Dell Insprion B130 drivers

[OldSchool38]

I was going through some of my old computer parts I had in my desk one day and found my old Dell Insprion B130 a friend gave me years ago.  I tried installing windows 98 on the thing and was successful.  So far all I've found driver wise is stuff for 2000/XP, are there any drivers out there for Windows 98?

[awkduck]

I think its "Inspiron". :)

You may need to hunt for drivers one by one.

You can search the web for "Dell Inspiron B130" specs. That will give you some info on the hardware you have.

There are also programs for Win9x that will provide you with the "Hardware Identification" of the different install devices.

But before I go on, you should note that official Win98 drivers for a "Designed for XP/NT" laptop are often non-existent.

Dell does off a MSDos driver for the Network device. That might come in handy, as a last resort.

The Intel GMA 900 series video card will likely need a universal driver, like from the "Vbemp Project". It will not provide 3d acceleration. You may have to decide if you really need DirectX9 or not, since DX7 is the last to support "software rendering".

There are Universal Drivers for USB2. Or you could install one of the unofficial Win98(se) service packs, that include USB drivers.

If your audio is not of an AC97 chipset, you may have to try the Win3x(16bit) Driver for the HDAudio chipsets. Otherwise buy a cheap USB audio device, (almost always) supported by the Win98 Generic USB Driver.

It might be easier finding out what hardware you have, by making a Bootable LiveUSB stick; with some Linux or KolibriOS. Once booted with Linux, you can usually open a console and type "lspci" without the quotes. With KolibriOS, there is a system panel, from which you can click on the icon for listing PCI hardware. I can't remember the exact name of the icon, but it is trivial to figure out.

But then hunting for those drivers, on the net, is getting harder and harder. Especially for a Win9x OS or older. However, I do suspect that you could find a Win9x driver, for the network device. Wifi is a different story. PCMCIA slots can be hit and miss. If you can find out what type of PCMCIA slot you have (chipset), you may be able to use drivers for a different Laptop; having the same chipset.

You could maybe search for something like "Operating System Revival", to help ease your hunt.

If you get anywhere trying these things, it may be easier to get help for "Individual" driver problems. You will, at that point, be able to list the actual hardware device causing you issues. If you run into a problem with something I,ve suggested, someone may help you with that specific thing or suggest a different option.

[pangoomis]

Sadly, your laptop is too new for 98SE, no dedicated drivers for the GPU or the HD Audio chip exists, you can use workarounds suggested by awkduck but they won't get you far.

Laptops with 98SE support ended with Intel 855PM chipset (one generation earlier than your laptop with Intel 910GML/915GM chipset) and with DDR1 support.

So if you see a laptop that has DDR2 slots or has an HD Audio chip, it will not have 98SE drivers. Basically any laptop that was made in 2005 or newer. As for earlier years, it depends on the GPU/Chipset used, some are compatible with 98SE, some are not.