Pics please 😉

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-22, 18:20:

Pics please 😉

Here's the pic from fleaBay before I got it

Right now, I only have the base machine set up because I do not have the room to set it all up, however I've removed the screen filter, and given the machine a good clean with some Isopropyl Alcohol which has removed a lot of the discolouring on the machine 😀

Parts Pre-Installation
MMX 200 CPU

Righteous 3D

Nice!

I bought a couple of early to mid 2000s P4 based PB/NEC multi media systems. The newest one had a horrible white plastic body so I transfer the new 3.2Ghz based mobo over to the older case. Works wonderfully well. Got the OEM software and speaker set up for both systems as well. Cost $nz40 all up and it was delivered by the seller from a town 70kms away.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-22, 18:41:

Nice!

I bought a couple of early to mid 2000s P4 based PB/NEC multi media systems. The newest one had a horrible white plastic body so I transfer the new 3.2Ghz based mobo over to the older case. Works wonderfully well. Got the OEM software and speaker set up for both systems as well. Cost $nz40 all up and it was delivered by the seller from a town 70kms away.

Not bad at all! I also have a Dell Dimension L800 CXE that was originally a Celeron 800 with 256mb ram, now running Nvidia 5500 + P3 1ghz + 1gb ram and a 1tb hdd, Great for W98 and a bit newer 😀

This Packard Bell beast is for the older items I have, it's a great starter PC for DOS and W95 gaming + apps

Never used PB restore disks so maybe leading you down the wrong track but...
Sounds like you just need to modify the PB boot disk with updated CD-ROM driver.

If you boot with the disk does dos even know about the CD drive?
If not I'd work out which driver works with the currant CD-ROM oakcdrom.sys is usually a safe bet for CD drives
you'll probably get away with copying the file to disk and just replacing the line that goes along the lines of
a:\currantCDdriver.sys /D:mscd001
to
a:\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001

Oh, PB restore CD fun...

I can't currently find my documentation, but exactly what is needed and available depends on the CD release, the 'format' number (14, 16 or 18 seems likely in this case).

Good news: you have the floppy too. Older CDs didn't contain floppy images and the floppies tended to be rather specific to their CD...

Bad news: if you want the original software preload, you'll need something close to the original hardware. There's a whole minefield of things that could go wrong here, and again, the older the CDs (and this is an old one) the less flexible/forgiving...
- CDRom drivers are probably a thing. You need an old 4-speed or similar, ideally one known to have been used in this or similar PB system.
- 128MB RAM is way out and may cause issues. Drop that down to a more original 16MB.
- Tseng ET6000 and Voodoo? Nope. Do the restore with just the onboard (S3?) video.
- SATA controller? Same there. This could well be the most limiting factor, as getting Windows to run on a different HDD interface post-install is at best 'fun' and at worst ends in an unrecoverable BSOD (want to try? with original config, remove all HDD controllers from device manager, not rebooting till the last one. Then power down system, boot up and cross fingers. You'd better have both drivers for the new controller somewhere not affected by the action. i.e. on floppy/Gotek)

Are you REALLY sure you want the original bloatware...?

Here's an earlier topic around what you're getting yourself into, and this is with a later, simpler system than yours. If so, after getting HW down to something the recovery media might support, you need to play around with hidden sector and/or DMI tools which may or may not be present on the recovery media. Post full part number of both CD and floppy here, we should be able to figure something out.

Oh, btw, 128MB on this system (most likely an Intel NV430VX - it's always useful to give full specs!) is generally pointless. The chipset (i430VX or maybe i430FX) can only cache the first 64MB, so performance actually drops over 64MB unless you're using it above that value, which you won't with the original software.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-05-24, 12:56:

Never used PB restore disks so maybe leading you down the wrong track but... Sounds like you just need to modify the PB boot dis […]
Show full quote

Never used PB restore disks so maybe leading you down the wrong track but...
Sounds like you just need to modify the PB boot disk with updated CD-ROM driver.

If you boot with the disk does dos even know about the CD drive?
If not I'd work out which driver works with the currant CD-ROM oakcdrom.sys is usually a safe bet for CD drives
you'll probably get away with copying the file to disk and just replacing the line that goes along the lines of
a:\currantCDdriver.sys /D:mscd001
to
a:\oakcdrom.sys /D:mscd001

These are 2 part restores: You boot the "Master Boot Disk" floppy and then it asks you to insert the CD.
I have used both official PB Floppies (which detect only the CD-Rom drives the machines shipped with) and the "universal" floppy which has a universal CD Driver on it.
It does load however the issue is that I can't get it to detect the CD, it's possibly wrong media type, but could be incorrect serial number on CD vs what the floppy expects.

Down the rabbit hole we go!

dionb wrote on 2021-05-24, 16:15:

Oh, PB restore CD fun... […]
Show full quote

Oh, PB restore CD fun...

I can't currently find my documentation, but exactly what is needed and available depends on the CD release, the 'format' number (14, 16 or 18 seems likely in this case).

Good news: you have the floppy too. Older CDs didn't contain floppy images and the floppies tended to be rather specific to their CD...

Bad news: if you want the original software preload, you'll need something close to the original hardware. There's a whole minefield of things that could go wrong here, and again, the older the CDs (and this is an old one) the less flexible/forgiving...
- CDRom drivers are probably a thing. You need an old 4-speed or similar, ideally one known to have been used in this or similar PB system.
- 128MB RAM is way out and may cause issues. Drop that down to a more original 16MB.
- Tseng ET6000 and Voodoo? Nope. Do the restore with just the onboard (S3?) video.
- SATA controller? Same there. This could well be the most limiting factor, as getting Windows to run on a different HDD interface post-install is at best 'fun' and at worst ends in an unrecoverable BSOD (want to try? with original config, remove all HDD controllers from device manager, not rebooting till the last one. Then power down system, boot up and cross fingers. You'd better have both drivers for the new controller somewhere not affected by the action. i.e. on floppy/Gotek)

Are you REALLY sure you want the original bloatware...?

Here's an earlier topic around what you're getting yourself into, and this is with a later, simpler system than yours. If so, after getting HW down to something the recovery media might support, you need to play around with hidden sector and/or DMI tools which may or may not be present on the recovery media. Post full part number of both CD and floppy here, we should be able to figure something out.

Oh, btw, 128MB on this system (most likely an Intel NV430VX - it's always useful to give full specs!) is generally pointless. The chipset (i430VX or maybe i430FX) can only cache the first 64MB, so performance actually drops over 64MB unless you're using it above that value, which you won't with the original software.

Okay starting from the top here:
I don't have any original floppies or master CDs, god I wish I did since this would be a lot easier 🤣! Sadly missed out on the holy grail machine that had everything because I got bid sniped 🙁

I have the "universal" floppy which has a generic CD driver which seems to be working fine, it detects the drive and It runs the prompt: "Insert the packard bell master CD and press enter", I do that with my burned copy and it just repeats itself. No luck at all.
I have some CD-Rs on the way because at the time all I had was RWs and I've seen issues before on some machine restores where the actual media has made a huge difference too. (It's a DVD-RW drive so it's not that kinda issue haha)

I still have all the original parts to be able to "restore" the machine back to somewhat factory condition, minus HDD and CD Drive because they've clearly been replaced in a former ownership. This also means I'm at a total loss with the format number, since I have no paperwork with the machine nor a label on the HDD with it on. Doh!

RAM Wise Windows 95 should be fine with 128mb RAM no problem, it's only the meaty newer machines with their mega clocks and 1gb ram that causes issues (and requires patching, been there, done that, it was fun but god awful getting running 🤣)

The Onboard Video is the Citrix? one I believe? Not a clue but yep, it still does work if need be. I totally don't expect anything like that to work "out the box" from a fresh restore, so in hindsight with the OS in mind (install drivers before installing hardware kinda deal), it's probably best to do that.

The SATA to IDE Adapter is a straight pass through, it doesn't require drivers or any fancy controller cards, the PB Bios detects the HDD perfectly fine and I can see it and format it using a DOS boot disk. I am expecting mileage may vary trying to stack the Master CD onto a 500gb HDD (it might not handle that, but at least it will stop it complaining about too little room to unpack the CD)

I can't find it now but somewhere there's a good table with the machine numbers/Motherboard models and what their master floppy and master CD numbers are. I'm pretty sure the CD I have from Archive.org is correct, but it's likely the floppy is not the right one. Need to do some more digging me thinks!

Also thanks for the tip about the other thread about the club system. I know that the HDD in the machine is running the original Windows 95 PB Restored OS (bloatware and everything, but the previous owners have definitely tampered with some things and it's not in tip top shape...), perhaps I might find the restore code in there "tattooed" to the root directory. We'll see...
Good point about the chipset too. I just kinda dove in without really looking too much into the machine, however I read somewhere that 128mb is the max the MB can support, so just went with that.
Since I've been waiting to get the restore CD working in order to benchmark after doing all these upgrades, I do not know if the machine is even stable at this stage properly, I just know it posts and does boot into whatever I stick in the gotek...

xxbeefydjxx wrote on 2021-05-26, 01:21:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Okay starting from the top here:
I don't have any original floppies or master CDs, god I wish I did since this would be a lot easier 🤣! Sadly missed out on the holy grail machine that had everything because I got bid sniped 🙁

I have the "universal" floppy which has a generic CD driver which seems to be working fine, it detects the drive and It runs the prompt: "Insert the packard bell master CD and press enter", I do that with my burned copy and it just repeats itself. No luck at all.
I have some CD-Rs on the way because at the time all I had was RWs and I've seen issues before on some machine restores where the actual media has made a huge difference too. (It's a DVD-RW drive so it's not that kinda issue haha)

There's no such thing as a truly "universal" PB MasterCD or boot floppy. Each CD needs a specific, matched floppy to work, and in the earlier days (where your system is from) the CD can be specific to one hardware configuration, i.e. two similar models from same time have different, incompatible CDs.

To help you at all here I need to know the part numbers of the floppy/floppies you are using and the CDs. They will start with 67xxxxxxx. If the CDs and floppies are copies, not originals, you won't have the part numbers on the media themselves, but there should be info to identify the disks on them. However I'm too rusty to be able to tell you exactly which files you need to check. If they aren't original, where did you get them from? That might document exactly what you have.

I still have all the original parts to be able to "restore" the machine back to somewhat factory condition, minus HDD and CD Drive because they've clearly been replaced in a former ownership. This also means I'm at a total loss with the format number, since I have no paperwork with the machine nor a label on the HDD with it on. Doh!

It's the CDs more than the hardware itself that determine exactly what you need or how to approach. Once you know what the CDs expect you can check what you can do to match (if anything).

RAM Wise Windows 95 should be fine with 128mb RAM no problem, it's only the meaty newer machines with their mega clocks and 1gb ram that causes issues (and requires patching, been there, done that, it was fun but god awful getting running 🤣)

I'm not referring to Win95 but to the recovery media as possible issue with the RAM - and again, 128MB is going to be slower than 32-64MB on this machine.

The Onboard Video is the Citrix? one I believe? Not a clue but yep, it still does work if need be. I totally don't expect anything like that to work "out the box" from a fresh restore, so in hindsight with the OS in mind (install drivers before installing hardware kinda deal), it's probably best to do that.

Citrix? Do you mean Cirrus Logic? In that case it's not an NV430VX board but a PB640 (other Intel OEM board wth i430FX chipset) - which does not support the split voltage needed by the Pentium MMX. It might work, but you're massively overvolting that poor CPU in that case. Could you please be specific about exactly what you have? If you can't ID it yourself, post some clear pictures so I (or someone else) can.

The SATA to IDE Adapter is a straight pass through, it doesn't require drivers or any fancy controller cards, the PB Bios detects the HDD perfectly fine and I can see it and format it using a DOS boot disk. I am expecting mileage may vary trying to stack the Master CD onto a 500gb HDD (it might not handle that, but at least it will stop it complaining about too little room to unpack the CD)

Ah, you're using a SATA to IDE adapter? You didn't specify "to IDE" so I assumed you meant a PCI SATA adapter. That makes life easier in terms of drivers. Still might be an issue in terms of drive size - plus of course the original media won't be properly 4096 bytes aligned for the SSD.

I can't find it now but somewhere there's a good table with the machine numbers/Motherboard models and what their master floppy and master CD numbers are. I'm pretty sure the CD I have from Archive.org is correct, but it's likely the floppy is not the right one. Need to do some more digging me thinks!

Not one authoritative one. Hence the question to be as specific as possible about what you have there.

Also thanks for the tip about the other thread about the club system. I know that the HDD in the machine is running the original Windows 95 PB Restored OS (bloatware and everything, but the previous owners have definitely tampered with some things and it's not in tip top shape...), perhaps I might find the restore code in there "tattooed" to the root directory. We'll see...
Good point about the chipset too. I just kinda dove in without really looking too much into the machine, however I read somewhere that 128mb is the max the MB can support, so just went with that.
Since I've been waiting to get the restore CD working in order to benchmark after doing all these upgrades, I do not know if the machine is even stable at this stage properly, I just know it posts and does boot into whatever I stick in the gotek...

"Tattoo" is a tool only used on later, Win98, systems. Yours probably needs HSCENTER instead. But again, it depends on what you have.

There may be images of the OEM install CDs to create new floppys.

dionb wrote on 2021-05-26, 06:14:

There's no such thing as a truly "universal" PB MasterCD or boot floppy. Each CD needs a specific, matched floppy to work, and i […]
Show full quote

xxbeefydjxx wrote on 2021-05-26, 01:21:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Okay starting from the top here:
I don't have any original floppies or master CDs, god I wish I did since this would be a lot easier 🤣! Sadly missed out on the holy grail machine that had everything because I got bid sniped 🙁

I have the "universal" floppy which has a generic CD driver which seems to be working fine, it detects the drive and It runs the prompt: "Insert the packard bell master CD and press enter", I do that with my burned copy and it just repeats itself. No luck at all.
I have some CD-Rs on the way because at the time all I had was RWs and I've seen issues before on some machine restores where the actual media has made a huge difference too. (It's a DVD-RW drive so it's not that kinda issue haha)

There's no such thing as a truly "universal" PB MasterCD or boot floppy. Each CD needs a specific, matched floppy to work, and in the earlier days (where your system is from) the CD can be specific to one hardware configuration, i.e. two similar models from same time have different, incompatible CDs.

To help you at all here I need to know the part numbers of the floppy/floppies you are using and the CDs. They will start with 67xxxxxxx. If the CDs and floppies are copies, not originals, you won't have the part numbers on the media themselves, but there should be info to identify the disks on them. However I'm too rusty to be able to tell you exactly which files you need to check. If they aren't original, where did you get them from? That might document exactly what you have.

I still have all the original parts to be able to "restore" the machine back to somewhat factory condition, minus HDD and CD Drive because they've clearly been replaced in a former ownership. This also means I'm at a total loss with the format number, since I have no paperwork with the machine nor a label on the HDD with it on. Doh!

It's the CDs more than the hardware itself that determine exactly what you need or how to approach. Once you know what the CDs expect you can check what you can do to match (if anything).

RAM Wise Windows 95 should be fine with 128mb RAM no problem, it's only the meaty newer machines with their mega clocks and 1gb ram that causes issues (and requires patching, been there, done that, it was fun but god awful getting running 🤣)

I'm not referring to Win95 but to the recovery media as possible issue with the RAM - and again, 128MB is going to be slower than 32-64MB on this machine.

The Onboard Video is the Citrix? one I believe? Not a clue but yep, it still does work if need be. I totally don't expect anything like that to work "out the box" from a fresh restore, so in hindsight with the OS in mind (install drivers before installing hardware kinda deal), it's probably best to do that.

Citrix? Do you mean Cirrus Logic? In that case it's not an NV430VX board but a PB640 (other Intel OEM board wth i430FX chipset) - which does not support the split voltage needed by the Pentium MMX. It might work, but you're massively overvolting that poor CPU in that case. Could you please be specific about exactly what you have? If you can't ID it yourself, post some clear pictures so I (or someone else) can.

The SATA to IDE Adapter is a straight pass through, it doesn't require drivers or any fancy controller cards, the PB Bios detects the HDD perfectly fine and I can see it and format it using a DOS boot disk. I am expecting mileage may vary trying to stack the Master CD onto a 500gb HDD (it might not handle that, but at least it will stop it complaining about too little room to unpack the CD)

Ah, you're using a SATA to IDE adapter? You didn't specify "to IDE" so I assumed you meant a PCI SATA adapter. That makes life easier in terms of drivers. Still might be an issue in terms of drive size - plus of course the original media won't be properly 4096 bytes aligned for the SSD.

I can't find it now but somewhere there's a good table with the machine numbers/Motherboard models and what their master floppy and master CD numbers are. I'm pretty sure the CD I have from Archive.org is correct, but it's likely the floppy is not the right one. Need to do some more digging me thinks!

Not one authoritative one. Hence the question to be as specific as possible about what you have there.

Also thanks for the tip about the other thread about the club system. I know that the HDD in the machine is running the original Windows 95 PB Restored OS (bloatware and everything, but the previous owners have definitely tampered with some things and it's not in tip top shape...), perhaps I might find the restore code in there "tattooed" to the root directory. We'll see...
Good point about the chipset too. I just kinda dove in without really looking too much into the machine, however I read somewhere that 128mb is the max the MB can support, so just went with that.
Since I've been waiting to get the restore CD working in order to benchmark after doing all these upgrades, I do not know if the machine is even stable at this stage properly, I just know it posts and does boot into whatever I stick in the gotek...

"Tattoo" is a tool only used on later, Win98, systems. Yours probably needs HSCENTER instead. But again, it depends on what you have.

Okay, here's some better details for you:
It is indeed a PB640 motherboard, the guidance from http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/640.htm: States that I can use a Pentium MMX OverDrive just fine, I know this is not an overdrive. Didn't realise the difference at first but I learned something new today!
Intel's website says 2.7-2.9, Socket 7 being 3.3v? There is a VRE jumper on the 640 though, would that do it? I can probe if need be...

BIOS was upgraded to 1.00.07 CP0R to accommodate for the CPU Upgrade. All the details for my board are in the above link and I can confirm this is 100% my motherboard.

Machine Label:
Executive MM 9016 D
A940-4x4E640
P/N: 010029301
F/N Code: WZRGD

Looking at this website, it suggests that the WZRGD FN Code should be a 9004d but my label 100% says 9016 D.

Looking at both the 9016D and the 9004D, they say:
The Master Floppy should be "6707570701"
and the Master CD should be "6707430501"

The Master Floppy I cannot find, sadly. Hence me trying the "Universal" CD. Perhaps I could try editing the exe so it searches for my CD? I hear this works based on reading of other topics here...
The Master CD I got from Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/mastercdenglish) says it is "6707430501" (The CD Label/Name), this I believe is the English Restore CD (UK)

xxbeefydjxx wrote on 2021-05-27, 23:11:

[...]

Okay, here's some better details for you:
It is indeed a PB640 motherboard, the guidance from http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/640.htm: States that I can use a Pentium MMX OverDrive just fine, Am I right in thinking the MMX OverDrive is different to the P MMX I purchased? I'll be honest I didn't do too much looking around...

Yes, the MMX Overdrive is different in one critical aspect: it has an onboard voltage regulator to lower the motherboard's fixed 3.3V down to the 2.8V that the MMX needs. Without that you are overvolting the CPU by almost 20%. Given that the P55C (regular Pentium MMX) is one of the most robust, overengineered CPUs ever, it can take it for a while, but it's most definitely out-of-spec and not recommended for long-term use.

BIOS was upgraded to 1.00.07 CP0R to accommodate for the CPU Upgrade. All the details for my board are in the above link and I c […]
Show full quote

BIOS was upgraded to 1.00.07 CP0R to accommodate for the CPU Upgrade. All the details for my board are in the above link and I can confirm this is 100% my motherboard.

Machine Label:
Executive MM 9016 D
A940-4x4E640
P/N: 010029301
F/N Code: WZRGD

Looking at this website, it suggests that the WZRGD FN Code should be a 9004d but my label 100% says 9016 D.

Looking at both the 9016D and the 9004D, they say:
The Master Floppy should be "6707570701"
and the Master CD should be "6707430501"

The Master Floppy I cannot find, sadly. Hence me trying the "Universal" CD. Perhaps I could try editing the exe so it searches for my CD? I hear this works based on reading of other topics here...
The Master CD I got from Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/mastercdenglish) says it is "6707430501" (The CD Label/Name), this I believe is the English Restore CD (UK)

Right, found my old documentation, on paper - no idea where the digital versions went. Just one problem: I have documented what to do with which 'format', but not which CD P/N matches which format...

In any event, that CD needs the floppy listed, there is no floppy image on the CD and a universal boot floppy won't work. You could however probably get away with a different language version (i.e. last digit of P/N different). Also, no way will the original floppy work with that very modern optical drive. As noted in the document: "...but remember that older versions of the MFD [floppy] will not suppor newer CDRom drives. Just download a newer one in that case." This was written in 2001 when these floppies were still available on the Packard Bell site. Unfortunately the download page for them was never archived: "The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL." :'(

Even then, "Newer" means 1996 instead of 1995, so a later minor version number (i.e. 6707570701 insteald of 6707570501). Possibly replacing the driver with oakcdrom.sys or vide-cdd.sys might help, but it might mess up checksum controls in the restore program.

So... I've downloaded the MasterCD. That appears to be the right one for your config. I believe it's "16 format" That's the easy bit. That tells me you need to run HSUPDATE from A: to add a hidden sector to your HDD, and after that run OEMSETUP SAFE FORM from the CD. You will need to enter a 'password'. If I'm not mistaken that would be the F/N from here. If I am, you may be stuck. But...

Then the floppy... I've looked here and dug through the floppies, but they look like US-only images, not compatible with EU CDs. In any event, the crucial file HSUPDATE.EXE is not present in any of them. Now, that file was available on the old PBNEC FTP and someone mirrored it: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jrmzqiv8y2z4xol … nec_pb.rar/file

There's a floppy image in there that contains that HSUPDATE file and appears to then start the setup, looking at its AUTOEXEC.BAT. However this disk is even older than the others and has extremely limited CD support. You could try editing the floppy image to add a generic CD driver and then cut out all the CD checks. That might work...

However I can't type straight anymore it's so late, and I have no PB hardware this old, so can't test it anyway. Off to bed!

dionb wrote on 2021-05-28, 01:30:

Yes, the MMX Overdrive is different in one critical aspect: it has an onboard voltage regulator to lower the motherboard's fixed […]
Show full quote

xxbeefydjxx wrote on 2021-05-27, 23:11:

[...]

Okay, here's some better details for you:
It is indeed a PB640 motherboard, the guidance from http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/pb/mb/640.htm: States that I can use a Pentium MMX OverDrive just fine, Am I right in thinking the MMX OverDrive is different to the P MMX I purchased? I'll be honest I didn't do too much looking around...

Yes, the MMX Overdrive is different in one critical aspect: it has an onboard voltage regulator to lower the motherboard's fixed 3.3V down to the 2.8V that the MMX needs. Without that you are overvolting the CPU by almost 20%. Given that the P55C (regular Pentium MMX) is one of the most robust, overengineered CPUs ever, it can take it for a while, but it's most definitely out-of-spec and not recommended for long-term use.

BIOS was upgraded to 1.00.07 CP0R to accommodate for the CPU Upgrade. All the details for my board are in the above link and I c […]
Show full quote

BIOS was upgraded to 1.00.07 CP0R to accommodate for the CPU Upgrade. All the details for my board are in the above link and I can confirm this is 100% my motherboard.

Machine Label:
Executive MM 9016 D
A940-4x4E640
P/N: 010029301
F/N Code: WZRGD

Looking at this website, it suggests that the WZRGD FN Code should be a 9004d but my label 100% says 9016 D.

Looking at both the 9016D and the 9004D, they say:
The Master Floppy should be "6707570701"
and the Master CD should be "6707430501"

The Master Floppy I cannot find, sadly. Hence me trying the "Universal" CD. Perhaps I could try editing the exe so it searches for my CD? I hear this works based on reading of other topics here...
The Master CD I got from Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/mastercdenglish) says it is "6707430501" (The CD Label/Name), this I believe is the English Restore CD (UK)

Right, found my old documentation, on paper - no idea where the digital versions went. Just one problem: I have documented what to do with which 'format', but not which CD P/N matches which format...

In any event, that CD needs the floppy listed, there is no floppy image on the CD and a universal boot floppy won't work. You could however probably get away with a different language version (i.e. last digit of P/N different). Also, no way will the original floppy work with that very modern optical drive. As noted in the document: "...but remember that older versions of the MFD [floppy] will not suppor newer CDRom drives. Just download a newer one in that case." This was written in 2001 when these floppies were still available on the Packard Bell site. Unfortunately the download page for them was never archived: "The Wayback Machine has not archived that URL." :'(

Even then, "Newer" means 1996 instead of 1995, so a later minor version number (i.e. 6707570701 insteald of 6707570501). Possibly replacing the driver with oakcdrom.sys or vide-cdd.sys might help, but it might mess up checksum controls in the restore program.

So... I've downloaded the MasterCD. That appears to be the right one for your config. I believe it's "16 format" That's the easy bit. That tells me you need to run HSUPDATE from A: to add a hidden sector to your HDD, and after that run OEMSETUP SAFE FORM from the CD. You will need to enter a 'password'. If I'm not mistaken that would be the F/N from here. If I am, you may be stuck. But...

Then the floppy... I've looked here and dug through the floppies, but they look like US-only images, not compatible with EU CDs. In any event, the crucial file HSUPDATE.EXE is not present in any of them. Now, that file was available on the old PBNEC FTP and someone mirrored it: http://www.mediafire.com/file/jrmzqiv8y2z4xol … nec_pb.rar/file

There's a floppy image in there that contains that HSUPDATE file and appears to then start the setup, looking at its AUTOEXEC.BAT. However this disk is even older than the others and has extremely limited CD support. You could try editing the floppy image to add a generic CD driver and then cut out all the CD checks. That might work...

However I can't type straight anymore it's so late, and I have no PB hardware this old, so can't test it anyway. Off to bed!

RE the MMX CPU, totally agree, rock solid chips known to take 3.5v like a champ and get some sweet overclocks (300+? But that's kinda pushing the realms of stable and I don't want to OC... Yet aha!)
I know this board has a VRM Header as I mentioned in the previous post, so when I finally get the machine back into windows 95 I will run some stats software to check voltages, see if enabling the VRM drops it to expected 2.8V.
I read something about how this was a "future proofing" some manufacturers did, though in reality mileage varies heavily!

Thank you very much for your insights and tips. You're right about the master floppies supporting only X Y and Z hardware configurations.
More specifically, the batch scripts have the hardware hard coded into them, so if they don't find say a NEC 4x CD ROM (Totally made up, I don't know the specifics but they're in the batch scripts, so not hard to find), it simply tells you that you have unsupported hardware.
I believe it's this and the main BIOS check + the Master CD paired to Floppy (specific serial number whitelisting) + Format codes that make up the main checks.

I'll provide an update once I get around to checking that archive, if I make any breakthroughs (or not, here's hoping!) I'll be sure to check back in.

Thanks again!

Update time:

Okay so I haven't yet been able to check the CPU Voltages, Spent the last 4 hours running in circles with the "setupoem safe" because as much as it would boot it kept refusing to format or even try to read the Hard Drive.

Some googling later and I think it's down to using such a large drive capacity in a machine that as much as it can do "larger" drives, it doesn't support 500gb "larger"!
Anyway, some mumbling later I gave up trying to investigate "how to" and just swallowed the fact this machine will probably never have a large HDD unless I go down the route of putting a PCI card in the machine that is better than the onboard IDE controller.

Right now, the machine is restoring using a combination of a custom floppy I put together and the burned master CD. Lo and behold though it flew by however unfortunately seems to have run out of memory, possibly RAM related, possibly config related. Will tinker with the floppy to be sure and maybe remove some RAM.
Only other issue I have had thus far is that the machine seems to refuse to read the CD sometimes, but eject cycling works. Probably a driver.

If I get this working I'll post further updates and maybe even the Floppy image when polished up for future Multimedia users...

You can always try a disk overlay program to use a larger drive

Update:

Got the machine to "complete" a restore however upon booting into windows it just instantly fails to execute the autoexec.bat files and goes as far as to completely ignore the rest of the setup.
I did manage to get the general windows setup post restore to show however after putting in the certificate it just refused to execute again, leaving windows in a totally incomplete state and unable to boot.

I have a suspicion that's down to a bad CD Driver installation (in particular, the CD Driver named during the restore isn't being used by the newly restored drive, so it can't detect and furthermore run the final steps.)

I'll have another play tomorrow, it's late now.

Update:
Narrowed it down to the fact that there's a lot of fluff in memory and the command run for ARJ isn't using the extended memory option. Sadly the ARJ Archives can't be unpacked on a PC and repacked with the good command, because they're pass protected. I'm unsure where the password would be stored though I suspect it's in the setupoem exe which I could find easily with a bit of reverse engineering.

To summarise for anyone wondering:
A: When preparing the HDD, it's important that you format using the standard DOS tool, then reboot.
B: MS Mouse Drivers and potentially the size of the universal CD Driver in memory is causing an issue. Will attempt without MS Mouse Drivers (since they aren't needed in the main restore process until you boot into Windows 95 for the first time)

Still haven't succeeded yet, because I haven't carried out the above. I've been extremely busy lately so no time for retro play 🙁

Shelved this for now since it's becoming nay impossible to source the correct floppy and I'm running out of ideas with modifying the boot floppies to work.

Ended p restoring the machine with a fresh copy of Windows 98 I had laying around. The machine runs nice and snappy, however I am yet to properly introduce a USB card so I can transfer some bits to the machine to benchmark further and ensure the machine is running at its best.

Fingers crossed one day I find someone selling the right disk. One can hope.

Update:

The original Packard Bell Restore CDs and other bits were since found in the Internet Archives and with the help of Kiki, we extracted the contents of the Archives on the UK edition Restore CD and I have rebuilt a new OEM image with Windows 95 OSR2, the drivers for my specific machine and reloaded all the original Packard Bell Goodies.

I have a lot of various bits documented on this matter and one day aim to release a new, restore CD that is truly universal and restores all the range back to their former glory, albeit on a newer, more feature some and stable Windows Image...