Okay, another successful experiment: Windows NT 4.0 Workstation installed on the PS/2 Model 70 386 with a 486 DX/33 upgrade! Let's talk about it in a 🧵



So, first, just like when we installed NT 3.51, settings are important. Here are my settings for my McIDE-CF and ESDI hard drive. Channel A (secondary) is my CF card. Channel B (primary) is where I connected up a CD-ROM on the slave channel. And the ESDI is primary!

Alright, admittedly I did a TERRIBLE job trying to copy and preserve these disks! What did I do wrong? Well, pretty much everything. Let's talk about what I missed and just how terrible I did in a 🧵

https://twitter.com/RetroTechChris/status/1787618075782603031

So, first, I used a 1.2MB drive for 360K disks. While this isn't a totally terrible sin, we'll be much better off using machines with 360K drives due to the size of the read heads of the drive. As such, I've enlisted my Tandy 1000 HX and Compaq Portable II to help!

After several days of trial and error, I finally got Windows NT 3.51 up and running on my IBM PS/2 Model 70 386. It's actually quite zippy and a well-suited OS for this! I'll hit a few highlights of the setup process in a 🧵 here. Let's talk about it!



So, first of all, for days and days, when I went to install either NT 4.0 or NT 3.51, I was getting this dreaded screen. I tried different versions of NT, different service packs, no luck. As it ends up, all of my problems were self inflicted...

@KooKiz sent me some disks to read.. all the way from France! Let's read them! 🧵



First disk in the drive, and we see contents!

The $2 optical drives are here! Let's try and test them out. I feel the Pacman PC will make a good test rig. Let's go! 🧵



So, here is the first drive. A 32X drive by Techmedia. Funny enough there was a Braveheart disk in the drive 😂. Looks like this drive doesn't want to recognize my test disk. Uh oh. Maybe we should open it up!

I recently picked up this laptop stack you see here. I had one goal in mind: get a working processor card for my LTE 5200. We talked about the LTE Elite 4/75CX earlier today, but let's talk about the LTE 5200s. And... oh man... I think one of them spent some time swimming! 🧵 So, we'll talk about the "fun one" first. It must have spent some time underwater. To get it apart, I had to DRILL out the screw you see here. It was quite the ordeal, but we go through it!

It's time for some updates on the PS/2 Model 70 386. This week, I got a ton of parts in to put it together and spent some time configuring it with DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11. And, it has been an adventure. Buckle up for a fun 🧵. Here we go!

So, first, I did get all of the components installed! Here is what the system looks like with everything populated. You'll notice that the ESDI hard drive is plugged in. More on that in a minute... spoiler alert.. it's good news!

Someone mailed me a tape to try and read and recover! Let's see how this goes.

So, first thing I tried to do was to put the tape in the drive. And what happened? The belt snapped!

I hadn't planned on it today, but I decided to go ahead and swap the slot load CD-ROM drive into my Deskpro 6000 in the basement! Let's talk about it.

So, the drive that was in there is actually a Phase-change Dual drive. I don't think these ever really caught on. It's a neat drive, but I prefer the slot load. More details on the Phase-change Dual drive here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-cha…

So, yesterday I was toying around with this HP T5550 thin client. From what I read, it was similar to the HP T5700 in specs. What I read was wrong 😂. This machine is a much better candidate for Windows 2000/XP. Let's talk about it!

https://twitter.com/RetroTechChris/status/1781394857740669054

So apparently, this system is based off of the Via VX900 chipset. This chipset also includes support for PCI Express. Yea... that's going to be a little late in the lifecycle for Windows 98 drivers to be readily available!

I picked up this Compaq Deskpro 2000 Pentium 233 MMX system at #VCFEast. Namely because I wanted the slot load optical drive out of it, and needed some the parts from it to complete another system. Let's have a look at it!





First of all, on bootup, settings are not being saved. The system needs an external battery installed. I see that someone tried to "patch" one in where the original onboard battery was. I have no idea why they did this when you can just add an external battery, but oh well!

I've started to dive into the #VCFEast haul! First up is this nice Pentium Pro Compaq Deskpro 6000. It has 64MB of memory, a CD-ROM, Iomega Jaz Drive, PCI SCSI controller, and a 20GB IDE HDD. Let's explore a bit and talk about setup!



So, first of all, I bought two Deskpros in anticipation of making one "good" one. I was hoping to swap the faceplates since this one had some broken tabs. No such luck, they are different sizes! I was at least able to swap the power button over!

Today, I got Windows for Workgroups 3.11 working on my Pentium II CompUSA PC. I don't know why I like to inflict this type of torture upon myself, but I do 😂. And, oh man, did I have problems. I'll talk about it in a thread here. First of all, this system has an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard, which... well... has its own limits and quirks. It certainly doesn't have the most configurable BIOS out there. But I didn't let that stop this madness. theretroweb.com/motherboards/s…

A few weeks back, we talked about PCI sound card compatibility in Windows 3.1x. And then I went and purchased an Aureal Vortex AU8820 sound card for like $10 bucks. Let's find out how well it works in DOS, Windows 3.11, and a few other OSes in a thread here!

https://twitter.com/RetroTechChris/status/1759304218291101818

First, you'll be pleased to know that this sound card works with Hannah Montana Linux. Okay, enough of that already... for now 😂. Gosh, that color scheme is beyond atrocious and hurts my eyes.

So, in the end, the Hannah Montana Linux install was a success (a flaky DVD drive was the cause of my problems). I'll be sharing more about some of the specifics I did to get the display set up & retro WarpStream configured so that I could bring you this clip. Speakers on. Enjoy! Alright, let's talk about how I did this, shall we? I'm going to use a VM, because, quite frankly, I'm tired of sitting at the desk 😂.

I finished up my Windows for Workgroups 3.11 install on the Pentium III PacMan PC this evening. Let's talk about it in a thread here... and I'll discuss some Win3.1x programs that you probably haven't seen before!

So, first, I had intended to do the standard Windows 3.11 install with applications. But then I had another idea: how about clone the Windows 3.11 VM that I have had since the dawn of time...I'd had this VM before I started collecting, I probably made it 10 years ago! So I did.

Installing Windows 3.11 For Workgroups on the PacMan PC today! The PCI sound card in this Pentium III system does present a challenge though. I thought I'd take a few mins and talk about PCI sound card compatibility for Win 3.1x in a thread, at least from my perspective! Let's go

So, first question I will get is "why install Windows for Workgroups 3.11 on a Pentium III?" I'm afraid I don't have a good answer, I just want to do it😂. Okay.. moving on... 😅

Some great news: I believe I have sorted all of the issues with my 486 VESA Local Bus PC! Let's talk about it! First, I posted a picture of my Trident TGUI 9440 card going nuts the other day. Well, as it ends up, the issue was "bad" or "incompatible" expansion memory. I removed it, and now the card works great (card is the one on the "bottom" in the first pic)

https://twitter.com/RetroTechChris/status/1753538204135793014

Who is familiar with the NABU? It's a computer from the 1980s that ran over the cable network. Several people wrote Adaptor software that runs on modem computers to bring it back to life. But did you know you can turn a retro computer into a NABU server? Let's talk about it!

So, first, you need hardware to connect to the NABU, and the standard that a lot of people use is the DTECH USB to RS422 adapter. This adapter is based on an FTDI chipset. And as luck would have it, FTDI has drivers for older OSes, including early MacOS 10 and Win98!

With all of the BIOS fun we had yesterday, I thought to myself: "Can I find a better BIOS for the FX-3000 motherboard in my Gateway 2000 with better hard drive support"? The answer is yes, and the answer, once again, is MR BIOS. Let's talk about it! So, getting started, here is the board, the BIOS socket, and the chipset. This motherboard is based on UMC's 82C48x chipset. And the BIOS is pin-compatible with the Winbond W27C512 EEPROM.

Playing with mTCP NetDrive today! Created a NetDrive server (top right) that you can copy files to either via Windows (bottom right) or DOS LANMAN (top left) & NetDrive (bottom left) will see them! NetDrive uses block storage, so I set it to read only. Should I make a tutorial? So, usually in the past, I have used DOS LAN Manager (LANMAN), so why use NetDrive? Namely, because LANMAN is a memory hog and is clunky. However, unlike NetDrive, it does give you file-level access, as opposed to block level access.