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Install Operating system to HDD without floppy disk or CD ROM drive| Intel 430TX| Pentium 166Mhz| Nvidia Riva TNT 2 64

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First post, by aaronndavee

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Hey guys,
So i've recently gotten my old Pentium 166 build working after hours of dusting and vacuuming and disconnecting and reconnecting things.
My PC specs are:
Pentium-s 166mhz (non mmx) overclocked to 188mhz
Sis 6215 (1 mb VRAM) video card
Nvidia Riva TNT 2 64 16MB 3D Card
256 MB SDRAM
4 GB Seagate IDE Hard drive (not working)
160GB Samsung SATA HDD ( Working through SATA to IDE converter)
Jamicon SM-P5TX3 (Intel 430TX) motherboard

Unfortunately, the old Seagate medalist 4310 4GB IDE HDD makes funny noises and wont boot up. So i replaced it with a 160GB Samsung SATA HDD using a SATA to IDE PATA converter. The hard drive is recognised by the bios. Now the only thing left is to install an OS to it. But the thing is that the Floppy and CD drive had both failed long ago. The only way for me to install an OS is by plugging in the sata hdd through usb on another computer and writing a bootable iso to it using rufus.
However i have tried all Windows ISOs from 95 to XP but the moment the pc boots up it just gets stuck on the isolinux bootloader and doesnt load further. It just says "syslinux 4.07 edd" and sits there with a blinking cursor. I tried using winsetupfromusb to install windows xp/2000 iso but it just gives me a black screen.. Next i tried installing windows xp and after that windows 2000 on to the harddrive from another pc and then inserting the hdd into the pentium 166 pc. This time the pc kept rebooting and never reaching the Windows Xp startup screen. However i tried installing FreeDos through rufus and it worked! But unfortunately the Windows installation does not run from FreeDos. Then i tried MSDOS and it just straight up gave me a black screen.
I dont want to give up hope and really wanna try to revive this old beauty. Any suggestions?
I only have 1 IDE PATA cable. SATA CD DRIVE (using sata to ide converter) and a SATA HDD ( again using another sata to ide converter) dont both work on the same IDE cable. Even after setting master and slave. I also cannot go and buy a new IDE CD DRIVE or floppy disk as the prices are just too expensive here in India. So i guess im really stuck. Any help is appreciated. Thank you

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Reply 1 of 3, by mihai

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1.Mount the hdd as a physical drive in VirtualBox, on a different computer
2.Use a virtual floppy to make the hard drive bootable in dos (proper partition size and file system)
3.Copy the contents of the instalation kit of windows 95 or 98 to the harddrive.

4.Move then the hard drive to the live system and this is it, boot in dos and start the setup from a dos prompt.

The 160g disk is too big for your hardware, not sure if limiting the partition size would work. I would stay below 2GB when experimenting.

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