awkduck

@sonyu I found a couple of fanless laptops, near Win98 era. They are a bit bulky and most have no Win9x 3D support. The ToughBook and Getac laptops are mostly fanless. They have some Centrino Pentium-M and Core 2 Duo machines. The Core 2 Duo machines would probably need USB audio. The Pentium-M machines have AC97, and audio should work find with Win9x. If you hunted, you might find a Panasonic ToughBook CF-28. It supposedly has an "Intel 830MG (Win9x 3D compatible)". They range between 1Ghz and 800Mhz. But it is a Pentium III. However, I bet it would run circles around the Wyse laptop. But the real problem would be the resolution. A 1024x768 maximum, with some models only supporting a 800x600 maximum. I guess it depends if it is a touchscreen or not. They are probably not going to reach the display sizes you've mentioned. And they all have strange harddrive caddies. If you don't have a caddie, you can't install a harddrive. This is unlike many other laptop brands, where the caddie is more like a guide. These caddies have the drive connector in them. The caddie then connects to some a non standard connector, inside the laptop.

The ParkyTowers site lists "integrated in CN896" in the Video section. If you scroll down a bit, on the ParkyTower page, you'll find the results of "lspci". You'll have to click it to expand. While CN896 is listed in there, it is combined with two others. So you'd have to determine how he derived that it was indeed a "CN896". If he downloaded a driver for XP/XPe and the "CN879", the driver likely supports all three. For Win98, that would not be the case. There may be a chance, it is supported. I don't want to dash any hopes. But I have been unable to confirm that it has the "CN896" chipset/GPU. Also, the exact model might make a difference. With the Wyse Vx9(LE) series, I noticed some variations. Some came with DVI+ and others with only VGA. They also didn't all have the same Video chip. If you check the ParkyTower pages for the Vx0L and Vx0LE, you can see he lists the video as "VN700?". This is what he says about that: The command he used (lspci), for that output, is from Linux. The driver developed for Linux supports all three of those chipsets. That is why it is listing all three. It is more complicated than that. Maybe it supports others, but groups those three together as a set. This is a similar situation to the Laptop. If you can confirm that it is the "CN896", then the chances are better. If you can't confirm the chipset, you can email the author of ParkyTowers. He does reply to email. But if I had to bet on it, I would bet against Win9x support. Vbemp would provide support, without 3D acceleration. I've used it with multiple laptops, VGA output, and I believe DVI. For sure, the VGA from DVI+. If you don't mind me asking, what is your desired budget? A Pentium M @ 1-1.6Ghz would probably be cheap. Video with "Official" Win98 support might take some hunting. Snap, I forgot you wanted fanless. I guess the below wouldn't work. I think the Dell Inspiron 6000 has a Radeon X300. I believe drivers for Win98 exist for that. I see them on Ebay, without hard drives, for about $30. You could the get an SDcard to 2.5 IDE adapter. Might be a pain to get the adapter seated, in the laptop. There are adapters for CFcards, too. There are even mSata to 2.5 IDE kits. They are the size of a full drive and easier to seat (more expensive).

The video chip is one of "CN896/VN896/P4M900". The oldest Windows "officially" supported is 2000. VBEMP or SciTech-DisplayDoctor7 might work with it. But I am unsure if you will have dual display support. Though, it probably provides video cloning. No 3D drivers, for Win9x. The other issue is the audio chip. It is also not "officially" supported. There is a Win16 HDA audio driver. Some people have had luck getting that to work. Alternatively, you could buy a cheap USB audio adapter. Win98 has generic support for that.

Its interesting.

HX Dos Extender, lists Java 5 "console mode" applications as working. Maybe newer versions work. That list is probably old. It might even be possible that some graphics work. It isn't what you asked for, but there is also Javascript for Dos. It goes beyond command line.

Maybe? There was a variety, handed down to me, from my step-father. I didn't know that. It should've been an obvious assumption, on my part. I have only worked with the actuator assembly. I would probably be kind.

I don't know if this would interest you. I've mean to eventually check it out, for x86. In some ways, COBOL is still a "Hot" language. I've never had the pleasure. When I was a young man, my mother worked for "Cray Research". The closest I ever got, was by looking through the lab windows; you could see from the cafeteria. So did my cousin. I had the Tandy Color Computer II. We both got them as hand-me-downs. They were beyond their expiration date, at that time. I never actually learned the included Basic. I just copied text, from old magazines. If it was IDE, I'm not sure they even plugged it in. They might not do much, for hardware failure. They can probably deal with "bad blocks". You could buy a duplicate "working" drive online. It needs to be the exact same model; same revision and everything. Depending on what is wrong, with the drive, the external boards can be swapped. If it is internal hardware, then it can be replaced, from the working drive. I "don't" recommend that you do the internal repairs yourself. There are special tools needed, for each drive brand. Even if you have the tools, it is very easy to make a mistake. It is also hard to create a safe environment, for opening the drive. I have seen it work out, when no "special" tools where used and no special environment conditions were provided. But, perhaps they would have recovered more data, had the disks not been exposed to dust. There are places you can send drives, to have this work done. I also don't know if they support older hardware.

This is a USB driver "fork" from the "USB OPL3 RetroWave". The fork is by "Crazii", the person responsible for SBEMU. Like with SBEMU, this driver won't really provide any function to Win9x (untested). But it will be useful to some Win9x users. Some machines have no PS2 keyboard/mouse support. Or, if they do, you'll loose it when Windows loads your USB drivers. With this driver, you can potentially enable USB keyboard/mouse support, by using it with "DOSSTART.BAT". This way you can exit to Dos, and not be stranded.

Just to be clear, have you yourself written in assembly? Its not important. I just wanted to ask.

Seems there is some, progressive, work on a Dos SoundBlaster emulator (real/protected). This is what the SBEMU project page says: There are more recent, beta files, found on a well know legacy computing forum. Github seem to have an early release. I don't see this being useful to Win9x. But it'll probably be useful to people, who use Win9x

I also choose 98fe. 95 is very appealing. Too many things make 98fe more useful, for me.

I have had problems, using HxD, to save RAM images over 350Mb. When using Grub4dos, the error is "Stream Read Error". With Grub2/Memdisk(from Syslinux), there is no error. But when you boot the saved image, there is filesystem corruption. I'm not entirely sure it is the size of the image, causing the problem. It could be specific machines. I haven't investigated it very much. A work around is a Dos USB/Fat32 drive and Partition Saving. This won't work, if the available Dos USB drivers don't work for your machine. There are some good Dos USB drivers out there. But even the "demo" Dosusb drivers operate long enough, to do a back-up. Note:These drivers don't work with "EMM386". The other problem, is that Partition saving adds a very small header. It needs to be cut off, after saving. If your machine has no PS2 keyboard support, you may have to add a batch file to "C:\Windows\Dosstart.bat". "Partition Saving" can be automated through a configuration file. Then you just exit to Dos, and your batch handles it for you. Note:If you have prevented Windows from installing a Driver, for a specific USB, your BIOS PS2 Emulation may still work.

Its nothing to severe, long term. Sometimes only a few hours. But it has prevented me from engaging employment, in remote administration. Such is the way of things. I've had many harddrive failures, in the last few years. That is part of what has taken me so long, in setting up a development environment. Add to it, that I am fickle at system crafting. The aim is redundant safe saves and quick machine portability. Years ago, I had a several year project zeroed on me. Ironically, it was in Java. It can really be discouraging. It has happened often enough, that I've learn to just let it go. However, once in a while, it was for the better. I have messed with many different languages and operating systems. Not many scripted languages. I don't care for Lisp, but ironically love Scheme; this causes me to admire ML. I like ASM, the simplicity of complexity. Most high level languages, seem like the complexity of simplicity; for the sake of organization/business. On the outside, Forth looks great; but I have yet to investigate it. The moving target of progression, has always seemed poorly implemented. Not having a career agenda, has greatly liberated my scope. When the 286/386 were in main use, and the 486 in fresh vogue, I really only used C and Batch. I was so out of the loop, I had never even known about Pascal. I knew about GWBasic, but never bothered to check it out. I was pretty young. While I find assembly a focus, I would not be the guy to address a wide range of processors. I initially set out targeting the NEC 186 V-chip. Even now, I find the Next186 pretty tempting. So I might get to learn all about these differences you've mentioned. Thanks, for sharing some of your history. I enjoyed it.

Your O.S. of choice?

I'm a bit late, back to the thread. I watch an elderly woman, about every other week. When I am there, I don't do tech. Simply because, I get too drawn in. Sometimes, she only gives subtle hints of her needs. Great tip! I (too?) will look into the various sources mentioned. Old stuff is getting hard to find, but I'll try hunting for Ramdisk98 source. I'm not entirely opposed to buying a copy of Walter Oney's book/CD (about $6). There are a couple of other books, along the same line, I am looking to snag anyway.

Maybe it was in the Nero installer? Well, it is a direction. Static builds are the very portable, within a O.S. type. I can use new static GO builds, in old Linux distributions. With GCC C/C++, it would often require that the Linux kernel and Glibc be more up-to-date. And with win32, it will also depend on what libraries you build on. But you already knew that part. There are other options, too. BlackBox Component Builder, provides something similar(ish) to Java/VB. You can run it on different OS versions and Platforms. I would think the overhead would less, then say Java. However, it has a less mature availability of libraries. But it offers rapid-application-development. There are some different "Small Talk (modern example)", rapid-application-development, projects. But I'm not sure if there is one, that bridges between many systems. I mentioned "FreePascal/Lazarus", as there has been some work on win16 and Dos compatibility. Win9x has been depreciated. But, if there was enough interest, it could be re-ignited. If Win9x was brought, more into vogue, it would make FreePascal more interesting. Lazarus, is the rapid-application-development side of things. If Win9x support was re-upped, in FreePascal, Lazarus would also need updated. But there are alternative environments, to Lazarus, for FreePascal. They rely on the leaner Win/GDI and *nix/X11. MseGUI/IDE and fpGUI are the notable ones. Note: It might be more likely, that the alternative GUI environments, would consider support for older systems. While they have a smaller development crew, they also have less dependency entanglement. It is also noteworthy, that they could just build in support for older versions of FreePascal; the ones that support Win9x. One could use older versions of FreePascal/development environments, and then minimally port their own code to the new compilers. Also, many older compilers support newer systems. For the masochists, like me, there is FASM. It can have good O.S. portability. But is harder to bridge between architecture types. Writing something "like a modern web browser" in this, would be daunting. But, no doubt, many people would praise your skill/insanity. Fresh IDE, is a rapid-application-development environment for FASM. You can imagine, that work on this takes time. But the project could provide useful, if you are looking to use assembly. More specific to web-browsing, there was an interesting project called "Hv3". It has 12/13 years, since it was last developed. But, might provide interesting study, for someone looking to build a web browser. This one would be "somewhat" useful, as is, if it just had modern encryption support. But Fifth, is more relevant. It is FLTK3/Webkitfltk based. Obviously, this would require some Win9x back-porting. But it might be less dependency bound, than other options. The least compatible GCC compiler is 4.7.3. That means there is "potential" for MinGW/TDM and Win9x. I am "near" ready, on my own "Win9x" production environment. Hence, less knowledgeable regarding Win9x development. I'm only partially focused there, anyway. Please forgive, I'm having a histamine attack today (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome). Concentration is harder. If my reply is confusing, it is probably due to my brain fog.

Excellent.

Actually, this is the reason for the OP. I'm kinda spoiled, and don't want to reboot. Depending on how much was already present, in Walter Onely's book, I had thought about it. I like systems programming; just maybe not Windows 95/98 systems programming (or any modern system). Time is always an issue. In spare time, if it took half a year, I would probably not have ambition for it. A couple months, of poking around to completion, and yeah. But anything more than that, and I'd rather work on a project that solved more problems. That's for another post. :) Yes, that has crossed my mind. I did end up getting RamDrive98 to mount/unmount, without a reboot. The project, I am working on now, can use "Fat16"; requiring, a maximum of, half a Gigabyte. So this will work, for now. The main issue has been file permissions. Many alternatives would require manually setting file permissions, after injecting files into the image. And there are a number of files, where the permissions are important. I really doubt anyone will follow, using this method. But the Internet is big. If you do, pay close attention to the data, "right" after the end of the partition's first sector. Those few blocks may not match, between the two. You can probably leave them, as they are, for each image. In the raw disk image, search for "fat16"; also sector 63, depending on your editor. The size of the partitions need to match. This limits the usefulness. As I am creating the raw image " blank", this works fine for me. I can just match RamDrive98's partition size, by messing around with Qemu's "qemu-img.exe".

Some people have reported problems with 3.66, on virtual machines. When I tested it "Win old app" needed to be killed, in "Task Manager", to continue from an installation stall. The installation continued, but I never investigated for install errors. Some have said 3.65 didn't have the issue. Some said 3.66 worked fine, after using 3.65. You can read all about it, starting in the last handful of pages. You can extract the update contents, and read the install scripts. Seems like the installation is the problem, not the content. You could just install things a piece at a time, when possible. Then when/if something goes wrong, you can read the script and do it manually. But it really depends on what you need the update(s) for. For example, if you are trying to resolve a specific issue.

Yes. Here it is. You can make static builds with other languages. It can be a pain. But I've found Go impressive. I don't remember were, and a quick search didn't turn it up, but I think someone ported Go to dos once (protected/extended mode). Hm? I used Ghex2 and couldn't find the string GET_UPDATE.

SoftICE comes to mind. The Bochs Emulator. IDA(pro).

@jaclaz Thanks for the tip! I have something working. But it isn't ideal, or a solution for large hard disk images. I downloaded RamDisk98, from one of the many Simtel FTP clones. If my disk image has the same partition size, as the RamDisk98 saved partition image, I can use HxD to copy the data between the two. So the image size is limited by the amount of free ram you have. You need enough ram, left over, for HxD's copying in order to paste. So it's better to save the ram image, then operate "afterwards" without the ram disk. For me, the ram disk does not start and stop, as described in the readme. Edit: now works Mapping a disk image, with Grub4Dos, is still easier. I'll install Paragon's Harddisk Manager 6, to see it I can do something similar with the included Image Mounter. They have a header, on there created disk images. As long as the image is not compressed or encrypted, it saves it raw. But this would only work for people with this software. Update: Image mounter couldn't unmount Paragon's own images correctly; the changes were not saved. It seems like a Win98 compatibility issue. Otherwise, it seems as if it would have worked. Mounted images, that had been modified by raw disk image partition data, displayed contents of the original raw partition. Alternatively, the "README.TXT" included with RamDisk98 say: If there is enough usable code, in there, maybe something could be (re)written for a ram or file image.

Read about this a while back, regarding beta releases. Nice to see 95 still getting some play. One day, 95 may even see USB2.0 support.

Anyone know if there is a drive/application that can do this? I'm looking to mount it as a device letter. I know Qemu can run with a disk image, while you copy files over a shared FTP folder. Also, DosBox can mount a hard disk image, and a shared folder as a virtual drive. Files could be copied that way. WinImage allows inserting and extracting files, from a disk image. I could also use Grub4Dos and mount the image as a secondary drive. Is there a better "native" way?

Don't mind me, I'm just jesting about extremes. I have a fondness for static (or near static) applications. That is one of the things making "GO" (static friendly) an interesting programing language. Or tools like FreePascal/Lazarus (very portable) appealing. Sometimes, in some tech corners, you get criticized for reinventing the wheel. But back in the Dos days, static building was much more normal. Then again, Dos didn't provide you much to build off of. There wasn't a library folder anywhere. Not that you couldn't do that. But if you built things with less dependencies, especially O.S. dependencies, it would be harder to control the product life cycle. Just did a post mentioning it. Great tool. Absolutely, you can. Some installers hash themselves, checking for changes. But I doubt that is the case here.