Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[davemurgtroyd]

VS pm me your email address and I will give you access to WIN98SE.iso on my dropbox.

Forget that having problems uploading to my dropbox - p.m. me your dropbox address and I'll try and upload it there

 

[Vipersan]

So ..
almost completed my side project ..
Remember when beige was beautiful ?
Well ..let me introduce you to the Beige Brick..
She sports windows 98 SE fully loaded with hardware..
A DDS4 tape drive ..A CD/PD drive ..
Network connectivity....SCSI interface ..Radion 3D graphics ..
Maestro AC97 sound card..
1.44mb Floppy drive
CD DVD RW multidrive..
A 32GB hard drive OS (partition)..with a 32GB hidden (partition) containing raw backup image of the OS ..
Total drive capacity 80GB
768mb stable ram ..
Basically the PC I was using back in the late 90s ...but faster cpu etc..
Just got to cut a few port holes on the front plastic cover for USB port access ..
Yes it fully supports USB at USB2.0

And is VERY heavy as the desktop is basically plate steel ..
Even heavier once the lid goes on ..

A proper trip down memory lane for me..
I'm still building CHAMELEON ..but since I had a suitable spare PIII mobo ...I figured why not ..
rgds
VS

 

[Channel Hopper]

So ..
almost completed my side project ..
Remember when beige was beautiful ?
Well ..let me introduce you to the Beige Brick..

I think a wipe with a cloth dipped in lemon brings the plastic back to an off cream colour.

 

[Captain Jack]

And here I am pissing about with MAC encoders...

 

[2cvbloke]

I intentionally built my gaming PC in a beige case just because it looks good, for beige at least, and the metalwork resembles that of a tank, far better than the fugly "gaming" cases they offer these with their big side windows letting EM interference in and out and angular ugliness with LED lights and watercooling everywhere...

 

[Vipersan]

I think a wipe with a cloth dipped in lemon brings the plastic back to an off cream colour.

Hydrogen Peroxide and UV light ...apparently ...

 

[Vipersan]

I intentionally built my gaming PC in a beige case just because it looks good, for beige at least, and the metalwork resembles that of a tank, far better than the fugly "gaming" cases they offer these with their big side windows letting EM interference in and out and angular ugliness with LED lights and watercooling everywhere...

Not keen on modern cases myself ..
I failed to understand why the emphasis was on angular beasts that look like they were abandoned after an alien invasion..
..and exposed wiring and visible internal lights with leds everywhere to draw your attention to moving parts like fans etc..
They are bulky and irregular with nothing gained in the process ..
Making it difficult to stack anything ..or even place 2 towers side by side..
But the worst thing ..is that for all that bulk and space ..the makers assume you only need 1 or 2 ..5.25 inch bays ..
Gimme a good multi bay beige any day ..with sides that hide wires ...
keep out dust ..and stop radiation ...
Perhaps I'm a bit old school ..but give me function over alien aesthetics any day..

 

[Vipersan]

Ok ..
now I'm out of my comfort zone ..
Having already created win98SE for Chameleon on the first primary partition of a 320gb IDE drive ..
I hid it and proceeded to install mint 15 ...
This automatically integrated 98SE even though it was 'hidden' at the time ..
Mint found it and set up a dual boot system without my express permission..
Thus I assume grub has been implemented ..and no longer uses MBR ?
Now whenever I boot the drive ..Mint is always default and at first although Win98SE was an option would not boot ..until that is I used Gparted to unset the hidden flag and set the windows partition as bootable..
with me so far ..?
Now when I run up the drive Mint will automatically boot ..unless I step in quickly and change to boot from 98 ...which does now boot ..
The linux partitions remain invisible to 98 ...and although the 98 partition is 'mounted' during the Mint boot I suspect is not accessible to mint.
I would much prefer to use GAG bootloader and have the boot option 'wait' until I choose.
I suspect this will be relatively easy for 98SE ...as I'm familiar with MBR boot structure ..but Linux ...errr ..not so much ..
So which partition will contain the mint (root) OS and can I simply point GAG at it and thus initiate boot ?
I'm imaging the whole 320gb drive in order that I can experiment ...but anyone familiar with Mint or indeed Linux in any form ..
Perhaps you might explain the structure created to a novice ..and how boot is achieved ?
Once the raw image has been created ..I'll post up a screen grab or photo (whichever is easiest ) to show the drives current structure..
The FAT32 structure of the first primary partition remains intact ..
This is true..on account if the drive is removed and mounted as a usb drive on my main PC ..windows can access this partition ...and no access to the others created by mint..
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Well ..I know what my problem is now ...but no idea how to fix it ..
basically when installing mint from a live cd the process is automated ..and you dont get the choice of where grub is put..
Grub being needed to boot linux OS ..
by default it dumps grub into the MBR space ..which is subsequently overwritten by gag as this is where it lives.
Grub needs to be located in the boot sector partition and NOT the MBR ..but how to achieve this ??????
Grrr

 

[Captain Jack]

In the past, I installed Linux last as grub overwrote everything. However, in doing so it retained to ability to boot into all previously installed OSes. Just not the other way around.

I am not familiar with gag, so not sure.

 

[Vipersan]

Another desperate plea ..
I need one of these ...
Internal High Byte Active Terminator 50pin~HPDB68/HD68wire Male-M SCSI3 Adapter | eBay
This one listed on ebay in the US ..
The price of the adapter I'm happy to pay ..but the fffing postage is taking the p!ss again..
for something about the size and weight of a matchbox..
rgds
VS

 

[Archive-8]

Another desperate plea ..
I need one of these ...
Internal High Byte Active Terminator 50pin~HPDB68/HD68wire Male-M SCSI3 Adapter | eBay
This one listed on ebay in the US ..
The price of the adapter I'm happy to pay ..but the fffing postage is taking the p!ss again..
for something about the size and weight of a matchbox..
rgds
VS

U.K. Seller

NEW! Active SCSI Terminator IDC 50 Pass-Through

 

[Vipersan]

U.K. Seller

NEW! Active SCSI Terminator IDC 50 Pass-Through

Cheers Chris ..
cant tell from the picture if the 68 pin side is male or female ?
They do both ...which is a bit confusing..
I'll contact the seller and ask..
rgds
Evan

 

[Vipersan]

..and so ..what seemed impossible now looks possible ..
Only time will tell if both OS are totally stable..?
No drivers installed yet ..
BUT
I have a dual boot OS on an 80 gb drive 32gb partitions for each OS
Win95C or Win98SE
I shall image this rarity ...then go for broke and try and go for a hat trick with Win3.1
as there is just enough room left on the drive..
This was extremely difficult and required constant exterior mods to the partitions on my main PC by mounting it by USB and file tweaks to both OS to allow them to function on a fast CPU with large RAM
rgds
VS

 

[Archive-8]

Cheers Chris ..
cant tell from the picture if the 68 pin side is male or female ?
They do both ...which is a bit confusing..
I'll contact the seller and ask..
rgds
Evan

Did the seller get back to you?

If not I can have another look about.

 

[Vipersan]

Did the seller get back to you?

If not I can have another look about.

Looks to be what I needed Chris ..
order placed..

 

[Vipersan]

Halfway home n hosed insofaras I now have all needed drivers installed in the Win98SE half of the drive..
The OS appears stable ..
Tomorrow I'll try the same for Win95C.
Still leaves me a few 'deeds' short for a breakfast at milliways..
cest la vie

..spose I could have another crack at 'cold fusion in a bucket'

 

[Terryl]

"Cold Fusion" old hat stuff, try a dark matter reactor, you will get at least 45 trillion miles to the micro-gram.

 

[Vipersan]

Pulled off another minor miracle ..
I tried and tried to add windows 3.1 to the triple boot ..but no way was this happening ..
My conclusion fwiw is the early DOS underpinning 3.1 was at odds with later OS ..
..and is FAT based ..not FAT32
..crucial I feel..that all OS use the same format.
so gave up on this and decided to chase ME instead ..
More issues here as ME only runs when overlayed on DOS 8 ..
but figuring All dos from 8 backwards through to 5 _should_ be backwards compatible ..
in theory ..
Nowhere could I get a definitive answer on the net ..so I just went for it ..
I used Minitool partition util which allowed me to clone the first Primary partition (Win95C) to create a second primary partition in the raw drive space ..
Then a third primary ..
So effectively creating 3 theoretically bootable images of win 95C ..BUT used a startup diskette created on an entirely seperate HD build of ME ..
Thus it _should_ be DOS 8 ?
I then copied all the files off 2 other seperate drives ..including the 'hidden' bat and sys files for win95C and Win98SE ..
these files were stored safely for later use ..then ALL partitions were cleared of files each being and exact sized empty clone of each other.
Next Windows ME was reinstalled on the 3rd partition using minitool to hide the 1st and second ...
Using the boot recovery diskette (DOS 8) made on the seperate ME build ...once completed I then reinstalled 98SE ..to the 2nd partition once again using the DOS8 boot floppy ..and hiding partitions 1 and 3
..and finally repeating this to reinstall 95C on the first partition ...after hiding the other 2
All the drivers now needed reinstalling ...but wait ..
I'd saved the complete installations of each OS earlier ..so wrote these files back to each relevant partition ...in sequence after un-hiding the required partition..
Still with me ..??
lol
The final act was to once again hide all 3 partitions ...hook the drive up to Chameleon ..and install GAG ..
GAG will unhide each selected partition whilst hiding t'others ..
..powered up and waited for the boot screen ..and selected each in turn ..
WOW ..they all booted just fine ..but wih a slight delay each time ..
This I can live with ..
Stability tests to come ..but all drivers are already installed.
I suspect this fudge works because basically all 3 OS are DOS underpinned ..and using the final DOS production(8) which appears backwards compatible with all 3 OS ..
Not sure if this actually _should_ be possible at all ..
but amazingly ..it works..

 

[Vipersan]

..and here it is ..
My final 200gb IDE drive structure for Windows Triple boot DOS based OS..
Win 95C
Win 98SE
Win ME
(All primary)
There is a hidden logical drive partition containing 3 sets of OS files with drivers ready to go ...just in case I need to rebuild
There are 2 Shared logical drive partitions..that are accessible to all 3 OS depending on which one is booted of course..
GAG auto hides the 2 NOT in use..
All partitions OS/ hidden/OSdata and shared 1 & 2 are formatted in fat 32 to retain compatibility...
This is one helluva achievement imo.
rgds
VS

(not a bad few days work for an old fart/brain like mine...)
..now for the next drive ....
Definately XP pro ...& Win2000 ...
+ possibly Vista ..
I'd like Win 8.1 ...but think my mobo might not be up to it..

The final drive will definately be Linux ...possibly Mint15
;)