giving fresh life to a 20 year old laptop

[systemchris]

hello all

i felt like getting myself an old laptop to play my favourite dos/95/98 games, landed up being given a 486 toshiba with 32mb ram and 500mb HD, and an external floppy (which it can boot from) plus a pc card zip100 drive. the CD drive seems to be a dud

it has a 98 install on it, filled with junk

i was wondering what would be my best way of approaching this?

im thinking either dos 6.22 + windows 3.11, or a fresh minimal 98se install and use the dos on that

afaik my only options are to copy the windows 98se cab files over to hard drive and install from them after booting from 98 bootdisk or to just format c: /s and run a 6.22 install floppy? then windos 3.11?

what would you recommmend yourselves?

[lotharuk]

I'd go with 98SE. Maximises flexibility to run 98 and below games. As long as the 486 is a DX 66mhz then your other mentioned specs exceed the minimum:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751

[Monroe]

Hi Systemchris ... I have a 10 yr old NEC notebook and a 12 yr old Toshiba Satellite notebook .... both have Windows 98SE on them. Maybe this site will be of some help to you, just found it searching around.

The Ultimate Unofficial 486 Toshiba FAQ

http://www.bitlink.ca/Library/toshiba.shtml

* just a small update to my earlier posting ... NEC notebook is a P3 - 750 mhz (32MB upgraded to 512MB) - 40GB HD

Toshiba Satellite is a Pentium MMX - 300 mhz (32MB upgraded to 96MB ... highest I could go)

I am not familiar with the 486 line, so the others posting here will certainly be of more help.

...

Edited June 7, 2011 by duffy98

[systemchris]

thank you

i'm gonna try use a larger hard drive, about 1-8 gb and hope it likes it, so i won't have a cd, but i'll have a large storage space

i'm also going to try find one of thexircom parallel to ethernet adaptors to transfer files over

[Kelsenellenelvian]

A 486? I am pretty sure you will not get to much bigger a hard drive in that...

[dencorso]

Hands down Win 98SE.

[pointertovoid]

32MB are narrow for W98 and 98se and will make it slow (I had it on a PIII 450MB 32MB expanded later to 128MB). W95b runs at its full speed on 32MB (I have one).

Which doesn't mean W95 will be comfortable... On my P1 120MHz, it got pleasant only after I replaced the 5400rpm disk with a Compact Flash card.

I don't see any direct link between the CPU and the maximum disk size, and I even suppose there is none.

An indirect link is via the age of the Bios, which will know only CHS to access the disk, hence only 8GB, 4GB or even less.

- BUT -

as opposed to DOS and (I believe) Win3.1, Win95b accesses the disks through its own drivers that don't rely on the Bios, and uses LBA.

So if your boot volume is small enough that the Bios finds the boot sector, then W95b should access the rest of the disk (but DOS won't unless you add a driver).

This may require your disk host (often called the controller) to know how to use LBA and have the proper driver, which W95b should bring anyway.

For instance, the Bios of my old laptop detects only one HDD. I have an adapter for 2 Compact Flash cards where the disk was to be.

W95b loads its built-in driver for the disk host and accesses both CF cards, something the Bios wouldn't.

[rloew]

32MB are narrow for W98 and 98se and will make it slow (I had it on a PIII 450MB 32MB expanded later to 128MB). W95b runs at its full speed on 32MB (I have one).

Which doesn't mean W95 will be comfortable... On my P1 120MHz, it got pleasant only after I replaced the 5400rpm disk with a Compact Flash card.

I don't see any direct link between the CPU and the maximum disk size, and I even suppose there is none.

An indirect link is via the age of the Bios, which will know only CHS to access the disk, hence only 8GB, 4GB or even less.

- BUT -

as opposed to DOS and (I believe) Win3.1, Win95b accesses the disks through its own drivers that don't rely on the Bios, and uses LBA.

So if your boot volume is small enough that the Bios finds the boot sector, then W95b should access the rest of the disk (but DOS won't unless you add a driver).

This may require your disk host (often called the controller) to know how to use LBA and have the proper driver, which W95b should bring anyway.

For instance, the Bios of my old laptop detects only one HDD. I have an adapter for 2 Compact Flash cards where the disk was to be.

W95b loads its built-in driver for the disk host and accesses both CF cards, something the Bios wouldn't.

All Windows Versions use DOS or BIOS Calls during bootup until the Protected Mode Disk Driver is loaded so the BIOS must be able to access any and all Files that are used before the Protected Mode Driver is loaded.

I have a DDO that can supplement the BIOS up to the ATA Limit of 128PiB.

[jaclaz]

In my experience, 98 in 32 Mb is not going to work "right" (in the sense that it will be SLOW).

A 95 will work allright.

Most probably a good compromise will be a "Mindows" or "98-lite" (i.e. 95 base+additional 98).

This will pose serious licensing questions as you theoretically need TWO licenses, one for the 95 and one for the 98.

Some info about making a "98 lite" can be found here:

http://reboot.pro/forum/53/

http://www.winimize.com/

jaclaz

[Ponch]

I don't see any direct link between the CPU and the maximum disk size, and I even suppose there is none.

An indirect link is via the age of the Bios, which will know only CHS to access the disk, hence only 8GB, 4GB or even less.

It's all about age like you say. Most early 486 (40MHz and before) were limited to HDDs of 528MB. Finding a bios update for those dinosaurs might prove tricky. "Drive overlay" programs were a solution.

[TmEE]

My first 98SE setup was on a 166MHz Pentium with 32MB of RAM. It was not too great, but with 64MB of RAM it became much more responsive. Win95 will rock your socks on that laptop.

[starport3]

I once installed Windows 98 on a 486 with 64MB, however I would not recommand using that OS with a 486 though. I know MS minimum requirement for 98 is a 486DX2 66MHz, but in my case the computer ran so slow that I had to go back to using Windows 95.

Windows 98 is really made to be used with a Pentium system or higher...

[M()zart]

I agree, I compared the performance of Windows 95 and Windows 98 on my first computer - Pentium 133 with 16 Mb RAM, and Windows 98 was slow. It worked, and it was usable, however I decided to go back to Windows 95 that time and stayed with Windows 95 until 2002 and my second computer.

[maxvre]

I know you've already bought the hardware but would you not be better running 98SE under something like virtualbox? That way it could run at its best on better hardware. All those old games would run fine if you can get 98 up and running under VB.

[systemchris]

I don't see any direct link between the CPU and the maximum disk size, and I even suppose there is none.

An indirect link is via the age of the Bios, which will know only CHS to access the disk, hence only 8GB, 4GB or even less.

It's all about age like you say. Most early 486 (40MHz and before) were limited to HDDs of 528MB. Finding a bios update for those dinosaurs might prove tricky. "Drive overlay" programs were a solution.

you never guess thats the size of the hard drive it seems to have at the moment.....

i found a bio update made by toshiba which was made in 97/98 to flash to bios to version 5 which it has on it now

i have a 2.5" ide cf card reader and 2 gig card, you think i should try it on it with a basic dos install on it? i can't atm as my sister is taking up house space i use for my computer fiddling

i have a plain retail windows 95 cd here which came with our first pc and a cd key stamped onto it, as well as 98se from my other pc so it should be doable