Mail Archives: opendos/2000/10/24/17:22:44
----- Original Message -----
From: <fernande AT internet1 DOT net>
To: <opendos AT delorie DOT com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 12:17 AM
Subject: Re: About Micro$quash DOS 7 (hiding in Win98).
> A 386DX-16??? I always assumed it required a 33mhz machine. Of course
> I suppose I drew that conclusion becasue most 386dxs were probably 33,
> at least the ones I see. I did own a 386DX-16 at one point. It is the
> only one I have ever seen or heard of.
I could probably run it on my old 386SX25, however, I would not recommend
it. My previous MB was a 386DX40 with 8MB RAM. I ran it on that for a while,
but really needed more memory. I decided to upgrade the system and started
checking prices on used stuff. I was going to up the memory to 32MB. I
checked the prices for 4MB 30 pin SIMMs on ebay and was shocked at the
prices they were getting for these and how rare they were. So I started
checking prices on used MBs and found that I could easily upgrade to 486
with 72 pin SIMMs for a lot less and that 72 pin SIMMs were very cheap
compared to measly 4MB 30 pin. I wound up getting a 5x86-133MHz AMD MB with
48MB of RAM installed and most of the cables for about $50 including
shipping. This was less than what 32MB of 30 pn SIMMs would have cost me!
Plus I got a y2k compliant BIOS with power management/ LBA capability and
more RAM capability than I would have had with the old DX40 and many other
newer BIOS features. I also needed to increase my drive space, I had a 345MB
IDE and a 256MB Syquest removable cartridge SCSI drive. I was running Linux,
WINDOZE 95 OSR2, and DRDOS 7.03 on my 386 at that time after I got a bigger
drive (3.1GB SCSI-II FAST.)
I have installed and run ME on this system, but still had the same problems
with it that I had with 95. Hwever, before someone jumps in and says that ME
cannot be run on this system, don't bet on it. I trick the stupid thing into
seeing it as a 160MHz by overclocking it to 160MHz. My system was unstable
at that speed, so it used the turbo switch to change between 133MHz and
160MHz and would boot at 133 MHz and found the point in the install where it
chacked for the computer speed and would switch it to 160MHz at that point,
then right after it passed that point, before it started decompressing CAB
files, I switched back to 133MHz and loaded it without any problems.
> What are the minumum requirements for w98? I have considered doing a
> minimal install of 95 or 98 on my 486DX2-66, it has 40megs of ram. I
> ,of course, would like to up that :-) I haven't done it, becasue I
> haven't wanted to abandon WFWGs, and I don't know how well it will
> run on a 486.
That system would probably be very limited as to what you can do with 98.
The first thing I would do is to up the memory to 64MB. I don't know if WFWG
has any problems with memory above 64MB. If it does, there should be
numerous tricks and TSRs available to overcome this. If it has a PCI bus,
you will probably be okay. The real problem with these older systems is the
BIOS. My brother has a 5x86-133 Cyrix system with the UMC VIP chipset. His
chipset has some bugs in it and I had a heck of a time loading 95 on it. A
newer BIOS would have fixed at least some of the problems. However, who
wants to spend more money for an updated BIOS that what a newer faster used
MB with memory would cost? I have the AMD 133 and the SiS chipset and had no
problems.
One of the major problems you can run into is not have true PnP BIOS. As I
previously stated, why bother upgrading the BIOS when it cost as much or
more than purchasing a much newer used MB and memory.
I have also run WFWG 3.11 on this system and my brother is currently running
it on his system with DRDOS 7.03.
> I have thought about NT 3.51 as well.
You should be able to do this. NT 3.51/4.0 does not require PnP BIOS as it
does not have PnP built in. (There is some undocumented PnP capabilities
with NT 4.0, but does not require PnP crap. You will probably have to visit
the MS website and get a ton of updates and latest service packs for it and
even then, you will be limited in many ways as to what you can do on the
internet. many of the services requires at least NT 4.0 and IE 4. If you
have a choice between 3.51 and 4.0, go with 4.0 and get at least service
pack 3 for it. You will also need to download various other updates
(especially security) for it as well. I am running NT 4.0 with service pack
6 and all the lastest updates and IE 5.
You will find that many of the internet applications you want to use for
various internet services and ease will require NT 4.0 and will not run on
3.51.
You can blame all of this crap on Mr Gates. When I first got on the
internet,(Late 1995) I did not run across all of these problems. In fact, I
used text browsers, text e-mail and just about everything I used was in text
mode. I also installed Linux about that same time (just before 1996) and had
a ball on the internet. I could do everything at lightning speed and was
using a 386DX40 with 8MB RAM. I also used OS/2 Warp 3.0 with Bonus Pack.
(This version had the WINDOWS 3.x capability built-in as well as a bunch of
internet apps. This is sometimes referred to as the Blue version.) I got
sick and tired of getting so-called OS/2 stuff for the internet and it all
turned out to be WINDOZE 3.1 16 bit crap. I bought a 32 bit OS and expected
to use a 32 bit OS, but nobody seemed to want to write software specifically
for OS/2, you had to get crappy 16 bit WINDOZE crap. So I removed OS/2 and
had wasted a ton of money on it and went to Linux.
Everything was great for a couple of years. Then at some point after Gates
came out with that IE 4 crap for software is when the internet started going
to crap as far as I am concerned.
If you want to continue using WFWG and would also like to run 98, I suggest
that you look at auctions on ebay and Yahoo (as well as others, but these
two seem to have the most for the type of stuff you will want) and find a
good inexpensive used Pentium class MB and at least 64MB RAM. Upgrade to an
inexpensive used PCI video card with 4MB or more RAM (at least 2MB, but
really recommend 4MB or more.) Although you will keep running across system
requirements that say at least 16MB or 32MB of RAM, don't believe it. By the
time you get through loading all the stuff you run in the background, it
will eat up a lot of memory. You will want to have an active online virus
scanner, and other protection when on the internet. I have 48MB and am
always running low on resources and have to close apps to reclaim memory. I
swear that you really need 128MB or even 256MB to do a decent job on the
internet MS and GUI crap. I would also suggest that you get a 133MHz or
faster CPU. I have been running across a lot of stuff that now requires
200MHz. Pentuim II class should now be a lot lower cost and would recommend
a 233MHz or faster and an FSB of at least 66MHz. You don't have to go to AGP
if you want to save money and also you can skip USB if you want. In fact,
anyone running WINDOZE 95 and who does not want to upgrade to 98 or ME or
2000, should not even bother with AGP and USB. These are a pain in the b*tt
for installing 95.
The slowest I would recommend at this time is a 90MHz Pentium class system.
My system is considered a 75MHz pentium class and if I could get it to
160MHz and run stable it would be a 90MHz Pentium class system. Some
5x86-133 AMD MBs can be stable at this speed, but often you have to boot at
133 then after boot up switch to 150Mhz or 160Mhz because the system BUS
speed may not be correct. There is a lot of information about this on the
internet for overclocking 486 systems. Pentiums with certain chipsets can
also be overclocked. AMD chips are usually much better for overclocking.
I have not checked out proces lately for these types of MBs but would think
you should be able to get a 133 to 233MHz MB and 64MB of RAM for around $100
or less. 72 pin SIMMs are now pretty cheap as most peole are now using DIMMs
and Pentium I and II CPUs are now cheap, even for some new ones. I would
look for MBs that have 72 pin SIMM sockets as these should be cheap, some
P-IIs will also have DIMM sockets as well.
Another possibility to look at (especially if you are considering also using
Linux) is the Pentium Pro series. Some of these have now dropped in price
considerably. The ones with the 256KB internal L2 cache are now real cheap.
The 512KB L2 are still a little pricey. The Pro is excellent for Linux and I
would imagine are also great for NT. These do not have MMX and I would think
that you are probably not looking for MMX capability at this time. WINDOZE
98 would probably be best with MMX capability. You will have to go to P-II
for this and make sure the MB supports MMX and the CPU is MMX type. If you
can live without MMX and/or 98/ME, I would look at the Pro. If you want to
run more that 64MB of RAM, it is advisable to get a Pro with 512k of L2.
This is because 256k will only cache to 64MB. But this is no biggy if you
are not looking for blazing speed for memory above 64MB. Also if you want to
spend a little more, and wish to use NT 4.0 and/or Linux, consider getting a
dual Pro processor MB. You can get these with 0,1,or 2 CPUs used at very
decent prices. You can always add the second CPU later, but as I recall,
they also have the CPUs in matched pairs for better performance. The Pros
typically come in 150MHz to 200MHz but were easily overclocked for faster
speeds. One of the best MBs were the Tyan series of TomCat boards. I see a
lot of these listed on ebay. These will scream with Linux. Since NT also has
multiple CPU capability and does not have PnP crap and MMX crap built-in,
these will also probably scream for NT. These are a lot faster and better
than Pentium IIs for linus even though you can get higher speed P-II chips.
This is because Intel optimized the P-II and later chips for WINDOZE crap.
The Pros were not, plus you can use more than one CPU. The Pro is especially
good for multiple CPU operating. Most stuff I have read say that you do not
get very much inprovement above 4 CPUs. There are MBs available for the Pro
for up to 6 CPUs. There may have been some for even more, but believe that
the max number that can be used with the Pro is 8 CPUs. If you want to stay
away from MS crap for operating systems and applications, the Pro is an
excellent choice. Even OS/2 supports multiple CPUs. The multiple CPU boards
also usually have more SIMM sockets. Typically 8 instead of the usual 4.
Some may even have more than 8 SIMM sockets. The Pro is also a screamer for
DOS.
If you want to go with 98/ME then I would suggest a P-II with MMX or better
CPU. There are several excellent MBs available for low cost if you want a
decent speed system. There are many K6-II 3D and K6-III up to about 500 or
550MHz and some of these can be overclocked to 600Mhz and a FSB 100Mhz with
AGP-II with both SIMM and DIMM sockets. There are a few with the AT format
available. Since most people currently using 386, 486, 5x85, K5, 586, and
P-I use an AT format chassis (box) this would be an excellent choice. Some
of these MBs have both AT and ATX capability. However some need the 8 slot
chassis instead of the 7 slot chassis in order to use the AGP slot. You
don't have to use the AGP slot if you don't want to or if you have a 7 slot
chassis you should be able to use the ATX format MB. You can also look at
some of the earlier MBs that have FSBs of 83Mhz and 66MHz that will run
lower speed K6-II CPUs. These are also getting cheap now and many used ones
are now available. Some use SIMM and some use both SIMM and DIMM sockets.
Some of these are good to about 350MHz and might even be able to be
overclocked and use 83MHz and/or 100MHz FSB. Most were 66MHz FSB but had
undocumented FSB to 83MHz. I have seen K6-II MBs go for around $50-$60 used
on ebay with CPU. I have also seen many on Yahoo as well. Some of these
cheaper ones are 133MHz to about 200MHz. These are also highly rated for
Linux. Some have AGP and some do not. Most of the older ones do not have AGP
or USB. If you can live without AGP and/or USB, there are many very good
bargains available.
I would say that the K5 is somewhere in between a P-I and P-II. I do not
recall whether or not these had MMX capability. I remember reading something
about K-5 and MMX, but at that time I was only running DOS and Linux and was
not at all interested in MMX. If you are considering a K-5 and want MMX, you
should research this. the AMD site should give you all of this information
and recommended MBs. Also research the AMD site for K-6-II/III for features
and recommended MBs.
I have a bunch of sites I check on for overclocking and compatibility issues
with MBs, CPUs and Memory modules. You can find these sites using a serch
engine. Search for things like "overclocking" "K-5 motherboard" (use
quotes) (also try mainboard in place of mother board) "K-6 motherboard" (use
quotes) and similar searches. Toms hardware site is a good one to check, I
don't have the URL but believe it is tomshardware.com. The overclocking one
should lead you to several sites including 486/5x86, P-1, P-11, 686, 586,
K-5, K-6, P-III, K-7, etc.
Note: Many of these high perfomance MBs are still available in AT format.
You do not have to buy a new case, but I would suggest, you look for K-6 and
later MBs with both ATX and AT capability for future upgrade of
case/chassis. K-5 and P-II may also have these MBs, these MBs are sometimes
referred to as BT board. Be sure to check and see if these BT boards with
AGP sockets will work in both AT and ATX cases. If not then you can use the
MB anyway, but use a PCI video card. You can get these cards cheap and later
upgrade to an AGP card after you get a new ATX case.
Personally, if you are trying to decide between NT and 98, I would go with
NT 4.0 as it is much more stable and you do not get that hiddeous Big Bad
Blue Screen! My resources seem to go a lot further with NT and NT uses a
real kernel and is probably much more 32 bit capable than 98. You do not
have to get the NT server version. You can use the workstation version. You
also have limited admin capabilities with the WS version. (Good for
security.) NT also has better security than does 95/98/ME. However, if you
want real security, go with Linux
If you know nothing about Linux or are afraid of Linux, but would like to
check it out, try DOSLinux. It is mainly for the internet and does not
include compilers, many script languages and much of the complicated aspects
of Linux. If you have a good understanding of DOS you can use this. It also
has features to automattically set up your internet connection and other
utilities. It is a small distribution of Linux and is based on Slackware
distribution. It uses the Slackware packages and is designed to run on FAT
16. You can simply install it on your DOS drive and the start it using a
batch file after booting to DOS. I don't know the sizes of the current
version. The one I have is about 9MB compressed and uses about 22MB of drive
space. I have added several Slackware packages to it. I believe the site
also has the Netsacpe package for it and has the module packages. (For
sound, SCSI drivers, file systems, etc.)
The author of this distribution also includes information to install
x-windows and has all the preliminary directories and files already
installed and documentation for what X-11 packages are needed and where to
download them. X-windows is a GUI interface for Linux and you can even get
frontends for it to make it look and feel like WINDOZE 9x.
I plan on setting up a WEB page for DOSLinux and have written several
articles for it and tell how to convert DOSLinux over to the native Linux
ext2 file system. Also a trick on how to use the WINDOZE 3.x Swapfile for
both Linux and WINDOZE 3.x and how to make a Linux swap partition and use it
in both WINDOZE 3.x and Linux. I wrote these several years ago for echoes on
FIDONET and other similar message nets. I describe the files needed and
where to get them, (actually, they are Slackware packages and very easy to
download.) I also have written some stuff about installing and using
x-windows. I know a lot of people are interested in Linux and see what it
can do. There are several so-called mini versions of Linux, but I think for
a beginner, DOSLinux is the best, because if uses FAT 16 filesystem and you
can install it and run the auto install programs and after reading the docs,
you can install it and be connected to the internet within 10 minutes. Takes
longer to read the docs that it does to install it. He also gives you very
good documentation for using the various programs that comes with it. Best
of all, Linux is free. The book I got with my first linux package (Info
Magic Tool Kit) is also available for download and is based on the Slackware
distribution. There were a few errors in it, but basically all the important
stuff is correct. The book itself was based on earlier versions of the Linux
kernel and some of the restrictions that it had back then no longer applies.
For example, the book states that the maximum swap file/drive is 8 or 16MB
(don't remeber which it said) but is now 128MB for each one. It also states
that you can have up to 16 swap files/partitons. However, I tried 17 one
time and they all showed up okay, but I could not load all this vertual
memory to see if all 17 worked. I am not certain what the minum
requirements are for his latest version, but you must have at least a 386sx
and 2MB RAM to run Linux. Most likely his latest version requires 4MB RAM
and 8 MB for x-windows, unless something has changed. This has been the
requirements need for Slackware distribution for many years. But I would
highly recommend 16MB and to get by without any swapfile or swap partiton
32MB should do it for a single computer. You can get by with 24MB, but one
time I really had the system loaded and ran just a little above 24MB and
needed to add another 8MB of swap space of the fly. There is also a DRDOS
hard drive image available for Linux at the DRDOS sites and get the DOSEMU
(DOS EMUlator) from many sources. You can then run DOS apps under Linux. I
know that my communications program Terninate 5.0 will run under it and many
other programs run just fine.
There are even WINDOZE emulators available, but I have not checked to see
how far the free ones have developed. There are commercial version which
seem to run fine. SUN has developed one that seems to work good. It's called
Wabi or something similar and was being distributed by Caldera the last time
I checked on it.
SUN also has it's OS available now for the x86 platform and it is free, if
you want to spend the time to DL it (if you can) but would recommend buying
the CD as is also includes Star Office and a bunch of other goodies and
believe you also get a printed manual with the CD. (Star Office is about
65MB compressed to DL. I dl'd the latest version for WINDOZE and works in
both 9x and NT. I have not dl'd the latest version for Linux, I still have
an older version for it. Star Office is awesome. It includes just about
everything you need for the internet and business. It includes: internet
browser, mailer, spreadsheet, database, wordprocessor, Java script laguage,
and much more. It can also inport and export many different types of files
including things like Word perfect, MS Word, Excel spreadsheets, Lotus,
dbase, etc, etc. and many version of each. (Even some ancient ant antique
versions!.) It is also free. Check the SUN web page for more information.
SUN just recently sent me some snail mail about a new free tool kit CD for
Forte. This is a business toolkit for the internet. I have not had a chance
to order their OS CD yet, but will probably do so within the next year.
I need to upgrade my system to have more space and capabilities to play with
this new stuff. I have an old ISA S3 video card, need more HDD space, more
memory and a 56k modem or a DSL card to get some decent speed. I currently
have a 28.8k VFP modem. I want to upgrade to a K-6-II 450 or better AT MB
with 128 to 256MB RAM and either a PCI or AGP video card and a screamming
SCSI-III ultrawide/LVD comtroller and a few 9GB UW 40 to 80MB/s drives. Not
quite ready to spend the big bucks for 160MB/s system or go to fiber optic
drives yet;-)
Pat
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