VivienM wrote on 2025-01-02, 03:06:

This is way, way, way more labour-intensive than any retro XP project, that's for sure...

Doing things from raw installer disks is going to take awhile. This is where I'll echo Joseph_Joestar's suggestion of using a CF reader and copying things over that way.

Once you get everything set up, I'd recommend making copies of all installed drivers and programs, along with copies of AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS.

I keep a DOS folder set up on my NAS with preinstalled programs, drivers, and games. Plugging in a CF card, it's trivial to copy everything over in a matter of minutes. Saves a lot of time when setting up DOS installs.

Okay, I received my CF reader today. Haven't done anything with it yet...

Now that the mail strike is over, I'm just trying to think - do I want anything else? I'd like to put the case back on this thing finally!

I think I'm going to pick up a 3c905b (nice period-correctish NIC). I was half thinking about a newer video card, but it seems like this Riva 128 is perhaps preferable to a TNT2 for Win3.11?

7Well, I seem to have run into my first real problem problem. Something is wonky with memory management:
- I tried to install QEMM, had great memories of it from way back in the day, and it's... not happy. Likes to crash on boot if the RAM parameter is given to QEMM386.SYS. OPTIMIZE very unhappy.
- so then I uninstalled QEMM, ran memmaker, and I'm noticing that I have a total of 39K of upper memory (of which the memmaker configuration uses 29K with 10K left)

I am getting the impression that for some reason, there's way less upper memory on this system than there should be... (e.g. Phil's Computer Lab's video on MS-DOS memory management is showing over 90K total upper memory in one of his screen captures, 76K in another)

Edit: if I add NOEMS to the EMM386 line, then I get 103K total upper memory. Seems like the person in this thread had the same issue I'm having - DOS programs won't load on upper memory .

Another edit: ran memmaker again with no EMS and aggressive settings, it... crashed on reboot just like QEMM, but it did add B000-B7FF and that gives me 130Kish of upper memory.

Yet another edit: the B000-B7FF prevented me from starting WfW 3.11. *sigh*

VivienM wrote on 2024-10-24, 00:14:

So... I just bought something on eBay. Not exactly what I had in mind, perhaps, but... this is a Dell D300, PII 300 (that seems to think it's a 233 in the photo, but they also have a photo of the CPU and it is a 300 - something misconfigured because the CMOS battery is dead?), the photo shows what appears to be an AWE 64 Value/OEM/something, an STB video card (likely a RIVA 128?), not clear if there's a working hard drive in it. Looks cleanish enough.

And I love that because it's a Dell, things like BIOS updates are still available.

A Gotek floppy adapter and an IDE to... CF or SD (CF is better, isn't it...? although I have so many SD cards in a drawer...) adapter later, and maybe a network card, and I think this hits most of my requirements?

Some how I missed this (been busy). Dell did/does make some good computers and the XPS line is very good !

Horun wrote on 2025-01-05, 03:19:

VivienM wrote on 2024-10-24, 00:14:

So... I just bought something on eBay. Not exactly what I had in mind, perhaps, but... this is a Dell D300, PII 300 (that seems to think it's a 233 in the photo, but they also have a photo of the CPU and it is a 300 - something misconfigured because the CMOS battery is dead?), the photo shows what appears to be an AWE 64 Value/OEM/something, an STB video card (likely a RIVA 128?), not clear if there's a working hard drive in it. Looks cleanish enough.

And I love that because it's a Dell, things like BIOS updates are still available.

A Gotek floppy adapter and an IDE to... CF or SD (CF is better, isn't it...? although I have so many SD cards in a drawer...) adapter later, and maybe a network card, and I think this hits most of my requirements?

Some how I missed this (been busy). Dell did/does make some good computers and the XPS line is very good !

I generally agree, although with all the troubles I had with memory managers today, I am starting to wonder if this machine might have been about a year too new for the intended goal. But... it's not like I found any promising socket 7 systems despite looking for quite a while.

I may have spoken too soon. Turned it back on, no operating system found. I think my CF card is dead. Put it in a modern system using my shiny new card reader you guys made me buy, and... it's showing a single unformatted 8 gig 'RAW' partition.

VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 04:54:

I may have spoken too soon. Turned it back on, no operating system found. I think my CF card is dead.

What I suggested was a StarTech CF to IDE adapter and an industrial grade CF card. If I understand you correctly, you bought a "no name" adapter? Those are cheap for a reason - it's a gamble what you'll get. Similarly, consumer CF cards are not always reliable for retro gaming purposes. Again, industrial grade ones are more expensive for a reason.

While I can't say with certainty that this is causing your problems, I had similar issues on some of my builds (including the drive suddenly not getting recognized) when using consumer CF cards and cheap adapters.

VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 04:54:

Put it in a modern system using my shiny new card reader you guys made me buy, and... it's showing a single unformatted 8 gig 'RAW' partition.

I'm not sure if modern Windows versions (10 and 11) can even read FAT16 partitions correctly. If you google "Windows 11 fat16" some discouraging results pop up. For what it's worth, current Linux distros (I'm using Debian 12) can still read from FAT16 partitions and write to them.

If the CF died, the my experience suggests that the most likely outcome is that it would not respond, not that it would show a raw partition. If the CF does respond but with an invalid partition type, I would look into other things that might have caused it to become unreadable before assuming that the storage device lost integrity. Could be as simple as a boot sector virus or that the old pc was using ECHS addressing and the usb device was using LBA addressing.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-05, 07:21:

I'm not sure if modern Windows versions (10 and 11) can even read FAT16 partitions correctly. If you google "Windows 11 fat16" some discouraging results pop up. For what it's worth, current Linux distros (I'm using Debian 12) can still read from FAT16 partitions and write to them.

Windows 10 can. I use CF cards with 16-bit FAT partitions on my Windows 10 system all the time.

edited to add:

Just tested on Windows 11 and it works fine there too.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-05, 07:21:

VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 04:54:

I may have spoken too soon. Turned it back on, no operating system found. I think my CF card is dead.

What I suggested was a StarTech CF to IDE adapter and an industrial grade CF card. If I understand you correctly, you bought a "no name" adapter? Those are cheap for a reason - it's a gamble what you'll get. Similarly, consumer CF cards are not always reliable for retro gaming purposes. Again, industrial grade ones are more expensive for a reason.

While I can't say with certainty that this is causing your problems, I had similar issues on some of my builds (including the drive suddenly not getting recognized) when using consumer CF cards and cheap adapters.

No, I got the StarTech adapter. As for the card... well... it advertises itself as industrial, there were some reviews on amazon saying it was good for vintage PCs.

But I am perfectly happy to buy another CF card! I just can't seem to find anything that gives me confidence...

VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 14:32:

But I am perfectly happy to buy another CF card! I just can't seem to find anything that gives me confidence...

Don't know if I mentioned earlier, but I've had good success with official Sandisk cards, Verbatim cards, and Cisco industrial cards.

VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 14:32:

No, I got the StarTech adapter. As for the card... well... it advertises itself as industrial, there were some reviews on amazon saying it was good for vintage PCs.

But I am perfectly happy to buy another CF card! I just can't seem to find anything that gives me confidence...

I'm using these two CF cards for my DOS/Win95 system:

I think Transcend still sells them brand new. I bought mine maybe 2 years ago.

Just to add a few more details about what happened:
- before everything went boom, there were a few concerning signs of storage issues, e.g. some .grp files for Windows 3.1 getting corrupted. And a scandisk picked up something like 200 megs of unallocated whatever things, you know, the things it turns into .CHK files.
- before putting the CF card into the card reader, I booted the machine with DOS 6.22 from the Gotek. Couldn't see C drive, FDISK seemed unhappy.
- I did also try a Linux box with the same card reader. No partition table visible there either.
- ended up making a new partition and running F3X on my modern Mac laptop, and the CF card... passed.

That being said, my confidence in this card is exactly zero at this point. Going to see if I can find those Transcend cards.

If you're using one of those USB IDE converters, the ones that have a 3.5 plug one side, 2.5 plug the other, and a socket for a SATA cable... there are some bad quality ones of those around and using one of those with a CF/IDE converter I've messed up cards. Also messed up 3.5 IDE drives with them so confidence in them is super low.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-05, 14:39:

I'm using these two CF cards for my DOS/Win95 system: […]
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VivienM wrote on 2025-01-05, 14:32:

No, I got the StarTech adapter. As for the card... well... it advertises itself as industrial, there were some reviews on amazon saying it was good for vintage PCs.

But I am perfectly happy to buy another CF card! I just can't seem to find anything that gives me confidence...

I'm using these two CF cards for my DOS/Win95 system:

I think Transcend still sells them brand new. I bought mine maybe 2 years ago.

I would love to buy something like that... but... I can't find anywhere that has them, except eBay sellers in China who have plenty of used ones. I'm assuming buying used CF cards from China is a baaaad idea...

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-05, 15:26:

If you're using one of those USB IDE converters, the ones that have a 3.5 plug one side, 2.5 plug the other, and a socket for a SATA cable... there are some bad quality ones of those around and using one of those with a CF/IDE converter I've messed up cards. Also messed up 3.5 IDE drives with them so confidence in them is super low.

I have one of those, a Vantec one that I got years ago, but... have not used it for this. Didn't occur to me until you mentioned it that, sure, you could use a CF to IDE adapter with those.

At the time the card got messed up, the only place it had been was inside my Startech CF to IDE adapter plugged into the motherboard's PATA controller.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-05, 15:26:

If you're using one of those USB IDE converters, the ones that have a 3.5 plug one side, 2.5 plug the other, and a socket for a SATA cable... there are some bad quality ones of those around and using one of those with a CF/IDE converter I've messed up cards. Also messed up 3.5 IDE drives with them so confidence in them is super low.

Can confirm... I used one of those combo IDE-to-USB adapters with a CF-to-IDE adapter and I damaged a Transcend industrial CF card while trying to back it up to an image. The card is still recognized but the original partitions are gone. My understanding is there's an internal translation to the actual NAND pages which possibly became corrupt through the chain of adapters.

Now I use a "UGREEN" CF to USB adapter (no IDE to USB middleman) and it works great, even on Windows 11.

Regarding CF cards themselves, I've used a handful of Transcend, Cisco, and Swissbit CF cards with good success, some sample model numbers:

• CF150
• SSD-C02G-4431
• UB30STC4000CZ7-BTB-FCF
• SFCF1024H1BK2MT-I-MO-553-SMA
• CF220I / TS4GCF220I
• CF180 / TS4GCF18IG16IK1

Cosmic wrote on 2025-01-05, 18:29:

Now I use a "UGREEN" CF to USB adapter (no IDE to USB middleman) and it works great, even on Windows 11. […]
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Now I use a "UGREEN" CF to USB adapter (no IDE to USB middleman) and it works great, even on Windows 11.

Regarding CF cards themselves, I've used a handful of Transcend, Cisco, and Swissbit CF cards with good success, some sample model numbers:

• CF150
• SSD-C02G-4431
• UB30STC4000CZ7-BTB-FCF
• SFCF1024H1BK2MT-I-MO-553-SMA
• CF220I / TS4GCF220I
• CF180 / TS4GCF18IG16IK1

That happens to be exactly the one I got!

Now if I could just find some CF cards. 32+ gig photography-centric CF cards are everywhereish, but... that's not exactly what I want.

Cosmic wrote on 2025-01-05, 18:29:

Regarding CF cards themselves, I've used a handful of Transcend, Cisco, and Swissbit CF cards with good success, some sample mod […]
Show full quote

Regarding CF cards themselves, I've used a handful of Transcend, Cisco, and Swissbit CF cards with good success, some sample model numbers:

• CF150
• SSD-C02G-4431
• UB30STC4000CZ7-BTB-FCF
• SFCF1024H1BK2MT-I-MO-553-SMA
• CF220I / TS4GCF220I
• CF180 / TS4GCF18IG16IK1

Okay, so Swissbit I can actually get... from sellers of electronic components like Mouser or Digikey. Pretty much all the others on your list - available used from China but that's about it. But... looking at ~$100CAD for an 4GB Swissbit C-56.

Is that just the price to pay for these things unless you want to gamble on used ones, or is this insanely highway robbery?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-10-06, 16:47:

This is a very good choice. You can slow down a Pentium MMX with ease to 386 and 486 speeds by using SetMul to toggle the test r […]
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VivienM wrote on 2024-10-06, 16:38:

Pentium MMX was where I was leaning. Huge Intel fanboy, never had a Pentium MMX (or any Pentium) on a main computer. But... maybe other things make more sense.

This is a very good choice. You can slow down a Pentium MMX with ease to 386 and 486 speeds by using SetMul to toggle the test registers, and by turning off L1 and L2 cache. Note that L2 cache needs to be turned off from the BIOS, so make sure your motherboard has that setting (some OEM boards don't).

AT scares me. I have never had a full AT system (had large OEM systems in the mid-90s with PS/2 ports), don't have AT keyboards, etc. There seem to be some ATX super socket 7 boards that seem promising, but... pricy.

There are also Socket 7 (non-super) boards with an ATX power supply connector. My Soyo SY-5BT is one example. Alternatively, you may be able to get an adapter and use an ATX power supply.

thinking a SD/CF to IDE adapter for storage

There's a front loading CF to IDE adapter from StarTech that fits nicely into the second 3.5" slot below the floppy drive. If you do go that route, I would suggest getting an industrial grade CF card to save you from a bunch of headaches.

I would also suggest looking for a motherboard that has PS2 mouse support, with the pinout clearly labeled in the manual. Using a serial ball mouse is something I always hated, but that's just me.

What are the advantages of running a 386 or 486 over a Pentium MMX?

I never really used a 486. The first computers I used properly, I think, used Pentium class CPUs and ran DOS and Win3.11.
So I dont really remember the 486 machines.
I remember back in 1991 time the company I worked for had some laptop style computers that had orange screens, which I presume used older CPUs like the 486 but I never really used them. But I have vague memories of them being only good for running spread sheets and word processing software.