Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-12-11, 15:39:

Hmm, what make is the compact flash card? I've found an unbranded 4GB card quite recently produced that works for file storage and such with high transfer rates but I keep getting file system errors when I try to use it as an IDE / ATA device on an old computer. Which also results in crashes during the Windows install.
The troublesome ones I have are marked 4GB CompactFlash MLC / Diamond but are otherwise unbranded, produced only within the last few years. Usually I stick to Sandisk and Transcend, or go with traceable industrial compactflash cards with SLC flash, which I'll continue doing since attempting to save money on cheaper cards has resulted in cards I can't use as hard drives.

Additionally, you could double check that the caddy is making good contact. I had similar weirdness with laptop where I hadn't screwed the caddy together fully so the caddy connector wasn't making good contact with the mainboard, that also resulted in problems with stability and installing windows.

Thanks for the advice. Currently I am using a 8GB Sandisk Extreme (60MB/s, 20MB/s video, UDMA), and a 4 GB Transcend CF300 industrial one. I find the Sandisk much faster, but since this is a retro laptop I could also live with the 4GB one. Currently still toying around with DOS on the 8GB one. I make images on regular intervals, so if something goes wrong I can just re-image and start again from the snapshot.

I am really happy with how everything turned out with this laptop.

Almost everything works that I tried to get working:

• DOS (7.1 from Windows 98SE)
• CF card instead of a hard drive (8GB in two 4GB partitions)
• PCMCIA CF card adapter for easier file exchange (works with ataenab and unata)
• Sound (simply using the right BLASTER variable and bios settings - I had better success with IRQ7 instead of 5)
• Mouse (including a brand new external PS/2 mouse that I bought through Amazon for ~5$)
• Graphics scaling using vexp
• Many dos games I remember from my childhood (including Fallout 1 DOS version patched with the latest community patch!)
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• TCP/IP networking using mTCP and a serial to WiFi adapter implementing SLIP

What does not yet work:

• CDROM: maybe my CDs were broken, so maybe this is not an issue
• Floppy: does not seem to start spinning, but the lights turn on. Maybe I need to open it up and clean it.

Thanks to everyone who contributed with hints and pointers!