Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[Vipersan]

Done enough for tonight ..
Managed to find an ancient version of direct draw ..
Installed that ..which allowed me to then install media player classic ..
again an ancient version ..
Played sound ok ..but no pictures ..
Ahaaa ..
Codecs needed ..
dug up an old hard drive which I knew contained very old versions of FFDshow ..
et voila ..
alright it can't handle MP4 or MKV ...
but it does work ..
Are you being served in an old DIVX or Xvid format..

 

[Vipersan]

So ..I need more memory in Chameleon ..
I wrongly thought I had 3 sticks of 512 mb installed as these were double sided ..
Turns out they are only 256 each ..
grrr
In order to run games such as Leisure Suit Larry - Reloaded I need at least 1.5gb ..
the more the better..
So I'm on the scrounge for 1gb sticks of pc133 sdram
Here is a picture ..
Mine has 2 notches per stick..

It isn't impossible to find ..but large capacity is tricky ..
..and can be expensive new.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Can you take a better image of the label with your potato ?

 

[Vipersan]

Can you take a better image of the label with your potato ?

This is not an actual photo of a stick of memory from chameleon Stephen ..
just a stock image from the web to show the shape and the 2 notches..
I could pull a stick and photograph it ..but afaik the info that it is PC133 SD non ecc
should be all that's needed.
rgds
VS

 

[Vipersan]

Well ..
not quite what I'm after ..but better than what I have ..
I ordered 3 of these from Fleabay..
512MB PC133 133MHz 168Pin Desktop Computer SDRAM Memory Ram DIMM NON-ECC | eBay
The problem is you see that the motherboard only has 3 memory slots ...so fully populated and with the sticks I have ordered ..
I can only achieve 1.5gb ..
..and being greedy I need more ideally ..
Theoretically I could achieve 3gb (3x1gb sticks) ..but thats the problem ..finding them..
I believe that the largest ever made of this type was 1gb..
Ahh ..the constraints of yesteryears tech.

rgds
VS

 

[Captain Jack]

And 32-bit OS is limited to 3GB RAM anyway... though with some jiggery-pokery, you can run up to 4GB...ish. Sometimes.

 

[jeallen01]

And 32-bit OS is limited to 3GB RAM anyway... though with some jiggery-pokery, you can run up to 4GB...ish. Sometimes.

Can't remember but was that an XP limitation, because W7 32 bit can address 4GB and does use something like 3.5 ish?

 

[Captain Jack]

It's also a BIOS/motherboard architecture limitation...and I don't think there ever was a 64bit version of Windows 98.

 

[jeallen01]

According to this thread, even 1.5GB might be too much for 98 (??)

 

[Captain Jack]

Ouch. Back in the day I thought 64Mb was more than enough! But then I struggled with 1Mb RAM on my Acorn RISC OS machine.

 

[PaulR]

[ThreeYorkshiremenMode]
I can well remember buying the individual memory chips needed to upgrade an Amstrad 1512 from 512KB to the maximum of 640KB the same as fitted to the 1640. It wasn't quite the same though as it still only had CGA video.
[/ThreeYorkshiremenMode]

 

[jeallen01]

[ThreeYorkshiremenMode]
I can well remember buying the individual memory chips needed to upgrade an Amstrad 1512 from 512KB to the maximum of 640KB the same as fitted to the 1640. It wasn't quite the same though as it still only had CGA video.
[/ThreeYorkshiremenMode]

Did the same to a Viglen 286 (my very first PC) in around 1990 to upgrade the total directly socket-mounted memory on the m/b from 1Mb to 4Mb - 32x 8-pin(?) DIL chips IIRC (and a "traumatic" experience because it was the first time I had ever done anything like that).

 

[Vipersan]

If you want to go down that route ..
lol
I have some 4k 8k and 16k cartridges for Vic 20
and somewhere in the loft ..
a ZX80 memory expansion cartridge..

 

[davemurgtroyd]

How about a ZX81 with 64k (16k paged), 8k of EEPROMs, high res graphics (256x192) and speech synthesis. Still got them all plus many more addons in the lof.

 

[Vipersan]

Sort of related ..
Took a delivery this morning of a risky bargain I impetuously bought on fleabay a week or so back ..
7 x 40gb IDE Western Digital hard drives..
Used ..ex server ..
Did surface scans on all of them ..and they are perfik considering their age ..
Some I will use for OS builds ..and some for creating OS for the WAC700 units ..
These I can sell on my TV group ..as no one else appears to do this any longer ..
Someone has to keep these WACs going .
;)

 

[Channel Hopper]

Sort of related ..
Took a delivery this morning of a risky bargain I impetuously bought on fleabay a week or so back ..
7 x 40gb IDE Western Digital hard drives..
Used ..ex server ..
Did surface scans on all of them ..and they are perfik considering their age ..
Some I will use for OS builds ..and some for creating OS for the WAC700 units ..
These I can sell on my TV group ..as no one else appears to do this any longer ..
Someone has to keep these WACs going .
;)

How much were they (and how much was the postage ?)

 

[Vipersan]

How much were they (and how much was the postage ?)

£21 inclusive of postage ..
nice
;)
btw ..after much messing about ..
I got windoze 95 to see my network ...and access t'interweb ..
and although I can't use https
http only ..I managed to retrofit IE5.5 ..which is the last version that will run on 95
overinstalling IE3 ..which is wot is installed by default at build time..
I'm re-learning a helluva lot..
lol

What I can't do with win95 is get it access removeable media ie USB ..
The version I have _apparently_ supports USB 1.1
Dont think they ever made a pci usb 1.1 card ..
which has amazing bandwidth allowing access to peripherals such as Mice ..Keyboards...Joysticks etc ...
So thank gawd I established network access ..as the IE5.5 cabset was about 85mb compressed ..
It would have taken an age to transfer a file at a time by floppy..
We dont know how lucky we are these days ...

 

[Channel Hopper]

What I can't do with win95 is get it access removeable media ie USB ..
The version I have _apparently_ supports USB 1.1
Dont think they ever made a pci usb 1.1 card ..
which has amazing bandwidth allowing access to peripherals such as Mice ..Keyboards...Joysticks etc ...

The twin USB card I sent to you earlier - for the sdr - was 1.1 from memory

If not then I still have one here.

 

[Vipersan]

Hmm ..
I'll take a look...but the drivers are the real issue ..
Win95 doesn't auto detect and identify ...so finding suitable drivers might well be a problem .
If you have the original driver disc for the one you have there ..
maybe ..just maybe..

 

[2cvbloke]

I got windoze 95 to see my network ...and access t'interweb ..
and although I can't use https
http only ..I managed to retrofit IE5.5 ..which is the last version that will run on 95
overinstalling IE3 ..which is wot is installed by default at build time..

I got IE3(?) to access 'tinternet on my Toshiba Libretto last year, but it seemed to not understand how to display the google logo at the time...