Thread by @RetroTechChris

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!

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/2020019740803260862

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!

Luckily, this thing powered right up. It had a dead CMOS battery, but that was an easy fix!

This system didn't have a HDD, so I threw in this 3.2GB Western Digital drive.

I also put a 3Com 3c905 network card in, and used LAN Manager to copy over files. Before long, we were installing Win95! Oh.. I threw an optical drive in this beast as well, because, why not!

Alright, with Win95 installed, it was time to hunt down drivers. This system has integrated EVERYTHING, including video, so the video drivers is SiS, and looks like the audio is C-Media.

Oh! I also found drivers for Ultra DMA IDE, so I installed those, and actually installed those first!

Video drivers worked out fine for the most part... well.. except for referencing a non-existent VxD file. I had to take its reference out of the registry. Such quality 🤣

Let's address the memory situation. This system has 16MB of memory, and 8MB is dedicated to onboard video. So, that leaves 8MB for system use. Yikes! I threw a 128MB stick in there, and performance improved a lot! Also, odd that this is detected as a Pentium Pro.

Next up was sound. Ah... sound. I spent SEVERAL HOURS on this. The sound chip is a special PC Chips variant, which is C-Media... and you'd suspect that C-Media 8338 drivers would work. Yea, if only! I ended up using C-Media 8738 drivers instead.

However, that wasn't straightforward either. After running the installer and rebooting, the drivers had to be manually installed for them to get detected. From there, PnP did the rest. This took me more time to figure out than I would like to admit.

Well, anyway, that's it for this. I don't think I'll be keeping this, it'll probably go on the free pile at VCF East, unless I change my mind. It's not a terrible PC, but since my plans didn't work out, I think I'll pass it on. Thx for following along!

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