I've seen enough of the left one to say that's the most trademark of a ECS/Uniwill/Gericom laptop.

The 9100 on that one does work fairly well on those. If you can find a Pentium M chip, that should make a great 98SE laptop.

Both are ASUS and the Celeron M has 512kb of L2 cache so I assume it should be pretty close to a high-end Tualatin S. The bottleneck should already be the Mobility Radeon 9100 whith system shared memory.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-09-21, 13:17:

Both are ASUS and the Celeron M has 512kb of L2 cache so I assume it should be pretty close to a high-end Tualatin S. The bottleneck should already be the Mobility Radeon 9100 whith system shared memory.

I find performance in those Celeron M, Pentium M to be falling in between P4 2Ghz and P4 3Ghz kind of area, with celerons near the bottom and good Pentium M maybe breaking out the top. Depending on chipset etc, and whether the particular processor at bottom of thermal envelope, you can socket trick the bus from 400 to 533 on some of them.

There is one linux I would consider, variants of Puppy linux may be suitable, but only do lightweight modern stuff, if it hits any Html 5 stuff the CPU will be figuratively hiding in the corner hugging it's knees.

I would see what 9x drivers you can dig out for the SiS one if you intend to offer a swap, think it would be okay on 98 stuff maybe. The other one may be good for early XP.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-21, 13:51:

There is one linux I would consider, variants of Puppy linux may be suitable, but only do lightweight modern stuff, if it hits any Html 5 stuff the CPU will be figuratively hiding in the corner hugging it's knees.

That's what I meant when I said, there is no modern task these notebooks can be ►reasonably◄ used for. There are stuff for which this performance range is fine, but you can pic up devices for pocket change that are a quarter of their age, more powerful and a better fit for those tasks. Like the Optiplex 7010 SFF I picked up last month for 10€.

I recently scored an Asus AM2+ MATX motherboard for free, and I decided to put it on Ebay. To test it, I tossed in a SATA drive and installed Windows 10. The CMOS battery was dead, but I just lived with that until I got so annoyed that I decided to replace it. Also, with only six gigs of DDR2 installed, it was slow going (and the conventional SATA drive isn't helping) so I decided to also install a video card to remove the load the onboard video was creating. I popped the 2032 out of a spare motherboard that had been in use pretty recently, and swapped it and added the video card. When I hit the power button, it wouldn't POST, just spinning fans. The power supply I was using was marginal, so I assumed that the extra load of the video card was too much, so I removed it. Still no POST. I then decided to swap in a much better power supply - still no POST.

I then removed the CMOS battery, and it POSTed! I put the original battery back in, and it POSTed! I then checked both batteries with my meter - the original was nearly completely dead and the replacement battery I had tried measured 2.5 volts. I pulled one from another spare board (I ran out of my pack of new 2032 batteries recently) and it measured 2.9 volts. I put this one in and it POSTed! So, dead battery, it POSTs, no battery it POSTs, but if the battery's charge is too low, no POST. That was a new one on me, but if I had a pack of 2032 batteries as I ought to, this whole sequence would have been avoided.

After reinforcing all screw posts and holes in my Tecra 8000 laptop and reassembling it, i took another project: Compaq Deskpro Pentium 2.

It's similar machine like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay_qrs5vBWg

My machine's configuration was:
440BX chipset!
Pentium II 266MHz
32MB RAM
ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP
ESS ES1869F Sound Card
3Com 3C590C NIC
2GB HDD (working!)
FDD

Of course, if i have resources to improve it, i will. And so, it got the following upgrades:
128MB RAM
ATI Rage 128 Pro ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxTF85QUjzk )
52x Lite-On CD-ROM

I hope to find a 32-128GB SSD to replace the HDD. I currently only have 240GB+ SSDs laying around... Such sizes may cause problems on older systems.
I also plan to play around with a few Pentium 3 CPUs to see, whether it works and is worth it.

It seems to be a great machine for pairing with PCI-based Voodoo card. (Though, i have never even touched one 🙁 )

I also have 2 Compaq CRTs in cellar. Time to go and check those out. 😀

I would actually discourage you from considering a 52x CD-ROM, unless you enjoy the sound of a jet engine taking off. I don't think that it's healthy for discs to spin that fast either. Even 24x can get very loud, depending on the brand. Personally, I find 16x to be the sweet spot.

I also like the 16-24 area, haven't had a loud 24, but 16 are "goldilocks" usually.

I find anything over 4x to be overly noisy and prefer to be able to throttle with programs like DriveSpeed.

This way a CD-ROM can be set to a faster speed for things game installs, but then slowed down when playing games.

Indeed, very useful, there's some stuff expecting a 2x drive that stutters on faster because reads a chunk, drive spins down, take 2s to use chunk, needs the next chunk, disk spins up, pause, gets going again, repeat, aaaargh.

Another small aaargh, it never rains but it pours as they say, or nothing for hours then three buses come at once... that sort of thing. Not sure whether to spend evening clearing space, and if and how much space I might need, and whether preparing is a jinx.... etc... Anyway, item one, EGA monitor a shortish drive away, cheap, will go with my Packard Bell 12Mhz 286. item two, a Compaq Presario CDS 520 going cheap not very far away either, item 3..n "Gotta recycle some old PCs" said the guy, "I could take them" I said...

Anyway, maybe call it rain, last day of summer though and summer rain, quick downpour and the pavement dries up real quick, so don't know if these will just evaporate on me or not. Angel on one shoulder "You should deal with all the parts and projects you've got, don't need more." Demon on the other "How often do EGA monitors or CDS 520 come up though and you know you'd think an EGA 286 or a CDS 520 is really cool." Angel "Yeah he's got a point there..." .... and the other stuff, there is rumor of a part I particularly want in one of the PCs so dunno if I gotta take a pile of junk to get it, or will get actually useful stuff as well, or what.

So train of thought at 100mph going "a tackety tick, tickety tack, EGA, tickety tack, CDS, tickety tack, Free PCs, tackety tick...."

If you can spare the money, why not. That's our hobby after all hehe.

I am wondering if I should make a video series on baking ramdisk-backed system images or not.

I've seen an uptick on the 'how do I start dozens of flavors of dos and windows?' Posts.

I'm not nearly as photogenic as say, Adrian or 8bit guy, so it may come out more 'dread specter of powerpoint', but I'd try to make it informative and comprehensive...

Tested the Amiga 500 I just bought.

Unfortunately it didn't include any disks, so I haven't been able to do anything but confirm it powers on. But that's something at least.

I'll have to figure out how to make disks for it or possibly install a Gotek in lieu of the disk drive. I also don't have a dedicated monitor for it, so I'll have to look at getting a video adapter if I want colour.

Yah, you're maybe going to want to make yourself a Greaseweazel... annnnnd DSDD disks are a bugger to find... and you might want a kickstart switcher and 1.3 or 2.x kickstart. 1.2 very original but might be limiting, not sure, never went lower than 1.3.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-09-21, 19:02:

I recently scored an Asus AM2+ MATX motherboard for free, and I decided to put it on Ebay. To test it, I tossed in a SATA drive and installed Windows 10. The CMOS battery was dead, but I just lived with that until I got so annoyed that I decided to replace it. Also, with only six gigs of DDR2 installed, it was slow going (and the conventional SATA drive isn't helping) so I decided to also install a video card to remove the load the onboard video was creating. I popped the 2032 out of a spare motherboard that had been in use pretty recently, and swapped it and added the video card. When I hit the power button, it wouldn't POST, just spinning fans. The power supply I was using was marginal, so I assumed that the extra load of the video card was too much, so I removed it. Still no POST. I then decided to swap in a much better power supply - still no POST.

I then removed the CMOS battery, and it POSTed! I put the original battery back in, and it POSTed! I then checked both batteries with my meter - the original was nearly completely dead and the replacement battery I had tried measured 2.5 volts. I pulled one from another spare board (I ran out of my pack of new 2032 batteries recently) and it measured 2.9 volts. I put this one in and it POSTed! So, dead battery, it POSTs, no battery it POSTs, but if the battery's charge is too low, no POST. That was a new one on me, but if I had a pack of 2032 batteries as I ought to, this whole sequence would have been avoided.

This thing has a weird issue that I've never encountered before: with Windows 10 and 8.1 it will occasionally hang on a cold boot right at the point where the Windows emblem shows up. Normally there would be slight pause, then you begin to see spinning dots, then it fully boots up, but in this case it hard locks. In both cases, it still happens when the OS has been fully updated. I've tried different power supplies, different hard drives, different memory, different video cards, and with Win10 I tried both SATA and AHCI mode. It never happens on restarts, and when it does hang, if you turn the power supply off then turn it back on, it will boot into Windows with no issue. This never happens with Windows XP on this computer. It's an Asus M3A78-EM, it has the latest BIOS (set to defaults), and it has the AMD 780G chipset. I even tried the newest chipset driver that AMD has with the Win 8.1 installation, but it still locked up.

Edit: I found the solution!

Cleaned an Apple keyboard + mouse.
Bless YT for detailed videos.

Today's menu: Phenom-II / AM2+ Win98SE Install. So I've been trying for about 2 weeks ago, a lot of tricks, a lot ...
Finally succeeded. It has to be refined yet, but it is already working, no sound, XFi is included (for XP), no Win98 driver. Also have need should Audigy2ZS.

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-23, 03:45:

Today's menu: Phenom-II / AM2+ Win98SE Install. So I've been trying for about 2 weeks ago, a lot of tricks, a lot ... Finally su […]
Show full quote

Today's menu: Phenom-II / AM2+ Win98SE Install. So I've been trying for about 2 weeks ago, a lot of tricks, a lot ...
Finally succeeded. It has to be refined yet, but it is already working, no sound, XFi is included (for XP), no Win98 driver. Also have need should Audigy2ZS.

The attachment PHIIW98FI_2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 1PHIIPan.jpg is no longer available

Hm, TDP 656 Watt? 😀 W98 on AMD AM3 - ACPI off and setup /p i?

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-22, 23:49:

Yah, you're maybe going to want to make yourself a Greaseweazel... annnnnd DSDD disks are a bugger to find... and you might want a kickstart switcher and 1.3 or 2.x kickstart. 1.2 very original but might be limiting, not sure, never went lower than 1.3.

While getting *harder* to find (because Japan finally stopped making them), Old knitting machines use these, and knitting communities can be leveraged to find stock.

floppydisk.com still has stock as well.

https://www.floppydisk.com/

Ydee wrote on 2024-09-23, 09:21:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-23, 03:45:

Today's menu: Phenom-II / AM2+ Win98SE Install. So I've been trying for about 2 weeks ago, a lot of tricks, a lot ... Finally su […]
Show full quote

Today's menu: Phenom-II / AM2+ Win98SE Install. So I've been trying for about 2 weeks ago, a lot of tricks, a lot ...
Finally succeeded. It has to be refined yet, but it is already working, no sound, XFi is included (for XP), no Win98 driver. Also have need should Audigy2ZS.

The attachment PHIIW98FI_2.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 1PHIIPan.jpg is no longer available

Hm, TDP 656 Watt? 😀 W98 on AMD AM3 - ACPI off and setup /p i?

No need for /PI and ACPI OFF, it goes up with. You don't have to switch, has too XP on it.
It was relatively difficult to get up sets, it was easier to install on Ryzen.