard Bell Master CD (I went with 170802-03 - Win95A (Sept 1996)) and copied the FMEDIA.EXE installer from it, and ran it. And, yes, I had to install this OVER TOP of the existing install for it to work.
And with that, we arrived at the video you saw in the first post of the thread! Now, I do want to try a few other things, such as using this remote on my Compaq Armada. On first blush, it didn't work, but I will try again. Thanks for following along!
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