**Pic** Hmmm... now I just need to get a cheap Box off Ebay!

[Mike 01Hawk]

I'm helping a friend with his 'ancient' Gateway PIII 500mhz (poor guy had over 500 instances of spy/ad ware ). Well after getting it all up to shape... I was pretty amazed at just how snappy it was Even loaded up XP and upgraded his mem from 128 to 330 (128+138+64). Makes me wonder why I droped $1k a couple years back for a Doom3 machine since all I do now a days is surf (w/ the occasional DII:LoD run).

Anyway, so working with this beast makes me all sappy nostalgic. While I was going thru my old PC stuff to get him a NIC I came across these:


A rush of my good ole Highschool days flooded my head.

I had visions of Syndicate, 7th Guest, blah blah.. you know the story.

Well my jaw dropped when I saw that there were some decent P200-233 boxes on Ebay going for like $0.01 + ~$20 shipping. I figure heck.. I'm a glutton for punishment.. although I remember the wonderful sense of accomplishment once I figured out how to make a Boot Menu.

My problem though is in the past when I've used emulators or what not.. my ADD kicks in I guess (either that or I just can't stand the low resolution) and I quickly stop playing the game after oh.. 5 min of tinkering. I'm hoping that w/ a true Dos machine w/ the time I invest it'll be more enjoyable (having sound and what not and none of the other emulation/compatiblity glitches will be nice too).

I've got one question though. Even though it says MS-DOS 6 Upgrade I'll be able to do an install from scratch with it right? I won't need Dos 5.0 will I?

Oh and one last thing. I fubard my 110meg PC Brand HD back in the day. The CSR was uh.. slightly pissed. But he aggreed to do a floppy backup for me if I sent in some floppies... bout 2 weeks later I got 41 floppies at my door I'll have to re-install it just as a little 'Time Capsule" reward... god I hope all 41 disks are still good!!!

Image Fixed W*W_K, Credits to dosraider for a smaller pic

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Syndicate was an awesome game; I'm still in the process of getting The 7th Guest... Hey, you wouldn't happen to have The 11th Hour would you?

As for your find, nice work, I was still using a Win 3.1 PC back in '99.

As for your question, errr not sure. Umm, well, there is only one way to find out. Nahh just joking, one of our other members will probably swing by later and be able to tell you.

[Mike 01Hawk]

For some reason I never got the 11th Hour... kinda ironic considering all the coin I dropped to upgrade from a 386sx to a 486sx just to play 7th Guest (I had the original deployment 7th Guest that came w/ the VHS tape w/ the background info on Trilobyte... but loaned it to a school 'friend' that promptly STOLE it from me... finally had to go to his parents where his mom just cut me a check. I went and re-bought it, but it was the plain version )

Anyway.... man.. my wallet is going to SUFFER if I go thru Ebay on all these games I want... and I'm a stickler though, I'll want the box art, the manuals, everything.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

No need to resort to eBay on those games, I can find most of them for you.

[Wally]

Im still annoyed with myself that i lost my only legit version of windows 3.11 on CD along with MS-Dos 6.22 and 7

[dosraider]

Mike 01Hawk, about your question if you will be able to install it from scratch:
Yes and no,

There were more than one version at that time, I myself still have my original ( yes I'm that old) Dos5/6/6.22 disks,
=> Dos 5 says upgrade and can be installed from scratch
=> Dos 6.0 says nothing but IS an upgrade from 5
=> Dos 6.22 says upgrade but can be used to upgrade AND install's also from scratch.
So at the end you will have to try it out.

About W3.1, you d'better look for W3.11, also known as WFW(WindowsForWorkgroups) That's more stable than the 3.1 version, AND you even can use it to establish a STABLE LAN towards a XP compy (I do so), use a PCI LAN card 10/100, some REALTEK or so, easily findable, mine is a REALTEK RTL 8139, works as a charm. You even can use a big NTFS shared HD partition on your XP compy through it . XP takes care of the reading/writing, and your progs on your secondary PC regards it as a FAT partition......
All drivers for the older PCI LAN cards are still easy to find googl'ing around.

AND THE NEXT TIME YOU POST A PIC SIZE IT DOWN TO 640X480 OR POST A THUMBFUCKINGNAIL THX

[Mike 01Hawk]

Well crud... looking at the disks again.. they say Dos 6.0 and then 6.2, not 6.22... dur. And dang it.. guess I gotta get win3.11 as well...

Oh and ha.. sorry bout the large pic.. my 2405FPW spoils me sometimes

Thanks for the pointers on the Networking to an XP machine.. that's good to know that I can look at my files on my Big Bertha. Newb question though... Installing 3.11 is just an application right? Installing it on top of the 6.22 partion, if I don't run "win" and have 'os typ boot up files, it'll act like I just have Dos 6.22 on the pc right? I'm thinking dual boot Win98SE since I have the CD and then Dos 6.22/Win3.11

Thanks.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

It didn't stretch my screen either, WIDESCREEN BABY! I just love saying that.

[dosraider]

About the pic: it didn't stretch my screen neither, but some are on dial-up, and not all have a big screen, some thoughts for others are usually considered as having good manners .....

About W3.xx: it isn't a full OS, it's more a GUI (Graphical-User-Interface) even if it has its own drivers for screen-sound-LAN-others....
So the PC is starting up in DOS and you can go through to Windows. You can start auto in Windows when adding as last line in your autoexec.bat: win, but that's your choice.

So: you install MSDos, and Win on top of it.

About dual-booting with W98x : no problems whatsoever.

The usual system setup:
Bootmanager,
A first Primairy FAT 16 with Dos/W3x , a 200 MB is enough
The second primairy FAT32 with W98SE, 1Gb is enough.
Extended partition with FAT16 logical, serves as a "swap" partition accessible from DOS AND W98SE
eventually more logical partitions FAT32, only accessisble through W98SE, advantage is that you can make your partitions bigger in FAT32 without too much loss regarding cluster size.

[Mike 01Hawk]

Woot... I was the high bidder on http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 8785772664

Specs for when this thread is old and dead and the ebay link dosen't work anymore:
Brand: Packard Bell "Multimedia R515"
Processor Type: Intel Pentium MMX
Processor Speed: 233 MHz
Memory (RAM): 256 MB
Hard Drive Capacity: 6 GB
Operating System: Linux
Primary Drive: CD-ROM
Bundled Items: Keyboard, Modem, Mouse, Network Card
Condition: Used

I was like , Some other guy hit the starting bid of .99, but I set my limit @ $10 and won it for $1.50 + $13.11 shipping for a whopping total of $14.61. After listing fees, packaging, gas to the post office, personal time invested I just don't see HOW the seller could be turning a profit.. eh.. oh well.. not my problem.

I've been trying to find some specs/docs about this machine but I'm not having any luck. Looks like the guy was telling the truth when he said he was unsure about the amount of Ram cause from what I've found, that PC only supports up to 128 off of crucial.com

Gonna try at first to go w/ the disks I have or Restore a backup I have back in 1992 off 41 disks...see how that goes.. I'm sure I'll be a tweaker though and plop down the $40+ for Win 3.11 and Dos 6.22 + Manuals off ebay.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

"Winning bid: US $1.50" Nice score.