It's always fun to install "older" OSes on systems not designed for them. Given that, how about we install Windows '98 SE on this Dell Latitude D600 with a Pentium M processor? Let's have a look at it in a 🧵 here!
So, first and foremost, this site is AWESOME! There is a bundle of drivers that you can download, and inside the bundle is a readme file with some very clear instructions on what to do! retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2018/05/dell-l…
I kicked off the install, and not far into the process, we ran into an issue since this system has more than 512MB of memory. I had to add a line to system dot ini under the [386enh] section as you see here (MaxPhysPage=20000). After that change, install proceeded!
Okay! After install, we have a TON of yellow question marks. Time to get to work. Also sorry for the crooked picture, I was doing "retro computing from my recliner" today😂
Next up, I installed DirectX and ran the Win98SE Auto-Patcher. About half way through, it had a fit, so I removed a few items from startup using msconfig. When Auto-Patcher finished, I put them back and had no issues after doing that 🤷♂️
Next up was USB and chipset. For USB, I used nusb33, but did have one stubborn driver that I had to manually click "reinstall" for afterwards, no big deal. I did chipset after that, and per instructions did have to select a different I/O range for the HDD controller.
Next up was video. Piece of cake! Now we are at 1024x768x32K colors. Nice!
Audio was next, and we will rely on these Micron drivers to give us SigmaTel C-Major Audio. Perfect!
The question marks are slowly disappearing! We'll get rid of two more with drivers for wired and wireless Ethernet!
Now, given this is Win98SE, we are going to need a wireless card manager. I'll use Odyssey Client from Funk Software which gives us WPA2 support. Nice! It's always fun to use these older wireless client software applications, they are a little different 😂
PCMCIA is next. There was just an executable to run for it. And it is a little wonky, but on next boot it gets detected.
So, with that, we are left with one yellow question mark (if we rerun the hardware wizard, we will get one for the PCMCIA drivers, but I digress...). Anyway, that device is the modem as we can see when we run Unknown Devices. I won't hunt that down.
Next up, we need to put a registry fix in for ACPI so that we have power management! After the registry fix, we rerun hardware detection and ACPI support is detected. On reboot, we get one of those lovely device detected loops. Oh yay.
After the last device got detected, we got a blue screen, hah! Oh well. But hey, we have battery support now, so everything must be fine. Right? RIGHT!
So, next up, I did the class "install Winamp and load up Retro SHOUTcast that I always do. And it doesn't disappoint!
Anyway, that'll do it! Very appreciative of the people who worked to put together a FANTASTIC Win98SE guide for this system. Thx for following along!
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Let's talk about my newest PC acquisition, which might be the most budget build ever 🤣. But there was a reason for buying it. I'll cover that... along with a Windows 95 installation, in a 🧵. Let's go!
First, why did I buy this? Well, the plan was to do a case swap with another system I had, which had some strange "fit" issues. However, that planned got smashed... literally. So, I thought we might as well explore what's left of this PC!
This system has a PC Chips M748MR motherboard, an Intel Celeron 400 MHz processor, and 16MB of RAM. Yikes! And of course the case is nothing fancy, but is nostalgic for me. But yea, this is the most budget build ever, for sure!
I just watched a video where YouTuber Action Retro set up a web server on a floppy disk using ELKS (the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset). I thought, I have to try this for myself! Let's talk about it briefly in a 🧵
So, first of all, what is ELKS? It's the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset, and it will run on a wide range of hardware, including 8088 systems. Pretty wild for a modern product! If you want to read more or try it out, GitHub repo is here: github.com/ghaerr/elks
Alright, let's go. I need to choose a system that will support the networking for ELKS. Turning to the Wiki, as of right now, the network cards supported are NE1000, NE2000, Western Digital 8003, Western Digital 8013, and 3com Ethernet III (3c509). My 486 DX4 has a 3Com 3c509!
I got a new DOS file transfer toy! Now, these have been around since the dawn of time, but let's talk about it: a MicroSD to LPT Printer Port Adapter. We'll give it a test on my Compaq LTE 5400. Time for a 🧵
First, if you are interested in reading about these, there is a thread on Vogons! Included in that thread is where I found the DOS drivers for it, you can go here for that, and to read about this device! vogons.org/viewtopic.php?…
Also, here's a few more perspective shots of it, captured from different angles.
And speaking of the past, here's what I had before today: four cards. These Xircom RealPort Ethernet 10/100 cards are great for getting a laptop without Internet connected to a wired network!
My holiday break is quickly coming to an end. So, I think it's time to power on the retro PCs that I have yet to power on recently. I am sure this will go flawlessly 😂. Let's do most of this, in real time, in a 🧵 here!
Alright, you've already seen the first three. My trusty, original 486DX4/100 powered right up, as did the Packard Bell Multimedia 601 Pentium 233 MMX
How about the Kehtron 486 DX/50? Weeelll.. the front seven segment display needed reconnected (I really should fix this permanently), and the sound card was being a pain, but I moved it over one slot and it is now working!
The challenges and solutions in retro computing never cease to amaze me, and today's project is no different. Today's goal was getting working storage in this AST Premium Exec 386 laptop. And fortunately, somewhat against the odds, I found one! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!
So, anyway, the issue I had with this laptop is that the original 20MB 3.5" IDE hard drive had died. I thought "no problem, I'll pop on eBay and get one." Except they are scarce and expensive. I picked up two 120MB drives and one 40MB drive. None of them worked.
In the past, I had also tried a CF card. I could get the CF cards to a point where they were accessible, but when I go to boot, I get a blinking cursor.. and sometimes a "non system disk or disk error" a few minutes later. Tried multiple CF cards, same result.