bonus points for having Win7 as your daily and 10 for games (I'm assuming that's due to most people dropping support for Win7)

Win98 FE isn't a common choice, why not SE and how is it modified?

Tripredacus wrote on 2024-03-26, 19:19:

I have a large collection of computers and parts but very few are put together into working units.

Haha, why does that sound familiar? 🤣

Welcome to the funny farm, don't forget to drop a trail of M2.5x5mm screws to follow back to reality.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-03-26, 22:55:

Win98 FE isn't a common choice, why not SE and how is it modified?

It is an original install from 1999 and that is the newest OS I had access to at that time. It has some files from Windows ME in it that are USB related.

I suppose I can put the highlights of my build log for Sakura in here, as it is something that has taken a few months now and I actually had documented most of it on X. It started out when I got something cool in the mail, it is a surprise and I won't give it away yet. The design was to run Japanese Windows 95. I was originally recommended to do a dual boot with Windows 2000 but I decided against it.

I started with an HP Netserve E60 which is a dual socket server/workstation board with dual PIII 550 MHz. The first video card I chose was an Intergraph Intense 3D Pro 2200S PCI. I had two of these E50 systems and immediately ran into issues with them. The first could not read or boot off of any ODD that was installed into the system. The second board did read the ODD but would also not boot and would show an I/O error with all drives. After discovering the secret USB ports, any attempt to boot off USB either a thumb drive or USB CD drive failed. Unfortunately, the chassis had proprietary front panel connections and I ended up junking both boards and the chassis, but I kept all the processors and RAM.

Round 2 consisted of find all of the Slot 1 boards I happen to have had in my basement and came up with two workable ones. The first was an Abit that had bad capacitors so it got junked. The second was the MSI shown in the specs above. Since I couldn't use the original HP chassis due to the front panel (and non-standard PSU mounts) I switched over to the SR-105, of which I had 2 spares. The MSI board would not output primary video with the PCI video card, so I switched to a Riva TNT 2. I found the Vibra sound card in my stockpile at home. At my office I only had newer cards that I didn't want to use. Also at home I had the Voodoo 3 with a blown capacitor and corrosion. I ordered replacement caps from Digikey and had a friend replace the cap and clean the board. Then I could use the Voodoo card instead of the TNT 2.

On both the HP and MSI boards I was having troubles with DOS. DOS worked, but DOS 7 did not work as I wanted. It using Grub was also a problem as the installation of Windows 95 did not like it. So I had to erase the disk using Ranish Partition Manager and that is when I decided to skip the DOS installation altogether. I have a USB floppy drive on my dev computer that I can write to, and take the floppy disk to Sakura. Every time I see sealed media at thrift I buy it, so I have NOS disks to use.

I made the CD Rom boot disk to load the oak drive, and attempt to install Windows 95 from CD. But it asks about a Kanji keyboard, which I did not have to use. Technically, I have a USB keyboard but I wanted a PS2 keyboard. So I had to wait about 3 weeks before I could get one from Japan. Then I was able to install Windows 95 using the Japanese keyboard. After getting into the OS, it was having some issues and likely due to having 768 MB RAM installed, so I dropped it to 256 MB.

I was able to install the video driver from the Voodoo3 CD I had, but the 3dfxtools would only try to install in Dutch because it tries to detect the OS language. I knew then I can get 3dfxtools from the internet, and now the issue became, how do I get files onto the computer without burning CDs? Well I had a plan for that also, install a LAN card. Then installed Filezilla to an internal network computer and configure it. Then installed leechftp on Sakura and now I am able to transfer files over FTP.

And I am at the point now where the English 3dfxtools needs Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1 to be installed. The English version of that shows an warning that it will only partially install. I was able to find (what I believe to be) the Japanese version of it from a Japanese magazine cover disc.

My plan going forward:
- install IE 4.01 SP1
- install 3dfxtools
- install the sound driver and test the sound
- install Unreal and run the benchmark
- Install a Sakura Taisen program (I think it is not a game, but one of those desktop accessories packs)
- Install the surprise item
- Install Sonic R to test the surprise item