Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[2cvbloke]

The internet police are at your virtual back door.

Best have myself an extra-large, extra hot virtual curry to flush them out then...

 

[jeallen01]

Ref AOL

I still know of someone using it but he is a technoluddite, but does mange an email now and then

That about sums up one of my wife's friends who still uses it

 

[Vipersan]

Pre PC ..I was given a modem to use when writing Comodore games ..
Had to give it back eventually ..
'Compunet' lurks somewhere in my old brain..
;)

omg ..just found this on youtube ..
Yep ..thats the one..

 

[Vipersan]

2 things to report today ..
Terry was very helpful in securing the IDE switch ...which wasn't expensive ..and with a reduction too ..because the vendor had lost the power leads ..
Now comes the painful bit ..
UPS have seriously upped the greedy grabbing attitude to posting to the UK ..
This is not a big parcel ..nor a heavy parcel ..but they still wanted ...over 70$ to ship it ..
so beware anyone getting something from the US ..
I wanted it ..so I pay the price..
Just got to suck it up..
Thanks again Terry
great guy and very helpful ...even if he is from another galaxy ..


On a less painful note ..
I now have WIN95 running on a mobo fitted with 1.5gb ram..
This is how ..
Install with a max 512mb stick only ..
Either enter and mod the system .ini file in dos ..
or take the easy route as I did ..
Pull the drive on completion ..slave it to another PC ..
find the system .ini file
open it ..
locate the chunk that begins [386Enh]
add this line to that section

MaxPhysPage=30000

save ..
reinstall the drive in the legacy PC ..
fit more Ram ..and power up..
This will limit Win95 OS access to physical ram to 768 MB

Also will work on 98 ..98SE and ME I read..

 

[Vipersan]

Nice vid ..windows history lesson ..

I guess we should at least be thankful ..the adds got less cheesy..

 

[Vipersan]

So ..work can now begin on Chameleon II
It will feature ..The Banshee PCI graphics card ..
The PCI Advansys Scsi card ..
A PCI sounblaster creative labs sound card
The 3Com PCI network NIC card
The PCI Sigma Designs X card graphics accelerator (hopefully)
Asus CUV4 motherboard ..supporting a PIII 80o mhz cpu ..and 1.5gb of RAM ..
A DDS4 dat tape tape drive (scsi)
A 1.44 Floppy drive
A DVD/CD R/W drive IDE
A PD/CD drive also IDE
and for now a pull out HD caddy tray for the OS ..
This will eventually be replaced with the 3 hard drive IDE switch ..thus 3 hard drives can reside internally
These will contain..
Win3.1/DOS
Win95
And a multiboot 98SE/Win2000/XPpro ...and at least one Linux based OS
All in one package..
Only then can I call Chameleon 'built'
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Deep Joy ..
what were the chances of finding this ..?

the cd driver disc and the 9 pin din to vga loopthrough patch lead ..plus the audio loop through jack lead ...and instructions ..
all in one packet..

I guess my life was much more organised in my yoof ..than I thought..
lol

 

[Vipersan]

Several hours later I almost have a complete and stable win95OS with the scsi the Banshee the NIC and an Advanced Audio card fitted..
I had to change direction and leave the Soundblaster out ..
even though it claims win95 compatibility ..
Why ..?
Too many resources used ..and this was the reason it's taken hours so far..
We are spoiled these days..
I'd forgotton how difficult it can be installing peripheral devices ..
Limited interupts ...and ranges to consider ..
Some devices will co-exist ..but thats what takes time ..making them ALL coexist and share resources..
I even got the Xcard in ..even though it was never designed to support 95 ..
I used 98/Me drivers ..
I doubt it will be fully functional ..but it does at least allow VGA loopthrough ...and 95 doesn't moan about it as an unknown device..
Still got USB to deal with ..and restricting of memory limit so it will run with 1.5gb ram..
So just taking a break whilst I image the hard drive (currently stable) ..that way I can experiment without worrying about having to start again..
Hopefully this will get easier after 98SE
heh !!
I dont do easy..
lol
;)

 

[Vipersan]

So ..I now have a choice to make ..
A PC with less ram ..to run ALL the targeted OS ...or abandon any hope of tunning win95 on a build with
1.5gb memory ..I can get everything to install before restricting memory ...EXCEPT the audio card ..
Sadly this places content in Autoexec ...and the real problems begin ..with ram (even restricted ram).
I can see no way around this ...so may have to compromise..
Somethings gotta go ...
back in the days of 95 it was inconcievable anyone would want or even be able to afford such large sticks of RAM ..
doh!

 

[2cvbloke]

I remember when I was working at the computer shop, 1GB of RAM was still considered "huge", even 512MB was a large amount, so finding a test-stick of 512MB PC133 SD-RAM available to me was amazing, to have such a large amount of RAM just to test with, I was impressed, think I still have that somewhere as I purloined it during a clearout of old hardware, not sure where it is though!!

 

[Vipersan]

I've been on this for well over 12 hours today ..
..and have a result of sorts ..
no idea how stable this is ..
but got all peripherals and drivers in ...using a Maestro pci sound card ..
there does appear some conflict of resources re- the game port joystick ..but if I can disable this ...which I will try tomorrow ..
I have a restricted WIN95 which boots all the way in ...with a memory cap ..
even have USB support ..
Course it may all come crashing down when I use it ..but for now ...it IS working.
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Probably one of the most useful links I have found ..
Re 95 and 98
Guide to CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT

 

[Vipersan]

Got BackupExec Desktop installed on the Win98B build ..
Dat drive SDT-10000 recognised ..and since this device can handle 40gb tapes ..Ive set it off to backup all of the C drive..
All being done _before_ ram is added so as to increase chances of success ..
I already have an image I can restore to hard drive ..so really this is just an excercise to check if the DAT is fully functional..
It will only take about 10 mins at this point ..since the system is mostly empty..
lol

 

[Vipersan]

If any of you guys can come up with a hardware solution that will allow SDRAM to remain fitted in the slots ..but could be made physically invisible by say removing power to the sticks ...or similar ...
I'd love to hear it ..
IE a swich that would allow RAM to be electrically inserted for OS systems other than early windows..
;)
not getting my hopes up ..
lol

 

[2cvbloke]

Probably one of the most useful links I have found ..
Re 95 and 98
Guide to CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT

Certainly a lot to read there with regard to them two seemingly simple files, that's one thing I never got my head around with MS-DOS, editing them files, though in recent years I've managed to "play with" the autoexec.bat file to display silly messages when starting up...

 

[PaulR]

Ah yes, config.sys and autoexec.bat. I remember prior to Dos 6 using a third party memory manager (QEMM - remember that?) to load as much as possible into high memory to get as much ordinary memory as possible.

I was so good with it that I could optimise the two files better than Optimize (the optimisation utility) could. Happy days...

 

[jeallen01]

QEMM I remember and I used, but IIRC it was "hard work" - and then when I went to DOS 6 and then DR-DOS6, I don't think I needed it .

OTOH, maybe QEMM is what VS needs.

 

[davemurgtroyd]

Another ebay seller has let me down again - cancelled order for AT keyboard adapter - out of stock so legacy projects on hold - so another legacy project a Sinclair PC200 - 8086 with only two expansion slots 8 bit ISA - now this should be a real challenge - at present it runs Dos3 and GEM. Would like to try Windows 1 or 2 but need a 720k 3.5" floppy drive as its built in floppy doesn't like discs formatted or written in any of my twenty or so 1.44 MB drives. Anyone got an old 720k floppy lying around?

 

[jeallen01]

IIRC, my first PC of any sort at all was a Viglen 286 that cost me nearly TWO Grand in 1989 (and which I picked up directly from their original assembly site on an industrial estate in Hanwell!) - came with DOS 3.0 & Windows 2, and that version of Windows was completely pointless as it was just a GUI front-end that linked to various DOS-based programmes. After a couple of "plays" with it, I never used it again - why bother? (Really, why bother!).

 

[Vipersan]

Cant help you there Dave ..
Not seen a 720k floppy in years ..
I wouldn't mind getting CH has one in his lockup..

There is an Atari one here ..
ATARI ST STE STF STFM MEGA FALCON BLACK 720K 1.44 DOUBLE SIDED FLOPPY DISK DRIVE | eBay
Assuming the pin config is compatible ?
..and its open to offers ?