It seems like most of the discussion related to REMOVED, Blackwingcat software packages, and updated video drivers occur here. So, here I am.
After watching Omores' video on the REMOVED I went and grabbed a copy, thinking to try 3.51 after my last failed attempt 27 years ago (bluescreened inside ten hours, with one hour of run time). I then decided to try the updated Win2k, since we have a software package that runs best on older stuff and they're currently using a super janky Dell laptop. I grabbed the spare machine that had been sitting around and installed win2k. This started a litany of machines failing with the 07b error regardless of the uniata driver. I tried six other machines, all failed the same way. It wasn't until I tried the disk out of the first machine in my i5-4590 that I received a successful boot. Sadly, that disk ate it some time last night. I've swapped in another from one of the other systems that would not boot.
I also tried a vanilla win2k pro sp4 install disk on the original candidate, and it doesn't even make an attempt to boot; just an endless blinking cursor. I also tried loading additional drivers, but the vanilla installer won't seem to accept them from anywhere except a floppy. A working floppy drive is hard enough, let alone working floppy media. If anyone has a method to load drivers from the recovery console, that would be great.
I mainly run Linux, but figured having a copy of Windows handy would be nice, and having experienced the digital frustration that is windows 10, I think I want 2k.
During the run of 2000 on the i5, I decided I wanted to get out of 640x480, and read a couple threads on video drivers. There's the German Startmeup driver, which seems to be targeted toward Intel chipsets, Blackwingcat drivers, which seem to be primarily Nvidia, and the universal VBE Driver, which may be usable on my Radeon 580. After checking the site for the VBE driver, I can't seem to find a way to acquire the 08-2025 release. Is someone here familiar enough with this project to know where I can acquire a copy?
Has anyone fiddled with REMOVED enough to have some workarounds for balky hardware that wants to fail with 07b? I may be willing to write some howtos on successfully installing and creating a working system via means of the REMOVEDand other available community software packages.