[mdlug] Completely replacing Windows 98se with Linux!

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: Garry Stahl
>On 07/30/2014 06:34 PM, Jeff Hanson wrote:
>> I wouldn't waste time on that system.  I've had systems recycled that
>> were much better than that.

> One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Indeed. It's funny how someone who owns and restores, say, a Model T Ford doesn't usually get asked "Why?", even though it's clear they're not going to commute to work every day in it.

I'm working on getting my oldest system back out of mothballs - the base is from 1993, with parts collected from later on to max it out.

Pentium Overdrive 83MHz (originally was a 486 DX/66 system)
32 MB RAM
VESA Local Bus
 - Diamond Stealth 64 1MB VGA (someday I might look into getting the chips to bump it to 2MB)
 - Tekram DC-680C caching IDE controller w/16MB RAM
    - Two IDE drives, one 3GB, forgot the size of the other
ISA Bus
- DCT2813E IDE controller
   - Creative 8x CD-ROM drive
- Conner 2Mbit ("high speed") Floppy controller
    - Colorado 350 QIC tape drive
    - 3.5" floppy drive
- 3Com 3C509B-combo Ethernet
- SoundBlaster 32 CT-3600 w/8MB RAM for AWE
- ISA adapter with one serial and one parallel port

Runs DOS and Windows 3.11, along with Slackware 3.1 (Might update that to Win95 and maybe Debian 2.1 or 2.2.)

Not even a toy by modern standards, but fun anyway. It's astonishing how much manual configuration those systems needed compared to the auto-configuring hardware of today. Nowadays you just stick in your PCI cards and USB peripherals and they negotiate amongst themselves. Back then you had to plan out what interrupts and memory addresses you'd be using for each card, and make sure nobody stomped on anyone else. Then you had to tell your software where you'd put them. Some auto-probing was possible but it'd hang the system as often as not.


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