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My first Win98 Build - Dell Latitude D600.

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First post, by Asomodai

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Hello all.

Been lurking on these forums for a month or so. It has inspired me to go back to my WIN98 roots.

Decided to get myself a laptop build working with 98SE so I can play some old school native Windows Games. Fury 3, Mechwarrior, Point and click adventure games etc.

I have promptly ordered a Dell D600, 1.4ghz Pentium M, XGA Panel, 512MB Ram, Intel Wireless card (Incompatible with win98) with no hard drive, charger or battery. ATI Radeon 9000 graphics chip.

OAFcPTr.jpg

The Laptop cost me £20 shipped, it has some dents and scuffs but not bad considering it is 12 years old! Unfortunately it is not a post 2005 August motherboard, which would allow me to run faster ram.

I want to basically get as much performance out of the machine as possible but not paying silly money. I have since ordered the following. Pentium M 755 @2.0Ghz (£7), Dell Charger (£10), Broadcom BCM4318KFBG Wireless card to replace the Intel card, Samsung SXGA+ LCD Panel with Inverter (£12), knock off battery (£11), Hard Drive Caddy, connector and screws (£4) and the most expensive part, a brand new Samsung HM160C IDE Hard drive (£12, Considered the fastest IDE drive mechanical drive for laptops). I have considered going for max ram at 2GB, but I want Windows 98 to run stable before mucking around with Ram Disks or the Ram increase hack.

So I will be basically using this thread as a build diary of sorts, I am an IT Professional, but I haven't played with 98 since I got rid of my first PC back 13 years ago.

If anyone else has any hints and tips, or there own personal experiences and frustrations with getting the D600 to work with Win98, I would love to hear them!

One question I have is that I hear that the on board sound doesn't play nice in Dos. What is the cheapest/easiest way of getting around this?

Reply 1 of 8, by PcBytes

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You can run 2GB safely on Windows 98 as far as I know.

At least I remember my Acer Travelmate 804 (which was a 1.7GHz Celeron M,Radeon 9000 as well) ran 98 SE without problems,and that was with 2 1GB Kingston RAM sticks.

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 2 of 8, by stamasd

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Win98 should work on that nicely provided that you find drivers for the hardware.

I personally run XP on a very similar laptop (Thinkpad R52) and I find it a very good fit. I generally keep 98 on computers with CPUs between 100 and 1000MHz. 😀

(that said I do run 98 on a P75 laptop)

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 3 of 8, by Asomodai

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PcBytes wrote:

You can run 2GB safely on Windows 98 as far as I know.

At least I remember my Acer Travelmate 804 (which was a 1.7GHz Celeron M,Radeon 9000 as well) ran 98 SE without problems,and that was with 2 1GB Kingston RAM sticks.

Odd. I thought that there were instabilities... Well I have ordered 2GB of Ram anyway. Should be a nice Christmas project!

Reply 4 of 8, by MrMateczko

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Win98SE works fine with up to 1GB of RAM, not 2GB.
Either order the paid RAM patch from R.Loew. or limit the RAM in system.ini using MaxPhysPage.
I don't know how PcBytes managed to run 98SE with 2GB of ram without any patches/tweaks.

Reply 5 of 8, by keenmaster486

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There's a thread somewhere that has all of the currently known information on how to install 98 on this particular model of laptop.

Actually, here it is: Installing Windows 98SE on Dell Latitude D600

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 6 of 8, by kikenovic

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Good luck with that project, the linked post is a great starting point.

I had a D600 many moons ago at work then some time later got me one. It is great machine, and worked great with XP, it never occurred to me it could be used with Win98.

Reply 7 of 8, by Ampera

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I have had problems going over 512 MB of memory in a previous Athlon XP+ build, but it's probably because I just didn't bother because 512MB is more than I really needed for my use of nothing with that computer (Sorta need to look at it again, it's a decent Athlon XP+ machine). Just a question since I am a bit fuzzy on this period, is a GeForce 2MX good for an XP gaming build with an XP+ around 2300+? (Forgot the exact speed, but it's about that.)

Otherwise it's a neat system. I personally wouldn't go for a laptop unless I got it with all I needed to run it for <= 20$ due to their piss LCD panels with horrendous colours (Too used to IPS colour quality/accuracy), but if you don't mind that it's fine.

Batteries will be impossible unless your willing to rebuild a pack using modern batteries, or pay some jackass more than you should for a rebuilt pack.

Reply 8 of 8, by Asomodai

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The Battery, Screen, Hard drive and charger turned up today.

Replaced the screen, annoyingly the cable is wide and flat rather then round and narrow. The ribbon cable is currently pressed up against the heatsink. Not sure whether to try and unwrap the tape and bundle it together. Otherwise the screen works great!

Battery works ok considering it is a knock off. We'll see how it goes after a few charges.

Hard drive is genuinely brand new. Currently installing XP so I can update the Bios and do some testing before WIN98 install.

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