Author Topic: "Vintage" PC Help (Read 7724 times)

chase · « **on:** Sun, 14 February 2010, 12:28:15 »

Heres the story: I recently found a laptop from 1996 in my basement, the first laptop I ever owned/used etc. I nostalgiad, and booted it up. First problem, System 32 is corrupt so I can't boot into Windows 98. Second, in BIOS the cd-rom isnt listed, even though my bios is from 96'.

Someone suggested me to do this in command prompt:

OP the real problem is that your BIOS does not support El Torito spec CD-ROM booting, which is unsurprising because the standard was released in 1995 and your BIOS is dated '96.

You need to copy your CD-ROM to a spare partition x: on your drive, fdisk /mbr, sys x:, then use fdisk to set it as the active partition. Reboot.

How would I do this, in detail? I already have a Windows 98 Boot Disc.

firestorm · « **Reply #1 on:** Sun, 14 February 2010, 12:48:55 »

Oh boy... I haven't done that with Windows 98 in at least 8-9 years.

Couple options...

1. Creating a DOS boot disk with CD-ROM support for that drive. Partition the drive and format it (or simply format the existing partition) with "format /s", then copy the i386 folder to the drive (e.g. copy to C:\i386). Then run setup from within that folder.

If you can find drivers for the CD-ROM, there should be instructions with those drivers for configuring for DOS. Otherwise, there are universal CD-ROM drivers out there as well. e.g. http://www.bootdisk.com/readme.htm

2. If the computer has a network card, you could, alternatively, create a network bootdisk. Put the Windows CD into an optical drive in a computer on the network, and share the drive. With the laptop booted off the network bootdisk, map a drive to the shared optical drive, then run setup.

Either requires some DOS know-how, with configuring drivers and such. There are universal network boot disks out there though. I think this is one that I have used: http://netbootdisk.com/

I usually found that the network bootdisk works out the best, but simply because old machines often have faulty optical drives, and machines of that vintage also often didn't read CD-R or CD-RW media.

kishy · « **Reply #2 on:** Sun, 14 February 2010, 12:51:42 »

That's not vintage.

First important question: is there a floppy drive? By that time it was usually a removable CDROM drive where you'd install a floppy in place of, not both side by side.

Even up to Slot 1 (circa 1998?) it was common to have mobos that couldn't CD boot.

The technique I would use is what I've used myself several times...take drive out, partition and format in another computer (FAT32!!!) then copy the contents of a Win98 disk to a folder Win98 or similar on the HDD. Then boot with floppy (if you've got an FDD that is), cd to the Win98 dir on C:\, run setup from there.

Way faster and far more reliable than from CD, plus when it prompts for the disk during later driver installs it knows where the files are on the hdd.

Superfluous Parentheses · « **Reply #3 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 09:05:00 »

Quote from: kishy;158292

That's not vintage.

First important question: is there a floppy drive? By that time it was usually a removable CDROM drive where you'd install a floppy in place of, not both side by side.

Even up to Slot 1 (circa 1998?) it was common to have mobos that couldn't CD boot.

The technique I would use is what I've used myself several times...take drive out, partition and format in another computer (FAT32!!!) then copy the contents of a Win98 disk to a folder Win98 or similar on the HDD. Then boot with floppy (if you've got an FDD that is), cd to the Win98 dir on C:\, run setup from there.

Way faster and far more reliable than from CD, plus when it prompts for the disk during later driver installs it knows where the files are on the hdd.

I did something like this on a laptop that had neither a floppy drive nor a bootable cdrom. Except that I just put the HD in another (much newer) laptop and installed windows on that. Then swapped the drive back and let the hardware wizard deal with the "new hardware".

Shawn Stanford · « **Reply #4 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 09:27:53 »

Seems like it's vintage week: I recently blew the dust off my old Thinkpad 600E running Win2K and I'm jiggering an old Compaq Presario into a NAS using FreeNAS.

kishy · « **Reply #5 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 11:27:22 »

>386 is NOT VINTAGE guys...come on now.

SP, do you mean you let the install completely finish? With 98 this is usually OK because it doesn't hold on to your hardware for dear life, but with NT/2k/XP that generally won't work (but if you power it off at the time of the first reboot, it generally will be able to successfully install if you then swap the drive back to the original machine since nothing has been "installed" yet, only copied).

Superfluous Parentheses · « **Reply #6 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 13:41:34 »

Quote from: kishy;158436

>386 is NOT VINTAGE guys...come on now.

SP, do you mean you let the install completely finish? With 98 this is usually OK because it doesn't hold on to your hardware for dear life, but with NT/2k/XP that generally won't work (but if you power it off at the time of the first reboot, it generally will be able to successfully install if you then swap the drive back to the original machine since nothing has been "installed" yet, only copied).

I think i let it finish completely. And yes that was windows 98. I've also moved W98 drives over from one machine to another after using them for years. Generally works unless you get some really weird hardware.

kishy · « **Reply #7 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 14:25:26 »

Quote from: ripster;158461

386 is not Vintage? My beloved Laserjet 4L finally died. May she rest in peace. Wouldn't even power up a week or so ago.
Show Image

But hey, allows me to throw away this stupid USB to Parallel Port dongle and upgrade to a Color Laser.

I'll take the parallel port controller!

386 is plenty vintage. 486 however...not so much (which is why I said ">386"). Pentium...not even close.

ch_123 · « **Reply #8 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 15:22:24 »

Quote from: kishy;158436

>386 is NOT VINTAGE guys...come on now.

Depends on the architecture. But with Wintel machines, then yes, above 386 and it's just beige trash. I pulled a twin 1.6GHz Athlon MP machine out of a skip and set it up in college... I think that's as old an x86 machine that I'd bother resurrecting, anything slower and you'd just virtualize it.

kishy · « **Reply #9 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 15:27:10 »

I've got a few older systems (8088 thru K6-2) scattered about.

There's something that can't be virtualized...the physical sensation of using such a machine. In particular the Win98 gaming rig I recently displayed here absolutely cannot be virtualized.

microsoft windows · « **Reply #10 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 15:46:25 »

All my computers are getting old. But it's true--You can't virtualize fighting with wireless cards in Windows 2000...

InSanCen · « **Reply #11 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 16:18:11 »

Quote from: kishy;158292

The technique I would use is what I've used myself several times...take drive out, partition and format in another computer (FAT32!!!) then copy the contents of a Win98 disk to a folder Win98 or similar on the HDD. Then boot with floppy (if you've got an FDD that is), cd to the Win98 dir on C:\, run setup from there.

Way faster and far more reliable than from CD, plus when it prompts for the disk during later driver installs it knows where the files are on the hdd.

This. As said, *way* faster then letting the CD do it's job. Even on an older system, the average transfer rate on a Hard Drive outstrips any CD drive my a long way. I Used the method for years, in the same way I image from an ISO these days, as the transfer rate of a Hard Drive these days is simply staggering compared to an optical disc.

as for the 386, Vintage? Question, I have my beloved AMD 386/40 system I've posted about before on these forums. It's sentimental to me, as I had much fun proving that a bigger number is not always faster (486-SX's), and even won one "racing for pinks". But would I call it Vintage? Possibly in it's original form, but this thing in no way resembles anything like it's original form. The board and chip are the only things original. It sports multiple SCSI hard drives, a modified case upgraded graphics, and some very tasty memory. It's certainly interesting to someone with an intrest in older tech, but without the sentimental attachment, that's all it is. Even souped up as it is, I can't even run it as a firewall, it's just not quick enough.

InSanCen · « **Reply #12 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 16:26:40 »

Fighting 3D cards?

Old, but still great. From Sept '99 Maximum PC.

itlnstln · « **Reply #13 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 16:31:21 »

What? Only 256MB of RAM? What a piece of ****.

kishy · « **Reply #14 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 16:42:15 »

LMNOPRAM. LOL.

Insancen, you bring up a good point...the lines blur when you consider upgrades vs original spec and of course who is doing the labeling. I've had wanted ads on the local Kijiji site for vintage computers and people have offered me Pentium II systems.

When that happens I want to hit them with a Model M, but one does have to consider perspective I guess.

datamonger128 · « **Reply #15 on:** Mon, 15 February 2010, 19:54:59 »

There's one other thing we all have to take into consideration. Some of these people with "vintage" computers that have Pentium II processors probably got them as hand-me-downs. According to many of the kids these days, anything that's not from the past year is old and useless. Hell, many of them have probably never seen a pre-XP Windows install CD let alone a floppy disk.

God, I feel old now.

ch_123 · « **Reply #16 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 15:14:30 »

There's not an awful lot you can really do with those old boxes. Most of them are too feeble to run Linux with a GUI or a half-decent version of Windows. Unless I find something that's quite fast, or is a collector item, I'm not interested.

Unless of course you want to turn them into a media server or firewall, but I'd rather use something like a beagle board for that.

quadibloc · « **Reply #17 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 16:00:21 »

Taking a drive out of a laptop to format it on another machine is not as easy as it sounds. Most laptop drives are not connected to by ribbon cables, but by something like the part of a membrane that connects to the keyboard controller board.

A Windows 98 emergency floppy will let you boot into a state that allows access to the CD-ROM as one of its menu choices, so it should allow the installer on the CD-ROM to be launched.

kishy · « **Reply #18 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 16:25:14 »

Quote from: quadibloc;158704

Most laptop drives are not connected to by ribbon cables, but by something like the part of a membrane that connects to the keyboard controller board.

"Most"? No...some.

Vintage or otherwise I have yet to find one that doesn't use the standard 2.5" form factor version of ATA or SATA.

Regarding boot floppy: it still hasn't been established that this laptop has a floppy drive. Given that it has an optical drive, it is best to assume it doesn't have a floppy drive, or doesn't have one that can be used simultaneously with an optical disk.

microsoft windows · « **Reply #19 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 16:46:38 »

That's quite good by my standards.

microsoft windows · « **Reply #20 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 16:50:23 »

If the CD drive is a standard form-factor one, you can boot into floppy DOS with CD-ROM support, swap out the floppy drive with a CD drive since DOS is now stored in the RAM, and then run setup.exe.

kishy · « **Reply #21 on:** Tue, 16 February 2010, 17:17:49 »

It's a laptop...there is no 'standard form factor', unfortunately.

Might want to check documentation before hotswapping devices that, by all means, should not have hotswap support. Some might support it...I doubt the majority do though.

sethstorm · « **Reply #22 on:** Thu, 18 February 2010, 11:36:13 »

Quote from: InSanCen;158490

Fighting 3D cards?
Show Image

Old, but still great. From Sept '99 Maximum PC.

"It's on the 'no circumstances should this technology be sold to China' list"

Fictional product, but it gets my approval.

As for the topic at hand, a floppy with the cdrom drivers as a part of a boot floppy would be the best thing to do in this situation.

kishy · « **Reply #23 on:** Thu, 18 February 2010, 11:56:42 »

That's getting frustrating. It's a laptop with a CD-ROM drive. We don't know if there is also a floppy drive or if it needs to be swapped in or what...

keyb_gr · « **Reply #24 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 11:29:11 »

Now that I think of it, the Dell I used to have came with a cable to use the modular floppy drive on the parallel port. Might be similar here.

kishy · « **Reply #25 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 12:12:22 »

Quote from: keyb_gr;159361

Now that I think of it, the Dell I used to have came with a cable to use the modular floppy drive on the parallel port. Might be similar here.

Is it possible it was actually that proprietary Dell interface for external drives? It had somewhat of a really tiny...oh whatever I'll take a photo.

Latitude CSx.
Doesn't have ANY internal removable media drives...this connector is what the drives go on.

trievalot · « **Reply #26 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 15:28:43 »

5150, now theres vintage!
Went to a guys house who i found in the local paper and he had 3 of them! rusted through too. I did get a 5153 monitor though for a good price. This guy has in box C64/Amigas and everything PC you could think of

I should go back again at some point.

kishy · « **Reply #27 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 15:48:51 »

If you weren't so far away I'd have you take a peek around for an 8-bit ISA floppy controller card than can handle high density drives...but even if you found one the shipping would be prohibitive for me at this point.

Did just get a job though...

TexasFlood · « **Reply #28 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 16:32:32 »

Quote from: ripster;158461

386 is not Vintage? My beloved Laserjet 4L finally died. May she rest in peace. Wouldn't even power up a week or so ago.

But hey, allows me to throw away this stupid USB to Parallel Port dongle and upgrade to a Color Laser.

My Laserjet 4s send their condolences, :-(

Might be able to use that stupid dongle since my old jetdirect box seems like it might be giving up the ghost as well. Nice to hear I'm not the only one still using stuff of this vintage, well, maybe I am -NOW-

itlnstln · « **Reply #29 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 16:40:17 »

Yeah, mine is the one on the left. It was a hand-me-down from my parents. I don't print much, so it does the job just fine.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #30 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 16:41:34 »

Quote from: ripster;159477

ItlnStln has a Laserjet 4. I think mine was the cheaper one at the time. $600.

Sometimes technology DOES get cheaper and better.

Cheaper to buy, yes. Faster to print, yes. Better, maybe. Cheaper to run over years, probably not.

ricercar · « **Reply #31 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 16:42:38 »

Not necessarily cheaper to ship

TexasFlood · « **Reply #32 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 16:46:37 »

Quote from: itlnstln;159479

Yeah, mine is the one on the left. It was a hand-me-down from my parents. I don't print much, so it does the job just fine.

That one I got from a company employee auction MANY years ago. Had some upgrades, memory, postscript, jetdirect card. It's slow but been a solid cheap to operate printer. The reason they sold it is it the paper was jamming when it got down to the last few sheets. I still does that, I never really tried to fix it, just keep the paper tray full.

TexasFlood · « **Reply #33 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 17:04:27 »

Quote from: ripster;159487

Dang, if I had known you guys had these I wouldn't have given two NIB 4L toner cartridges to Goodwill.

I'm a day+ late and a dollar+ short on this one, :-( If only I'd joined earlier, :-D

trievalot · « **Reply #34 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 18:10:18 »

Just watching Olympics on Channel 9 here
Harvey Norman ad comes on - "upgrade to the latest technology"
What to they have? a pic of a XT 5150 with mono screen and model F board!

trievalot · « **Reply #35 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 19:07:13 »

that ad was only aired 30 minutes ago! how did you get it so fast

if anyone wasnts any NKOTB or Men At Work, ive got a double casette deck and i can dub a copy for you.

trievalot · « **Reply #36 on:** Fri, 19 February 2010, 20:27:57 »

we even had Cliff Richard here only a few weeks ago.
It was the first time ever i saw all the disabled parks full and plenty of normal parks!

trievalot · « **Reply #37 on:** Sat, 20 February 2010, 00:26:13 »

well you cant deny its efficency.

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Author Topic: "Vintage" PC Help (Read 7724 times)