Evie's Conquests

[NickNick]

OMGness that Compaq is awesome! I so remember using that bloat ware Compaq stuff... Same exact midi player lol.....That was similar to the model Compaq Presario we had. It was the 4712. I still have that machine however the quantum bigfoot hdd went on it and I could no longer install the Compaq software on it. It now is running windows 98. Loved that Machine. Never needed a day of service in its life other than the hdd replaced. Which I did myself lol. Have all the original stuff for it as well speakers mouse keyboard even the Compaq disk package with all those software CD's, however the 1525 monitor was tossed by my Mom. If I was older then I would have saved it. Cool Machine.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, this one was about to be recycled until I intervened and saved it from such a fate...unfortunately I just got the machine and a keyboard, no software discs.

 

[EvilCapitalist]

There's got to be quite a lot of bloatware on there because '95, even if you get to '95 OSR2.5, doesn't take up all that much space on its own.  I ran '95B on a 486DX2/66 that only had a 730MB HD for a good while and never had much trouble with free space.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, I'm gonna try and strip it down as much as I can. I should be able to get down to just the included 95 stuff and the Compaq multimedia stuff without breaking anything...

 

[EvieSigma]

I seem to be attracting Windows 95 machines because today I got surprised with a mint Dell Dimension XPS P100c. All original except for the RAM (it got upgraded to 80MB at some point) and hard disk (I had to put one in), has a Trio 64+ video card and a SoundBlatster Vibra 16S ISA sound card.

Now if only I could figure out why I can't install Windows 95 on it. There's nothing wrong with the hard disk but the setup just gets stuck and starts thrashing the hard drive like crazy.

 

[CC_333]

I seem to be attracting Windows 95 machines

No kidding! I wish I was that's lucky, though I do seem to be attracting 2007-era MacBook Pros (I went from having no 17" PBG4s and MBPs to having too many :lol: )

Anyway, here's the obvious questions: what size is the disk? Did you partition/format it correctly?

It sounds like it's thrashing because of either a format problem or the disk is simply too large (95 RTM and OSR1 don't support FAT32 or FAT16 partitions larger than 2 GB, so make sure the partition(s) are ≤ 2 GB and FAT16). The disk thrashing is kinda weird, though. It sounds almost as if it's having trouble reading and/or writing to certain sectors (i.e., there's some bad sectors somewhere); maybe you should run a surface scan to see what it finds.

c

 

[EvieSigma]

First of all, I'm installing 95 OSR2 as its the only version of 95 I use. And second of all, I did in fact run a surface scan and it found zero bad sectors. It's a 2113MB Seagate drive that has a 2042MB DOS partition so it's just under 2GB.

 

[CC_333]

Hmm, that's weird!

Have you let it just sit there and thrash away for a bit? Maybe it'll work past it if it sits for awhile.

c

 

[EvilCapitalist]

'95 does a whole lot of disk thrashing during the installation when it's trying to detect non Plug and Play hardware though it's only supposed to be ~60 second max.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, this machine's done that for as long as I'm willing to put up with the racket, a lot longer than 60 seconds.

 

[EvieSigma]

How weird, all of my problems were because somehow the drive got partitioned as FAT16 instead of FAT32. Repartitioned it, made sure it was FAT32, and bam, it works!

 

[techknight]

I recall when I used to own a Compaq prolinea machine, that the bios was actually software that you had to install on a specific partition on the hard disk, which also is the system save partition for suspends/resumes. 

Good thing is the system setup/BIOS is full GUI with mouse support once your in it. But it did require the diskettes to get it going. Just like the PS/2 and their reference disks. It also had a very "Windows 3.1" interface. 

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, that's exactly how the BIOS is on that Compaq.

Right now I'm struggling with sound on that XPS though, I installed drivers for the sound card (A Soundblaster Vibra 16) but I get an "Incorrect MIDIPORT setting in the SYSTEM.INI file" error I can't seem to fix, I have no sound, and the card doesn't even show up in Device Manager.

EDIT: Turns out the Found New Hardware Wizard was the trick! Glorious sound!

 

[CC_333]

How weird, all of my problems were because somehow the drive got partitioned as FAT16 instead of FAT32. Repartitioned it, made sure it was FAT32, and bam, it works!

Hmm, that totally disproves my earlier advice. Forget what I said!

Apparently it's not valid for OSR2.x (aka, Win 95 B/C), but it should still be for RTM and OSR1 (95 A?) and everything before (DOS, Win 3.x, etc).

I recall when I used to own a Compaq prolinea machine, that the bios was actually software that you had to install on a specific partition on the hard disk, which also is the system save partition for suspends/resumes.

What a nuisance! Especially if the hard drive dies, which is not uncommon. What if the floppy drive (or the hard drive, for that matter) is an irreplaceable and unfixable proprietary part and it dies? Seems to me the computer pretty much dies with it, then.

c

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, I always install OSR2.5. FAT32 and stability improvements always make it worthwhile.

Of course, I probably could have just installed 98SE...

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, OSR 2.5 is, for all intents and purposes, 98 FE with slightly worse USB support (OSR 2.5 is basically identical to OSR 2.1, except the IE 4 installer is set to autorun at first boot.

98 does have some important enhancements over any version of 95, though, such as better USB support (especially in 98SE).

c

 

[Unknown_K]

Compaqs do have some kind of BIOS built in, but you have to install a setup program from floppy to configure everything else and that setup is saved on a hard drive partition. If the HD is dead and floppy drive is dead then you have problems, but all machines are like that. Dead PRAM batteries can keep Macs from working as well (same for MCA and EISA machines).

 

[Unknown_K]

For early Pentiums I think Win95A without IE installed is perfect since those machines don't have USB anyway.

FAT16 means you formatted the drive with DOS or equivalent and for 2GB or smaller HDs that perfectly fine.

 

[EvieSigma]

I do wish there was a way to strip IE out since I'll never use it but what can you do.

 

[Unknown_K]

Later versions of w95 integrated explorer with IE so it can't be removed without problems. Some people did figure out how to ditch the early IEs from 95.

My point was that the earlier lightweight W95 is good for original Pentium machines with low ram and slow CPU and still plays games fine. IE pre version 6 is pretty much useless anymore (heck the version on Win7 sucks enough I use firefox)