Uncreative Labs

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

Our needs are such that i am finally moving to machinery that is at least this century.
my son then my wife with old p4's and w2k.
it has been an "interesting time" after about 10 years leaning and NOT with 95/98 it is a big move.

first the busness about not being able to have a hard drive PnP itself to a new mb. i tried for a week and failed. thought I could at least strip out all hardware and make it work. No such luck

second the administrator box at startup.
I have a drive and a system without it.

all other installs and despiter trials I cannot get rid of it.. even xplits doesn't offer that ability.
a carefull registry edit seems the only way.
hard to do for me.
the whacko thing is it breaks all the old rules about drive letter assignments/.

there must be a bootasble cd with the 34 setup cd's
or an easy way to make the w2k cd bootasble.
all descriptions seem to lead to a dead link for a needed file.
I have a bootable xp home setup cd ( boot floppies only)

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

And you've not tried the Win2k boot disks (floppies)?:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I am 73., using the 4 floppies takes a long time.
and would be too old to compute. it I used them frequently.

I have that xp home bootable cd, that contains the xp floppies.
I may be able to copy the files over and make a bootable 2000 install ./startup cd.

all the schemes to make my w2k ( full cd) bootable
end in a 404 bad link.
i have parts of several schemes but not 100% of any scheme. this is not for lack of trying.

it would make a microsoft programmers dizzy.

there has to be a simpler way.
the systems all will boot from cd . and I use the hiren's boot cd and memtest86 frequently.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

here I am with the p4 from the scrapyard
no bootblock errors
this is a bare bones install of 98
w2k is coming soon
I am thenlast holdout here.
still have not resolved making a cd bootable
but my early "release candidate 2" time limited cd's are bootable
I am thinking of combining both and make one.
first try was ng another 20 cent cd-r wasted.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Walter, if you have a license just send me your snail mail addy and I'll mail you a bootable Win2K disc. No use beating your head in over something that difficult and can be resolved this easily.....

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

I had the same troubles trying to get Win2k past the initial file copy stage, I ended up starting setup manually using a windows 98 boot disk and running the setup file from the win2k cd, once it got to the stage after all files were copied and it was ready to detect components I imaged the hard drive using ghost so I would never have to go through the slow process again.

Probably doesn't help but I don't see why you can't just use a 98 boot disk and the setup file in the i386 directory on the cd to get going the ssllooww way.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

there are several ways 1-w98 boot, d: cd\i386 winnt
be sure the cd is vertical not on it's side.
OR 2- the 4 s l o w floppies.
I also copied the entire cd to a small hard drive and installed from that.
when I was tryingstuff
I used a ghosted image as I regularly trashed the install trying to edit the registry
( to get rid of the administrator login box)
lots of errors on cd's

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

Right now I'm mostly using a Pentium D 3.40 GHz box I assembled out of a mix of cast off parts and brand new best bang for buck hardware, I spent roughly $700 building, the most I've ever spent on a PC. I've really taken all my knowledge of Vintage computers to eek out good performance to this one and built the most stable and backwards compatible computer out of anyone I know. It's the only modern PC I can bear to work with.

As for my older boxen, they've been sitting under the futon for awhile. I'm trying to decide which ones are to go this year. There' are four I'm particualrly attached to though...not including the 96' Mac (which is just fun to mess around with once in awhile).

- The Ultimate XT Project (my IBM XT in a clone chassis)
- The Ultimate 286 Project (GEM 286)
- The Ultimate 486 Project (486 DX4/100 CAT Computers)
- 1984 Tandy 1000 (Nostalgia to the hilt)

Another thing is I'm reworking the GEM case mod so my current hot-rod 64-bit box can be fit into the old guts....then I can call it the GEM 64.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I have kept older pc's because when I am done with them they are too obsolete to be used.
even my newerr pc's similar to your home brew $700 machine, are built from pieces scrounged here and there.,
our card doi not cost what a pc sells for.,
we have that little "disposable income"
I am stilcking, for now, with the pIII-550. even though there is a "problem"
it acts flakey when a 256m dimm is used
unless they are of a certain archetecture
I tried 768 ( 3-256) and got lockups
I am running with 2-256 and 1- 128. maybe the 256m chips are the right lijkd, I have no way to find out.
the p4- 2.4 works and I may start using it,.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Don't use Windows 9x with more then 512MB RAM, there is a major bug in the OS when you use something over 512MB (might be 768MB) that causes the system to be unstable and not work.

I had a hell of a time back in 2001 or so getting a friends P3-1Ghz with 1GB of RAM running Win 98 SE and gave up, he had to go to NT. I googled around and found this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3bQ253912

Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 138 Location: Lynnwood,WA

Unknown_K wrote:

Don't use Windows 9x with more then 512MB RAM, there is a major bug in the OS when you use something over 512MB (might be 768MB) that causes the system to be unstable and not work.

I had a hell of a time back in 2001 or so getting a friends P3-1Ghz with 1GB of RAM running Win 98 SE and gave up, he had to go to NT. I googled around and found this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3bQ253912

Also, don't use it with a 1GHz CPU on 512MB of RAM either. I did that with 98 SE on the PIII I was using up until the start of last year, that thing got so unstable that I eventually had to go through various channels to acquire a copy of Windows 2000 Professional so I could use it.

I've reached a point that I almost have no use for Windows 9x or earlier (pre-2K NT) anymore, just 3.11 for Workgroups, DOS, and 2K/XP, and the rest is Linux.

Most of the time as of late I've been experimenting with "Virtual machines" now on my main box, mostly to test out other operating systems I have including OS/2 (I've got 2.1, Warp 4, and 2.0). I also have been setting up a Windows For Workgroups 3.11 tweak machine for use in making Youtube vids to display how to tweak/modify Windows 3.1x and DOS, since it's so much easier than using a Webcam to display how to do it on the standard machine, and it runs at flat-out speed in VirtualPC.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

with the asus p2b motherboard, they specifically state only certain kinds of 256m dimms can be used.

as you suggested,
I did get the" not enough ram to open... "messages. when I had 768 ( 3 - 256)

so with this asus p2b mb are two issues. doesn't mattetr which, it still messes you up.

My wife had an ecs mb that was limited to 384,

I swapped out and put in a second asus p2b. mb . but with 768 m ram. I took out my ram and put it in hers.
she was then running w 2000 pro.
still had problems, both with fat 32 and ntfs.
I changed back to 3 identical 128 m dims and it worked. and not much slower than with 98se.
( pIII-500 394ram w2000 )

she is now with a p4 2.4 and 1g of ram.

I have run w2k and even tried xp on this pIII-550.
( asus p2b slot 1)but not for long enough to see if the ( w98 ram bug) but not the mb ram bug is gone with this hardware.

since I have a few other systems that may not be subjest to the ram oddities of the asup p2b, I will start using them, and as used to it as I am get away from w98se alltogether.

I have 4 asus p2b mb. one with built-in video.

One apparently good system has a slot
A? AMD 700. these cpu's seem to be very pricey.
I don't think I can get a faster one as cheap as my $4 p4-2.4g.
but the possibly the fastest for this mb may be
under 1,000g speed, and it only has 2 dimm slots
for pc133 ram.

I think it makes more sense to stick with the chevy/ford/dodge of computers rather than the more off-beat designs.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Most of the VIA chipset motherboards can take high density RAM, some of the intel designs require low density RAM. So some machines either see 256MB or 512MB pc133 as half what they are supposed to be or as not being installed. Some high density SIMMs are just single sided, or have few chips.

Win2k is a decent OS to use over 9X because of memory protection.

Slot A athlons are rare to find, and will cost you some money. Athlon XP and newer are much more common but need a newer board.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

after I decided that the old p3-500 was getting flakey
I switched to the p4 and w2k
it rewarded me buy crashing after 2 days
I reverted back to w98 asnd took the time to properly set it
up on a new install
BYW the same drive that was flakey on the p3 required me to reinstall twicwe on the p4
so I used another drive.
if it is not one thing it is the other.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

I tend to use a bootable cd from seagate that tests HDs for errors before I put a "good" sticker on them and put into inventory. The last thing you want is to try setting up a machine to find the HD is junk.

With newer PCs you tend to have problems with RAM more then HDs, and then driver issues. Also power supplies need to be the correct type and power. Then you have bad capacitors that will cause all kinds of random hell.