Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[2cvbloke]

Has anyone tried a CF card for booting a PC?

Yep, works a treat for older IDE systems, though if you have SATA available you'd be better of getting cheap SSDs rather than CF cards...

 

[Vipersan]

Indeed I booted Freenas from CF for many years ..

As to Chameleon ..
I can't believe I'm contemplating testing yet another motherboard ..but I am ..
Dug out a KT4V mobo ..which posts ...but have yet to get it to boot from floppy..
grr.
It's an MSI board circa 2002 ...
and visually inspected to check for leaky caps ..
Non found ..so started it up ..
gobsmacked to find it was still keeping accurate time with the system clock..
This one allows booting from a variety of sources according to he manual (yes I still have it)
advanced bios boot options include :-
IDE 0 or 1 or 2 or 3
zip drive
CD/DVD
Legacy scsi
Legacy Network
USB floppy
USB CD Rom
USB HDD
USB zip drive

useful if it works..

But ..being an early MSI (shhhh) ...I cant use a pentium cpu..
but a VIA northbridge Southbridge chipset (KT400 /VT8235
AMD Athlon or Duron only

Hopefully this mobo will allow me greater flexibility ..and recognises larger HDs

KT4V / KT4V-L (v1.0) | Motherboard - The world leader in motherboard design | MSI Global

has onboard LAN /Sound card Realtek ALC650 6 channel audio /basic AC97
AGP 8X/4X
IDE UDMA 33/66/100/133

A lot of mobo at the time I think ...but it is an MSI (shhhh)

 

[Vipersan]

So far so good ..
Looks like I had the original chipset installation CD ..
I built win2000 on a 100gb partition formatted to NTFS on a 500gb IDE ..
Everything went smoothly ..
I have Audio ..
I have LAN / Internet access
It even installed the Voodoo without asking for my driver disc ..
The only driver disc asked for was the Sigma Xcard ..
This too went in smoothly ..
Will do XPpro tomrrow ..on a seperate partition of the same Hard Drive ..
What is worrying me a little is the motherboards backwards compatibility to Win95B and 98SE..
It may well choke ..
BUT
having looked closely at the original driver disc ..there are included Win9X patches on it ..
No surprise there ..so maybe ..just maybe the motherboard is old enough to be backwards compatible.
We shall see ..
..and this is the tricky part ..
Finding a mobo recent enough but not too recent for XP/2000
..and old enough to support older OS like 95B/98SE..
A tightrope indeed..to straddle the millenium..
Time to shut down for the night and go watch some TV.
;)

 

[davemurgtroyd]

Whilst looking for motherboard discs I came across a CD I made with copies of the floppies to install BEOS, DOS 3.3, 5.0 and 6.2, WIN 1, 2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 286, 95 upgrade AND CDs for Win 95, 98SE, 2003 Server edition. ME, XP and Vista. As well as these I came across numerous driver discs - see the motherboard thread.

 

[Vipersan]

Yes ..I went back to work ...
This time to try and install Win95 using this faster more 'modern' motherboard ..
As expected ...the installation failed at the last hurdle ...
AMD processor too fast etc ..etc ..etc..
Windows protection error ..
MS never bothered to provide a fix ..
No need for it ..
OS redundant ...why bother ...who the hell would be stoopid enough to want it fixed...
Enter an enthusiastic amateur ...who did what MS either would not or could not ..
Windows 95 2.1GHz CPU Limit BROKEN!
Made a bootable floppy with his fix on it ..
popped it into the drive and rebooted the dead OS ..
The floppy intercepted the boot ..and wrote a few files to the win95 installation ..
rebooted ..
crossed fingers ..
et voila ..
we're in ..

This bootable floppy is going in my installation toolkit ..
The guy is a fekkin genius ..
Now I will get some much needed sleep..
bfn
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Latest update ..
Still not got a fully functioning win95 as yet ..
The driver CD wont install on anything pre win 98 ..so have to do this bit manually ..and carefully..
So far only chipset driver in is for the onboard LAN ..but it is working..
Nonetheless that patch I applied last night plus the memory cap restriction ..IS allowing me to boot into win95 with 2gb of memory installed on the mobo ..
Installed on a 32gb Fat32 partition at the front of a 200gb IDE drive..

Also ..
I have now got Win2000 and XPpro on a 500gb hard drive 1st and second partitions respectively..
100gb for Win2000 and 150gb for XPpro ..
So loads of space for other OS ..
I'm waiting on another 500gb IDE to put 98SE on which will also be the first partition (32gb fat32)
Both win95 and 98SE appear to need to be the first bootable logical drive partition ..
Whereas Win2000 and or XPpro dont really mind which partition they are on..
Not installed GAG yet as this will hopefully be the final act when all OS are built.

I'm gobsmacked I got this far ..and it has been a very time consuming venture..
I'm taking RAW images of each drive after any major changes ..as a go back point..in case it all goes t!ts up..
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Time to go soak in the tub ..
I'm really feeling the cold atm..
but ..good news despite The Driver install disc saying the soulnd card drivers are incompatible with my OS (Win95) I got some in ..and I have sound..
I suspect they simply didn't make the driver disc 'open up able' on account they didn't think win 95 was even possible on this motherboard..so to avoid complaints and confusion ..they just blanket banned use of the CD ..
In short I have sound ..and it's stable..
I will make my own driver KT4V driver disc just for 95..
They make me wanna puke with their attitude..
rgds
VS
btw ..it simply wouldn't have been possible without that amateur patch I mentioned earlier..
;)

 

[Vipersan]

Almost there ..
Just the USB drivers and IE 5.5 to install..
..but these _may_ cause the windows protection error to re-appear ..
If it does I will run the patch again ..
This may or may not provide a fix.
So ..just in case ..another RAW image backup ..which will take at least 45 minutes.
Time to grab a brew ..and check out the news.
rgds
VS

Thanks to the patch ..I have managed to install :-
Sound card drivers AC97
RhineII Lan port drivers ..
These are integrated mobo devices ..
Plus
Banshee/voodoo drivers (pci card)
Iwill ultra scsi card drivers(pci card)
Sigma Designs Xcard drivers (pci card)

on a mobo running 2gb ram ..(may well take 3gb but not tried yet)
of course Win95 only uses a fixed amount and runs the CPU at a slower speed.
Never say Never

 

[Archive-8]

Almost there ..
Just the USB drivers and IE 5.5 to install..
..but these _may_ cause the windows protection error to re-appear ..
If it does I will run the patch again ..
This may or may not provide a fix.
So ..just in case ..another RAW image backup ..which will take at least 45 minutes.
Time to grab a brew ..and check out the news.
rgds
VS

Thanks to the patch ..I have managed to install :-
Sound card drivers AC97
RhineII Lan port drivers ..
These are integrated mobo devices ..
Plus
Banshee/voodoo drivers (pci card)
Iwill ultra scsi card drivers(pci card)
Sigma Designs Xcard drivers (pci card)

on a mobo running 2gb ram ..(may well take 3gb but not tried yet)
of course Win95 only uses a fixed amount and runs the CPU at a slower speed.
Never say Never

Nice one

 

[Vipersan]

Well ..
just in the process of restoring the Raw image to the hard drive..
Just glad I made one..
IE5.5 went in without issues..
XSUPP destroyed windows 95 Totally ..
not unexpected..
This may well have been because the KT4V may not use Via compliant USB ports..
??
I'll do some more digging..
but if I have to live without USB on this 95 installation..
So Be It ..
I can import and export files via LAN from the network..so no great loss..
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

After much trying ..I finally got USB on the mobo..
but the cost is too high..memory wise..
Windows 95 wears a cap
MaxPhysPage=30000
So is limited by this..
problem appears to be that introducing USB ..of which there are 4 on the mobo effectively starves the OS of working memory..
I believe that portions of working memory are 'hived off' and put aside for each USB port
As the USB drivers are installed ..one can see the process repeated for each port (4 times in this case)
..thus too much gets reserved at the expense of leaving sod all to run windows95.
So ..I guess I will be content with no USB on 95.
At least I know ..or at least ..I _think_ I understand why..
You'd think the obvious answer was just raise the cap..
Sadly this will not work ..as Win95 can only address 512 mb ..and even that is questionable.
256mb being the 'safe' stable limit.
rgds
VS

 

[Captain Jack]

Do you need more than that on a Windows 95 machine though? I remember having 32MB on my 486 and that was more that enough at the to do the light stuff.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Do you need more than that on a Windows 95 machine though? I remember having 32MB on my 486 and that was more that enough at the to do the light stuff.

There's a link to the 'Christine' upgrade somewhere.

 

[Vipersan]

There's a link to the 'Christine' upgrade somewhere.

huh ?

 

[Vipersan]

Do you need more than that on a Windows 95 machine though? I remember having 32MB on my 486 and that was more that enough at the to do the light stuff.

No ..dont need more memory to run 95 ..
but employing 4 usb ports demands more ..
So I guess I wont have USB on Win95..
I was getting away with it on an earlier mobo ..I guess cos it only had one usb port..
The MSI has 4..and I suspect therein lies the problem .
Prior to installing drivers ..a check in system ..shows the ports as 4 seperate 'unknown' devices in win 95 ..so installs 4 times ..and I'm guessing designates 4 blocks of memory/ram ..thus starving the OS

 

[Vipersan]

Just out of curiosity ..
I popped another 1gb strip of ram into the mobo ..and booted win95..
Yep it booted all the way in ..
..and shut down correctly ..with the 'please wait' message..
So I _can_ max my ram to 3gb ..which will be needed for later OS...and Win95 and hopefully 98SE will only take what it needs.
we shall see ..

 

[2cvbloke]

I remember the first time I saw a USB port, it was a lone port on the back of a late 90s Tiny computer that ran Win98 I got asked to set up, didn't know what it was 'til I unpacked the scanner and found this strange, small plug on the end of a surprisingly thin cable (I had a Parallel Port Agfa Snapscan 1212p scanner myself, amazing I can remember that, but not what I ate last night!!), so back then, a computer having just one USB port would have been normal, so they over-engineered the backwards-compatibility software for it I guess...

 

[Vipersan]

So am building or trying to build 98SE ..
but I keep running into issues with missing files during installation..
I have iso images aquired from the net ..but I suspect I need a genuine cd ..as the images tend to be tweaked for Vbox use..
Does anyone have a genuine CD they could iso for me ..or better still sell me the disc ?
rgds
VS

 

[Analoguesat]

Email me on Monday. I'll have a look in one of the boxes at work. I think Ive got some 98 discs stashed away at work. Cant remember if they are SE though With all the hassle Im having at work atm I'll never remember to check without a reminder....... I'll pm you my addy

 

[Vipersan]

Fingers crossed

Email me on Monday. I'll have a look in one of the boxes at work. I think Ive got some 98 discs stashed away at work. Cant remember if they are SE though With all the hassle Im having at work atm I'll never remember to check without a reminder....... I'll pm you my addy

there is an SE amongst them ..
Getting 98 non SE to run on this rig may well be a problem..
rgds
Evan