Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[jeallen01]

Drivers available on the net - try here on Driverguide (usually very reliable): 3Com 3C90x EtherLink 10/100 PCI NIC Family Free Driver Download for Windows 98SE
Or else look for drivers for the relevant OS

 

[Vipersan]

Drivers available on the net - try here on Driverguide (usually very reliable): 3Com 3C90x EtherLink 10/100 PCI NIC Family Free Driver Download for Windows 98SE
Or else look for drivers for the relevant OS

Thanks mate ..
just hope these .exe files are just self extracting ..
I need the actual drivers on floppy you see ..
In order to point win95 at them..
wish me luck..
;)

 

[Vipersan]

Thanks mate ..
just hope these .exe files are just self extracting ..
I need the actual drivers on floppy you see ..
In order to point win95 at them..
wish me luck..
;)

Well fwiw ..win95 recognises the NIC card now ..
as to functionality ..
that remains to be seen..
lol

 

[Vipersan]

Things are progressing it seems ..
One cannot update the drivers using scan and refresh it seems ..
They have to go in post win95 boot and before startup..
Floppy Disk 1 contained suitable DOS drivers ...
I'm currently seeing my network ..so the NIC is now grabbing and IP from the router..
It's a start..
lol
Now that I know I can use this pci NIC card with 95 ..and 98 ...
I can replace the damaged IDE mobo with a more recent all PCI mobo ..and lose the ISA NIC card ..
The only reason I was hanging on to the Jetway motherboard..
Enough for tonight ..
I'll try a new more recent motherboard tomorrow..as this will require a full Chameleon Re-build .


Oh ..and just worth mentioning ..
The 2 x 3com .exe (discs 1 and 2 files kindly found by Jeallen ..could not be expanded in my win7 64 bit system ..
total incompatibility ..
So transported as is to the win 95 PC ..and expanded there ..and the DOS files written back to blank floppies..

This was how we built systems back in the day ..whereas all done for you now ..
Marvellous thing ..plug n play..
we dont know how lucky we are..

 

[Topper]

Indeed I used to spend many an hour starting from Fdisk on a small HD and building up from there with individual drivers, you are correct plug and play made it all easy for folk, but I think it also denied them any chancing of learning and understanding the beast they had.

 

[Vipersan]

Spending the day testing all the mobos I have here ...and there are many ..
Some are mine from previous builds ..some were donated by CH ..
So far I have 2 workers ...both P4 boards..
;)

 

[Vipersan]

Chose my mainboard to experiment with ..
..and hit a problem immediately trying to instal win95 ..
Dont think it can access large memory ..so am about to try again having reduced from 3gb to 1.5gb ..
I daresay once in win95 it is possible to limit the memory it sees or uses ..but can't even get it to boot with such a high value of ram ..
I do remember something about this ..?
can anyone remember what the absolute max is on the last version of 95 ?
OS2 B
??
I was using 750mb on the other build ..and that was ok..
If no one knows for sure ..I guess it's down to trial and error..

 

[Vipersan]

Well ..1.5gb was a bust ..
insufficient memory to install win 95 ...
which is total bollox of course ..
I'll juggle the ram slots and try 1gb next..

 

[2cvbloke]

I think 95 is limited to about 512MB, otherwise it suffers the "Too much memory is not enough" bug, I'm sure someone out there has fixed said bug without M$'s permission though...

 

[Vipersan]

I think 95 is limited to about 512MB, otherwise it suffers the "Too much memory is not enough" bug, I'm sure someone out there has fixed said bug without M$'s permission though...

Odd that it ran on 750 then ...
but then ..it was 3x strips of 25o on an older mobo..
If you find anything relating to this issue ..
IE a fix ...and how to do it.
please post the link.
rgds

 

[2cvbloke]

Annoyingly, it's a bit hit & miss, the theoretical memory limit for 95 is 2GB, but past 480MB and it starts crapping out (it was designed to run on a 386DX with 4MB of RAM after all!!), the official way to deal with it is to edit the vcache settings in the system.ini file, however, that's as far as I got as the M$ supprt for telling us how to do that is gone (though google would probably find it somewhere). Another option is setting up a RAMdrive to use up RAM therefore removing enough available RAM to stop it hitting the so-called "crash barrier", again, dunno how that works though...

There's also the issue of chipsets on the motherboard, if it's not the right type or backwards compatible, 95'll just not work, which makes it a bigger PITA to diagnose issues in trying to make it work...

 

[Analoguesat]

Some info here VS

TeraByte Unlimited Knowledge Base

 

[Vipersan]

Some info here VS

TeraByte Unlimited Knowledge Base

Sadly the MS link is no longer viable ..
thanks anyhoo ...
I suspect this is as 2cv says ..
hit n miss ...
currently trying 2x chunks of 512 mb matched PC2700
but as has been pointed out already ..
It could well be the mobo chipset is simply not compatible ..in which case I'll have to ignore 95 ..or go back to an earlier mobo..
cest la vie..

 

[Analoguesat]

The top link is missing but theres useful info on the second & third links.

 

[davemurgtroyd]

VS have you tried installing it with less memory (say 512M and afterwards upgrading the memory?

 

[Vipersan]

VS have you tried installing it with less memory (say 512M and afterwards upgrading the memory?

It's on my to try list Dave

 

[Vipersan]

So ..last attempt failed ..
Windows protection error during installation ..again ..
and with ony 256mb of memory ..
Pentium 4 or chipset is totally incompatible I think ...
I have another mobo to try ..but its older ..slower and has ISA slots ..
but will take a P3 CPU ...
Tomorrow though ..
I've spent a lot of time on this today ..
Time to chill with some TV..
My conclusion ..win 95 will not run on modern PCs ..except in virtual mode ..
Not an option..
;)

 

[davemurgtroyd]

I've dugout my 2 projects for resurrection
1 A tower case - unfortunatel only suitable for AT motherboards so I believe the 500MHz Pentium 3 already fitted is the max I can do with it. IIRC already kitted out with SCSi card running 1 HDD, MO disk drive (very early so probably 128MB max) and a DDS drive (again early so probably only DDS1 or 2 max). DVD dfive ( I believe read oonly), 3.5 floppy, 5.25 floppy plus 2 IDE HDDs.

It has 5 5.25 external drive bays, one of which is empty at present but I used to alternate a DVD/CD drive and a 3.5" IDE drive caddy.

2 A "portable" mini tower - an unusual design that I really like with a built in carrying handle, only has 2 external 5.25 drive bays though. At present fitted with a 1GHz Pentium 4 IIRC although IIRC I have a PC with fitted 1600 MHz AMD procesor somewhere to transplant mobo.

I already have install disks (floppy and CD) for DOS 3, 4,5 & 6, GEM, Win 3, 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT4, XP, Vista, 7, 8.1 and keys for all of those that require one, not forgetting Linux and OS2 if I can find them all.

I have a couple of hundred cover CDs, floppies and DVDs from computer magazines from the 90's so should be able to find compatible programmes (browsers, media players etc) for each OS that I choose

So I'm in for a busy time. Does anyone know a site that lists min and max HDD and RAM sizes

 

[Vipersan]

I've dugout my 2 projects for resurrection
1 A tower case - unfortunatel only suitable for AT motherboards so I believe the 500MHz Pentium 3 already fitted is the max I can do with it. IIRC already kitted out with SCSi card running 1 HDD, MO disk drive (very early so probably 128MB max) and a DDS drive (again early so probably only DDS1 or 2 max). DVD dfive ( I believe read oonly), 3.5 floppy, 5.25 floppy plus 2 IDE HDDs.

It has 5 5.25 external drive bays, one of which is empty at present but I used to alternate a DVD/CD drive and a 3.5" IDE drive caddy.

2 A "portable" mini tower - an unusual design that I really like with a built in carrying handle, only has 2 external 5.25 drive bays though. At present fitted with a 1GHz Pentium 4 IIRC although IIRC I have a PC with fitted 1600 MHz AMD procesor somewhere to transplant mobo.

I already have install disks (floppy and CD) for DOS 3, 4,5 & 6, GEM, Win 3, 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT4, XP, Vista, 7, 8.1 and keys for all of those that require one, not forgetting Linux and OS2 if I can find them all.

I have a couple of hundred cover CDs, floppies and DVDs from computer magazines from the 90's so should be able to find compatible programmes (browsers, media players etc) for each OS that I choose

So I'm in for a busy time. Does anyone know a site that lists min and max HDD and RAM sizes

I'd stick to about 40gb for Win95 or 98SE ..
Only use OS2 ( B ) for win95 ..this was only EVER available as on pre-installed OEM ..
No legit CD ever released ..so best to make yer own..
As to partitions on those 40gb drives ..
both 95B and 98SE use FAT32 LBA ..but partition size must not be bigger than 32gb (32000 bytes)
Hope this is a useful starting point.
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

This Antipodean chap ...does a fine job ..albeit a bit fast for me ..
good job I can pause it..

A series of 3 youtube presentations ..
Here is the first ..and will likely autorun the 2nd and 3rd..