On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Michael Robinson <plu...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > First I installed Freedos 1.1 and used the 4x4 NEC cdrom, only the > first slot seemed to work, to copy over the Windows 98SE cabinet files. > I then proceeded to boot from the 98se cdrom and run setup from the > directory with the cab files. Long story short, this screwed up the > freedos installation. Is there a simple way to repair the freedos > installation so that Windows and Freedos can happily coexist?
I looked at Win98. I was given an old Fujitsu p2110 notebook by someone who had upgraded but wanted the Fujitsu to go to a good home. She commented it was "slow slow slow". Well, no surprise: the p2110 has a 867mhz Transmeta CPU, a 30GB IDE 4 HD, and a whopping 256MB of memory, of which the Transmeta grabs 16MB off the top for code morphing. The box came with WinXP SP2, and XP wants 512MB RAM to think about performing. I swapped in a 40GB HD from my SOs failed laptop, repartitioned and reformatted. It has Win2K SP4 on NTFS, Ubuntu Linux and Puppy Linux on ext4, and FreeDOS on FAT32. I was able to get Win2K down to 180MB RAM when booted, and performance is more or less acceptable. Ubuntu installed from the Minimal CD, which gives a CLI installation, then using apt-get to install just the bits I wanted made it work okay. Puppy is in part designed for low-end hardware, and it and the bundled apps worked well. FreeDOS simply flew. I thought about replacing Win2K with Win98SE, as 98 was intended for lower end systems. The problem was, the Win98 install wanted to reformat the *entire* drive. I couldn't find a way to tell it "Reformat and install to *this* partition." If I wanted to run it, I'd have to let it redo the drive, then use something like GPartEd afterward to resize the 98 partition, create the other partitions, and rebuild my Linux and FreeDOS installs. Win98 might work for you, but you would need to install it, then repartition and reinstall FreeDOS, using something like Grub4DOS to multi-boot. While Win98 uses DOS, it can't use FreeDOS. It's not like Win3.X or 95, which ran on top of DOS. Win98 uses DOS as a real-mode loader to boot into a full protected mode OS,l and requires its own version of DOS. Once 98 is up, DOS is out of the loop. > Running an unlicensed copy of 98 is not the best idea where there's > the issue of 98 having a lot of bugs and being out of support. Not really. Install 98, and all available service packs and patches. The problems tend to occur when the system connects to the outside world. If yours will, *don't* use IE, for *anything*. Install another browser. Older versions of Firefox still run on 98, as does Opera. Run a firewall, and perhaps run an A/V package. Look at KernelEx, an open source package that supplies a subset of the Win32 environment, and allows an assortment of apps intended for Win2K/XP to run on 98. http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/ Also look at 98Lite, a utility that can create a stripped down version of Win98, specifically intended as a stable gaming platform: http://www.litepc.com/98lite.html. Among other things, you can *completely* remove IE. ______ Dennis https://plus.google.com/u/0/105128793974319004519 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
