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giving fresh life to a 20 year old laptop


systemchris

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All those old games would run fine if you can get 98 up and running under VB.

IF ! Check their forum before install, if you do.

"Windows 9x is not officially supported by VirtualBox team, which means, that it lacks Guest VM Additions, and it runs slowly, because VirtualBox is not optimized to run Win 9x"

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I'd go with a dualboot solution.

One small partition formatted as FAT16 with DOS 6.22 for those old DOS games that need real DOS and as much of the 640 kIB of conventional memory they can get.

The second partition formatted as FAT32 with Windows 95B/C or Windows 98. It depends on what your Windows games need. If there's a game that requires at least Windows 98, go for that. Otherwise go for the faster and more stable (at least with no IE around) Windows 95.

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All those old games would run fine if you can get 98 up and running under VB.

IF ! Check their forum before install, if you do.

"Windows 9x is not officially supported by VirtualBox team, which means, that it lacks Guest VM Additions, and it runs slowly, because VirtualBox is not optimized to run Win 9x"

yeh i tried on a pentium 4 at work = horrible

runs well on my overclocked i3 though ;)

i actually have a windows 98se pc i got from ebay for £10, with a voodoo 3 500mhz p3, an old sb128 and 256mb ram which runs beauitufully, but this mini project is for playing games whilst watching tv with family

i'm very much tempted to go down the dos 6.22 and 3.11 route, maybe 95? still haven't had time to fish it out of loft again to resume work

the other day i had a go on freedos on virtualbox, and it ran all the dos games i threw at it quite well, and it can boot the os with neatly 700kb free conventional memory on a boot menu which make life easy.... but other than floppy drive id have no way of getting games on there since the cd drive is truly gone and i dont want to spend money on the exact same cd drive which would be hard to comeby :s hmmm possibly a pcmcia network or a xircom if one pops up on uk ebay

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On a 2GB Compact Flash with P-Ata adapter (44 pins if laptop...), yes, you should definitely try Ms-Dos AND W95b on it.

PROVIDED the CF card has SLC chips, not MLC.

W95b doesn't request it to be fixed and accepts it announcing itself as removable.

Dos will boot instantaneously (only Cd drive detection may take time) and W95b may take some 25s depending on the hardware.

Proper driver for the P-Ata host is necessary.

If the host or the driver or the CF don't allow Dma (Mwdma is fine, Udma not requested), forget it. Pio is too slow.

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There is a free operating system online called "D.amn Small Linux", you may want to take a look at it...

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

i considered it, but the the cd drive is dead on this machine i swear it doesnt even spin, and im not sure how to check as last time i tried to dismantle that far some of the plastic cracked on the case as it's so old :thumbup

if i can find windows 95 floppies i'll probably do that lol or msdos/freedos

any makers of pccard i should go for to have max compatability for network port?

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W95 floppies?

O yes, they existed if I remember properly, but you needed 30-40 of them to replace the CD...

Better method: copy the install Cd on the CF card, it's <100MB without the demos and useless stuff.

Boot some Dos from a floppy, start the install from the source folder on the CF. Faster than a CD.

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But wouldn't the price for your CF card adapter alone be double than the value of the entire computer ? :angel

@Systemchris, you can check these pages to make yourself a boot floppy with network support. It works with PCMCIA cards, you might have to write your own plugin (I've done it ~10 years ago).

From there you can map an optical drive on an other computer.

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But wouldn't the price for your CF card adapter alone be double than the value of the entire computer ? :angel

@Systemchris, you can check these pages to make yourself a boot floppy with network support. It works with PCMCIA cards, you might have to write your own plugin (I've done it ~10 years ago).

From there you can map an optical drive on an other computer.

i had one laying about, i think it was £2 from china, it's just a straight 2.5" 44pin ide to cf, and who doesnt have spare cf cards about gathering dust :P

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