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anyone good with ye olde laptops

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
i got given, well i took upon the challenge of trying to get a p1 75 MHz 40MB ram 750MB hard drive running something modern smoothly ie cut down linux

it has no floppy drive, no usb, no network and an unbootable cd drive..... :eek:

so i just resorted to shoving the hard drive in a usb casing and messing with it's contents

anyway even puppy linux was too much for it, though i did get to the grub prompt :D and dsl just didnt like the model of hard drive so that was kind of crap, i made the hard drive bootable into dos from a windows 98 backup floppy with fdisk c: /s followed by sys c: and fdisk /mbr

on this computer, even when kept in a usb case, it will boot into win98 dos prompt, this old laptop though it just sits at a blank screen and doesnt even give an error lol

i suspect the BIOs got screwed as i got some warning about basic rom being missing and needing a floppy disk when i turned it on lol and i cant be arsed to find a floppy drive that will work on it as i remember old laptops are fussy to what they had in them....

i'm doing this solely as a challenge, for zero money being spent, only my time :D though i think i may just try something i never tried before, throwing it out of a window LOL

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    The following list describes the minimum hardware requirements for Windows 98:

    * A personal computer with a 486DX 66 megahertz (MHz) or faster processor (Pentium central processing unit recommended).
    * 16 megabytes (MB) of memory (24 MB recommended).
    * A typical upgrade from Windows 95 requires approximately 195 MB of free hard disk space, but the hard disk space may range from between 120 MB and 295 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
    * A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT16 drive requires 225 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 165 MB and 355 MB, depending on your computer configuration and that options that you choose to install.
    * A full install of Windows 98 on a FAT32 drive requires 175 MB of free hard disk space, but may range from between 140 MB and 255 MB, depending on your computer configuration and the options that you choose to install.
    * One 3.5-inch high-density floppy disk drive.
    * VGA or higher resolution (16-bit or 24-bit color SVGA recommended).

    :D
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    more than enough, just it refuses to accept it's hard drive, i think it's a bios issue since i even attached it to my eeepc and it worked lol

    on ebay i found a p3 600 MHz with 128MB ram for like 7quid near my house in a monster tower, i think i'm gonna get it and use it for all my dos-win98 games :D get myself a pci graphics from then, and then it's even better :D
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I suggest something along these lines... ;)
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    wooooooooah wrote: »
    I suggest something along these lines... ;)
    That's... somehow disturbing :eek2:
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    is it worth asking .. why you would want this?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    adogwithsunglasses wrote: »
    is it worth asking .. why you would want this?

    It's because a machine of Pentium 2/3 spec running Windows 98 will be able to run Placebo's DOS and Win 9X games. Some won't run on Windows XP/7, not even in compatibility mode, and the current virtualisation solutions don't offer decent enough graphic card 3D emulation to warrant playing old games on that.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Indrid Cold wrote: »
    That's... somehow disturbing :eek2:
    You mean how the washer seems to be raping the flower bed? lol
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Monserrat wrote: »
    It's because a machine of Pentium 2/3 spec running Windows 98 will be able to run Placebo's DOS and Win 9X games. Some won't run on Windows XP/7, not even in compatibility mode, and the current virtualisation solutions don't offer decent enough graphic card 3D emulation to warrant playing old games on that.


    you got it, i won that pc for £8.20 and it's near me so my mum will give me a lift to collect it, it currently has windows me, but i'm gona try strip the drivers from the me installation and use a fresh 98se install, and if i find a riva tnt2 or voodoo 3000+ pci/agp card around i'll whack that in there, and then all is good for old games :D

    dos games can be done quite well in dosbox now if you use the right 'boot' settings, but the annoying ones are the windows 95/98 only games cause xp and 7 doesn't like them a lot

    plus it's a cheap tinkering project as i have usb drives (with 98 drivers) and accessories galore
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    Indrid ColdIndrid Cold Posts: 16,688 Skive's The Limit
    wooooooooah wrote: »
    You mean how the washer seems to be raping the flower bed? lol
    More like its death throes.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    What machine is it? I'd be tempted to just format the hard drive in another machine, and install DOS with CD drivers. Then install 98SE or Win2k from CD...

    A lot of machines from the late 1990's couldn't boot from the CD-ROM.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Click to see more wrote: »
    What machine is it? I'd be tempted to just format the hard drive in another machine, and install DOS with CD drivers. Then install 98SE or Win2k from CD...

    A lot of machines from the late 1990's couldn't boot from the CD-ROM.


    yup, if you on about the really old laptop i found kicking about, i tried that, the bios doesn't seem to like it, it's FAT16 formatted with a command.com that can boot up on any other computer i put it in apart from this... so it's the laptop that's arsey, according to forums everytime you format the OS you need to install soe toshiba bio flash off floppy, which i dont have so i gave up lol
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    If you just copied command.com across, it won't work. Format it as a bootable system disk... I think "format C: /s" does it, but it's years since I worked much with DOS.

    Partition needs to be made active from within fdisk, too. :)
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Click to see more wrote: »
    If you just copied command.com across, it won't work. Format it as a bootable system disk... I think "format C: /s" does it, but it's years since I worked much with DOS.

    Partition needs to be made active from within fdisk, too. :)

    i done that :)

    i made a bootable floppy on one of my old computers, done a fdisk c: /s to make it system, and then done a sys a: c: to make a system copy of the floppy on the hard drive

    as i said it works as a bootable hard drive, booting into a dos prompt on every comp apart from this old laptop, just sticks at a blank screen, not even any errors, like the controller is unable to see it

    needless to say i've put it in the recycling bag for rubbish men :D

    my new old p3 600mhz comes tomorrow, and i keep losing windows 98se auctions on ebay, one went for £20 earlier LOL
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I can *cough* mail you a backup of my 98SE disc? *cough*
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Click to see more wrote: »
    I can *cough* mail you a backup of my 98SE disc? *cough*

    nah i have a backup here cough cough
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    thought i'd provide a brief update i'm posting from my lovely ebay purchase

    specs it came with
    onboard graphics
    P3 600MHz
    128MB ram
    10GB hard drive
    broken DVD drive (pcb board was gone)
    soundblaster sound card
    CD-RW
    Floppy
    Beige tower


    so far it has instead
    one less DVD drive ;)
    120GB hard drive
    pci network card
    casing is removed so i can spray paint it :D
    and i'm currently looking at a voodoo 2000 pci card (there's no AGP socket) for less than a tenner

    and i have
    windows 98se up til last patches
    IE 6 sp1
    media player 6
    firefox 2 & noscript
    irfanview as default picture editor
    mediaplayer classic & vlc
    7zip
    virtual clone drive for mounting ISOs
    access to NAS drive on network :D
    worms 2
    settlers 2
    unreal tournament
    quake
    theme hospital
    cannon fodder
    jedi knight dark forces 2 + expansion

    my mate will lend me blood 2 and carmageddon so i can 'backup'

    can anyone recommend any useful application/tools/games?
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Nice build Placebo. You are at no loss by removing the DVD player, as I don't think that a 600MHz CPU can cut it for DVD video playback. I remember a friend who had an 800MHz machine in year 2001. While DVDs would play on it, it would stutter every 30 seconds or so. Also, try getting at least a Voodoo 3, then you're good to play Final Fantasy 7/8 etc. A few selling on eBay at the moment.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Monserrat wrote: »
    Nice build Placebo. You are at no loss by removing the DVD player, as I don't think that a 600MHz CPU can cut it for DVD video playback. I remember a friend who had an 800MHz machine in year 2001. While DVDs would play on it, it would stutter every 30 seconds or so. Also, try getting at least a Voodoo 3, then you're good to play Final Fantasy 7/8 etc. A few selling on eBay at the moment.

    yeah i need to hunt for the elusive pci versions as this damned computer has no agp :(
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