Packard Bell Master Restore \ VOGONS

Packard Bell Master Restore

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First post, by InGeeksWeTrust

Posted on 2023-09-12, 05:58

InGeeksWeTrust Offline

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Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I got my hands on a Packard Bell Legend 60CD Supreme some months back. Unfortunately, the computer has no OS installed on the HDD, so I need to get my hands on a Master Restore Diskette. I started looking on Archive.org and there's a ton and it's a bit overwhelming trying to make heads or tails, I've no idea how to find out what would be compatible with this machine specifically? If anyone can give me some advice, or just point me in the right direction. I asked on Reddit when I was originally trying to restore the machine, and was just told to try random disks and see what works. I was hoping maybe there was someone who may have a better idea? Any help is greatly appreciated! 🙂

Cheers!

Reply 1 of 3, by st31276a

Posted on 2023-09-12, 06:14

st31276a Offline

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It looks like it came out with windows 3.11, it is just slightly older than windows 95's release date.

If it were mine and I wanted to make it era-ish specific-ish, I would stick another 8MB RAM into it and install a clean windows95 first edition. That's probably what happened to most of them anyway. Win95 had an upgrade cd option, where you could upgrade win3.1/3.11 to 95 release 1. Those had the nnn-nnnnnnn type cd keys.

The custom software packard bells had on them was slow as hell anyway, I remember seeing them on the showroom floors and finding it hard to believe just how crippled these machines were.

Reply 2 of 3, by giantclam

Posted on 2023-09-12, 06:39

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There's a list of part numbers (for the discs) here ... http://pbplanet.info/wiki/index.php/Packard_Bell_Master_CDs

However installing DOS and win3.11 (not pb specific) should work ~ not sure about win95, largely depends on what drivers the machine needs

Reply 3 of 3, by InGeeksWeTrust

Posted on 2023-09-13, 22:10

InGeeksWeTrust Offline

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giantclam wrote on 2023-09-12, 06:39:

There's a list of part numbers (for the discs) here ... http://pbplanet.info/wiki/index.php/Packard_Bell_Master_CDs

However installing DOS and win3.11 (not pb specific) should work ~ not sure about win95, largely depends on what drivers the machine needs

Okay thank you!! I wasn't sure if some of these older machines required system specific software to be able to run. I had a Win 98 HP Pavilion growing up, and we only used the master CD it came with. Of course now days you just do a fresh OS install and put on your drivers and software. Wasn't sure if it was the same with something older like this haha.

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