Stop Microsoft
Miscellaneous => The Lounge => Topic started by: Aloone_Jonez on 23 January 2006, 18:01
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Don't know where to post this as it relates to multiple OSes I hope the lounge is alright.
I'm going to my a cheap PC off a freind for
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Windows 3.1 will ONLY run under MS-DOS, anthing else, it doesn't work.
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I've managed to run it under DOSBox which doesn't use MS-DOS before, but it didn't work with DOSEmu even though I did follow the instructions.
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windows 98 includes an ms dos and i have heard that people have successfully run windows 3.11 simply by exiting windows 98 to MS DOS and starting windows 3.11 although i have never done this myself. I would suggest that you install the windows 3.11 on a separate fat16 partition, but probably put windows 98 on there first. the reason is, windows 98 will use a fat32 filesystem, but it can read fat16. This means windows 98 will be able to see the win3.11 partition, but not vice versa, and with these old versions of windows they really want to think they are on the first drive, so if you have windows 98 on the first partition, then windows 3.11 on the second one, both will think they are on the first partition (if you get me)
next, you will have problems installing freedos and windows 3.11 onto different partitions, because both will see the other's partitions. also remember that fat16 becomes more inefficient for storing files, the larger the filesystem is, so above a couple of hundred MB there's not a lot of point, hence your FreeDOS (if it is fat16) and win3.11 partitions shouldn't go above that size. My advice for installing windows 3.11 is this: install msdos first, then install windows, then install DR-DOS into the same DOX folder that you put MSDOS into, over the top of it. There are several reasons for this: first DR-DOS is better and has more utilities (and the same ones are better than their MS equivalents in my opinion), including ones written for windows. the windows ones will only get installed if windows is detected by the DR-DOS installer, however you need a DOS on there in the first place to install windows with.
all that's from memory and may be a couple of years out of data, but since it deals with ten year old software this might not be too much of a problem, but anybody feel free to correct me on this.
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FreeDOS
Windows 3.1
Windows 98
BeOS
Linux - haven't decided yet Ubuntu with XFce, Vector Linux possibly both.
Don't know what else, always I'm open to suggestions.
ReactOS (http://www.reactos.com/)? GNU/Hurd (http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html) (only if you don't mind all the fucking about and reading, and then the fact that it's kind useless (but cool))? FreeBSD (it wouldn't be a bad idea to give a go at mastering FreeBSD on this box if you have the time, it's a very nice system and has nice documentation)? Haiku (http://haiku-os.org) (definetly an OS to watch out for in the future, dunno how usable it is ATM)?
Or would I be better off doing things the other way round and connecting this newly aquired machine when it's running Linux to the Internet and using it as a server for my XP/Linux box? That way I can install a darn good free Linux firewall to keep the bugs away.
If you do that (which I think would be the best idea):
When I've installed all this stuff how can I connect it to my other machine which dual boots XP and Ubuntu (the latter might change) and use it as a server?
Use a crossover cable (ethernet) if you only wanna connect two machines. I think you'll need two ethernet cards in the crappy machine, one for broadband in and one for connecting up to the other computer (using the crossover cable). Once the crappy machine is online then you'll need to set the default gateway in the other machine to the IP address of the crappy one (the networking wizard will help I think), and you might need to note the addresses of your DNS and set them manually once the gateway is setup. Take a note of Google's IP address, 64.233.187.99, it always helps me when it comes to DNS stuff.
I'm dodgey on the networking stuff, so don't take my word for any of this.
- I only want to do this with Linux as Windows 98 is far too buggy and I don't want to run anti-virus on it.
Disable the broadband in NIC in the device manager, but then you won't be able to get online on the other box without stealing the broadband cable when Windows 98 is running (but you'd have no firewall anyhow).
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BeOS is pretty cool, Its pretty fast on a 266Mhz CPU, but about after 1Ghz it doesnt seem to get any faster
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Windows 3.1 will ONLY run under MS-DOS, anthing else, it doesn't work.
DR-DOS/OpenDOS and IBM PC-DOS are fine for Windows 3.1
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Probably because it was designed for older hardware, MS-DOS was pretty fast on my old 486 and it's not that much faster on my 1800MHz machine, also Neopaint (a MS-DOS graphics program) isn't much faster on my new machine compared to my old p200. If software isn't built to take advantage of new hardware then it won't be much faster when run on it.
piratePenguin,
I'll have a go with ReactOS and I'll try the networking thing once I get everything else working.
Calum,
Why do you recommend installing MS-DOS first?
This isn't possible for me as I can't find the disks, I might have a go with MS-DOS 7.x which comes with Windows 98. DR-DOS also sounds a good idea though, it free (FOSS/as in bear)? Would you recommend it over FreeDOS or should I go for both?
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DR-DOS is not free as in speech/OSS. It is commercial software and still being sold. However, you can (AFAIK) still download it free of charge for personal use. Check on your favorite search engine.
A rather nice DOS...
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Instead of fucking around with all these other DOSes, why not make your own? Probably a lot harder than I'm making it sound, but more fun and beneficial to you in the longrun. Taking apart a free DOS and putting it back together would probably teach you more about computers than an EE program at MIT.
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Got the PC now and I'm currently installing Windows 98, next will be Windows 3.1. I want to get the MS OSes over out of the way as I know they don't like to know they have competition.
One thing I've noticed is it's taking fucking ages to detedct and install all the plug and prey stuff, I'm just going to leave to it's own devices amd come back later.
Now I don't know how the hell I'm going to connect this to the Internet, our cable connection is downstairs in the dining room and this PC is upstairs in my bedroom. I don't want to drill hole in walls so I think I'll get one of those USB network hubs that work though the mains cabels or possibly Wi-Fi but it needs to be :tux: friendly, can anyone suggest anything?
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USB based internet is generally NOT Linux friendly ... I figured that out long ago ... but most WiFi cards -- for laptops at least -- are Linux friendly. In my house I just ran an ethernet cable down the stairs ... yeah it looks ghetto with all the tape and everything, but I don't give a fuck ... no one comes to my house anyway ... and if they come and complain I'll just kick their asses out of my house :D ;)
Maybe you can get a WiFi hub that connects via ethernet ... that would be the best option if you don't wanna run cables.
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Actually, since the Wifi transmitter is going to transmit from the downstairs computer, presumably a Win machine, it can be a USB transmitter, although that would be much slower than Wifi.
Your Wifi receiver should be ethernet attached, though. And inside your house, a homemade boosting antenna wouldn't be a bad idea. Of course you want to secure your network, so your neighbors don't try to surf on your connection.
For information about cards and other devices and their compatibility with Linux,
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/
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Secure WiFi ???!!! I never heard of that ... all I know is WEP can be cracked in under 5 minutes ;)
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I used to get free DSL because one of my neighbors had a wireless network, and it didn't even require a login. As much as I appreciated it, I wouldn't suggest anyone configure their network that way.
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I'll keep your suggestions in mind but I'll concentrate on setting up the bare essentials first.
One thing I've rememberd about Windows 98 it it's nowhere near as stable as Linux or XP, in the final phase of the installation resulted in a BSOD but I rebooted and all was well and the install wasn't damaged due to this minor fuckup as it was only detecting the plug and play stuff which I've managed to configure manually
Just one observation about Windows 98, it's fucking fast at lots of things, it beats both XP and even Linux at somethings, like starting programs for example. I think this is because it's designed to run on old hardware and the crappy old DOS based kernel is very simple,it doesn't have to check permissions or anything, but it's really bad at multi-tasking and some operations like reading CDs are much slower, even though it has the same speed CD drive as my XP box.
I've had lot's of fun downloading and installing the video driver (640x480 was unbearable) which requied DirectX 8+ so I tried to download the latest version (9.0 if I remember) from the MS website but they wouldn't let me download it that would be far too simple. First I had to download a crappy little program to generate a key proving I haden't stolen XP. I entered it into a form on their site, then (to my horror) when I clicked the download button it didn't download the package but a shitty binary download and install program.
How the fuck was I supposed to download it burn it to CD and install on my doze 98 box?
Answer? Fuck it, I didn't bother, I downloaded a legacy DirectX 8.1 package from another site and installed it.
Anyway ranting aside (I hope I haven't bored you too much) I'm having problems with OpenOffice 2.0.1. The install seemed to go well but when I try to load it, it performs an illegal operation, wtf, I've re-installed it but it makes no difference?
Does anyone know how I can fix this?
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When I used 98, illegal errors were very common. It's pretty much unavoidable, just a price you pay.
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An illegal operation is when a program is trying to access more memory than Windows wants to give it. If the program can create a scratch or temp space, it will use that instead - that is why Illustrator and Photoshop almost never give this error. Otherwise, the program tries to steal some memory from Windows itself.
In Windows XP, the core OS is constantly on the lookout for a memory theif, and simply turns it away, and your computer goes into thrashing mode, which is basically an infinite loop where the program wants to take memory and Windows won't give it. When a program in XP is not responding, often, this is what has happened.
In Windows 98, Windows only checks its memory allocation sporadically, and sometimes a program can get in there and take some. Eventually, though, the core OS will catch on and kill the process responsible. Now, when I say core OS, I mean something like the kernel or IO system, because as we all know, Windows Explorer and the Desktop and IE can all pull illegal operations. Actually, IE was the king of illegal operations, in my experience.
Ways to fix this - get Linux :D
Seriously, though, the more memory you have to spare, the better. And set your paging file size correctly. Adobe recommends a min paging file size of (RAM/2)+12, and max size of 2*RAM. So for 512MB, that's 268 min and 1024 max.
Also, even more esoteric, you can adjust the memory allocation directly. One thing that you can do in the config.sys file and autoexec.bat file is allocate and deallocate low and hi memory. Fucking with this without knowing exactly what you're doing can screw things up bad, so I wouldn't recommend this until you've had read a whole book on DOS.
btw, this perspective of the "illegal operation" is childish and generalized - therefore, its only purpose is to illustrate concepts to people who aren't familiar with them. Anyone who already understands memory allocation procedures in Windows will probably find this version is ridiculously dumbed down.
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Linux isn't as fast as win95 and 98.
I have a DSL frugal install and win2000 is just as fast, although that uses a compressed image (but I'm sure its faster compressed because the harddrive is so slow).
http://www.oldversion.com/ is a great site for restoring old copies of windows.
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Yes Windows 98 is faster, it boots faster and loads programs faster, but you pay for this with poorer secuity and stability.
Sorry I didn't give enough information:
Crashrep caused an invalid page fault in module kernel32.dll.
So it looks like OO had already crashed then crash recovery program failed.
Worker,
I can agree with you that this is a memory allocation but I strongly disagree that simply throughing memory at this will solve the problem. I have 256MB installed and this was a hell of a lot when Windows 98 was released when 64MB was typical for a reasonably good machine and I've installed OO 2.0 on a 64MB machine at college with no problems. Both of my systems are far from short of memory and just to prove you wrong I've disabled virtual memory on both of them and they still run smoothly. My XP machine will load OpenOffice 2.0.1 and I've also got Thunderbird and Opera running with five tabs open, and all is well it's only using 123MB - there's still another 133MB free (whoops I need to subtrach 8MB for my on-board graphics, well still 125MB free).
So if this isn't a low memory problem it must be a memory allocation problem which is due to Windows 98 being shit. I know the obvious solution is Linux or indeed even a Windows NT variant but that would be boring I want lot's of OSes and the beauty of Windows 98 is I can run all of my old DOS games and OpenOffice on one platform, if I can get the latter to install. I might try re-installing Windows 98, but I think I'll take this one to the OpenOffice forum first.
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My experience with 98 is that it's faster up until the point you install ANYTHING.. at ALL or spend any time online. Then it begins it's dragging along like that guy from nantucket :D. also I've noticed that 98 performs better on Coppermine Intel chips and P2s than it does on P4s or AMDs comparatively to Linux. Although it's my understanding that P4s were almost a downgrade hehe. It's a desktop OS, what do you expect? It's GREAT if you plan on not networking at all.
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As far as stuff affecting the speed of Winodows I think it depends on what you install, fonts slow it down loads and so do shitty 3rd party pieces of software that clog the registry up. OpenOffice shouldn't give me any problems in this respect, I also plan to install ABIWord, 7 Zip, Inksape, Ghost Script and Ghost Script viewer, Acrobat reader.
Don't worry I don't plan to connect it directly to the Internet and it I do it won't be directly, it'll be via my XP/Linux box.
One thing I've noticed though is the ATI Rage card rules, it's only a 650MHz AMD but it kicks my 1800MHz Intel machine's arse into orbit when it comes to graphics. I think I buy a cheap graphics card - anything's got to be better than my shitty on-board adaptor.
My next OS installation will be a Linux, I don't know whether I'll be Ubuntu or Vector Linux SOHO, I think I'll go for the latter first and see how I get along.
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Aloone, I was wondering - why are you bothering with the headaches of '98 for the functionality of DOSBox (http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/download.php?main=1)? I've not had a problem with it; additionally, I can say that it emerges neatly under Gentoo, having added it myself.
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http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php?page=SystemRequirements
How fast's your PC?
It's only a 650MHz AMD - no way near powerful enough to handle protected mode games.
Also try running the classic DOS Quake under DOSBox and you'll see what I mean - even on 3.2GHz when run at 320x200 it's too fucking slow!
One thing I am experimenting with is DOSEmu (http://www.dosemu.org/) it uses virtualisation instead of 100% emulation so it's a hell of a lot faster (Quake runs at full speed at a reasonable resolution) but the price you pay is compatability and it's not only DOS stuff I'm having problems with, some Win 9x programs won't run on an NT OS.
Anyway I think I've discovered the problem, I think lots of the stuff I've being trying to install requires Windows 98 SE like MS Word/Excel/Power Point Viewers for example. I'll concentrate on Linux for now then I'll aquire a copy of Win 98SE from a friend.
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Now Windows 98 setup one big fuck-off 20GB FAT32 partition and I've managed to resize it down to 2.68GB. I want to create many partitions for my OSes to live on but I'm having problems, I can't seem to create any more than 5, is this normal?
Is there a way to have any more or I could just connect another hard drive though it'd be a pain in the arse?
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You can only have 4 primary partitions.
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Oh bollocks!
You say "primary partitions" can I have more secondary partitions then?
If I install Vesctor Linux on an ext3 primary partition can I then use a secondary partition for the swap?
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Yep. OS'es like their boot partitions on primary, but you can share a swap partition, and it can be secondary.
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Now Windows 98 setup one big fuck-off 20GB FAT32 partition and I've managed to resize it down to 2.68GB. I want to create many partitions for my OSes to live on but I'm having problems, I can't seem to create any more than 5, is this normal?
Is there a way to have any more or I could just connect another hard drive though it'd be a pain in the arse?
YOu can have seven.
Three primary partitions. One extended partition containing four logical paritions.
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primary 1 (hda1)
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primary 2 (hda2)
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primary 3 (hda3)
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EXTENDED (hda4)
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log (hda5)
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log (hda6)
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log (hda7)
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log (hda8)
==-----------------------
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hda4 is not accessable directly because it is only a container for the logical partitons.
Even if you make hda3 your extended partion, the logical partitions start numbering at hda5 anyway.
This is, of course, using the MSDOS disklabel system that almost every PC uses. It's inferior, but you must use it if you want an MS operating system on it.
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You can put an entire linux install on logical paritions. Even the boot partition can live on a logical partition if you use GRUB as your bootloader.
FreeBSD needs a primary partition because it breaks it up into "slices".
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Uhhh ... I've tried putting the whole Linux install on a logical partition and it didn't work ... it worked only with the boot partition as primary ... yeah I used GRUB
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It's inferior
It is fucking old shite! What's the alternatives (and I don't care about Windows)? What way do Macs work?
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What the fuck Vector Linux SOHO is taking fucking ages to install!
This is my second attempt, the first resulted in an error message like:
Something has gone wrong but don't worry, press enter to return to the shell, if you want the user friendly set up program back then type /sbin/vsetup(can't remember the last bit properly)
Fucking hell this is the kind of shitty error message I would expect from Windows XP not Linux!
Anyway I got setup to check the install CD (which I'd forgotton to do the last time) and it said it was ok, now I've set it to install again and gone away and left it, I've just had a look three hours later and it's still fucking going and it's only 65% complete. Bloodyhell I could do a direct install from the Internet with other distros (is it possible?) at this rate! :mad:
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Anyway I got setup to check the install CD (which I'd forgotton to do the last time) and it said it was ok, now I've set it to install again and gone away and left it, I've just had a look three hours later and it's still fucking going and it's only 65% complete. Bloodyhell I could do a direct install from the Internet with other distros (is it possible?) at this rate! :mad:
Sure you can do a network install from the internet. I did it with Debian once, and other distros also have minimal boot CDs for installation that fetch the latest packages from the repositories.
Some distros setup shells on different virtual terminals for logging stuff during installation. Try pressing CTRL+ALT+(F2,F3,F4 etc.) to see if there's one setup on there...
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Don't know if it's worth the trouble just connecting this box to the net would be a pain.
If this install fails I'll reburn the disc - I'm using re-wrightables here otherwise I don't know how many CDs I would've wasted.