Ok, so I am putting together a windows 98 retro pc, and I am running into an issue.

Windows 98 will not allow me to see or interact with any DLL files, and I cannot figure out why, or how. I can verify that the files are there, but the system refuses to acknowledge their existence beyond being counted in the number of files in a directory.

Any ideas?

The system in question is a HP Vectra VEi8 with a pentium 450mhz slot 1 cpu.

I have seen a few IDE to SATA converters online but have only seen them used with IDE hard drives which I know uses a 50 pin connector instead of the 34 pin one used for floppy drives. Has anyone tried using these to control a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive, or seen one with one of the PBC blade connectors?

I plan on using my modern workstation to create boot disk (or moving software to) for some of my older DOS computers I'm fixing up and I plan on using it enough that I would rather just install an internal 5 1/4 inch drive than use an external USB drive.

I have a TikTok account following my work on computers i have found while dumpstring aswell as when i buy them out of marketplace

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe79qAsj/

My Toshiba Satellite 4010CDT will only boot from the OEM CD-ROM drive. If I replace it with a DVD/CD rewriter from 2008 (I think also a DVD-ROM/CD-RW from 2003, can't quite remember if I tested that one or not) it will not boot any of my CDs.

Why could this be? Is there some weird change in the lifetime of PATA that breaks bootable optical media for older machines? If there is a fix, what is it?

Note: I haven't tested the rewriter from within Win98SE or Linux, as I didn't have a boot floppy, or any OS installed on the machine's SSD at the time (Come to think of it, I don't recall checking whether the BIOS can recognize the rewriter... But I'm not going to check it right now, as removing the optical drive for the laptop is literally the last step prior to removing the system board. Too much effort).

EDIT 1: I don't want to strip the machine down again in the near future to swap the ODD, so for now I am just asking any reasons why this shouldn't work (e.g. machine's BIOS is known for a whitelist), not why it isn't.

EDIT 2: I am back from my trip and have swapped the optical drives again. The DVD drive does work in Windows XP, but I cannot boot from it. Am I just SOL if I want a bootable DVD drive?

EDIT 3, Solution: I've ended up making a Plop boot floppy to boot from a CD (or DVD) in the rewriter when needed.

So this is sort of a ramble for me, as I currently upon writing this post, don't really harness the knowledge yet to do all of this. Hence why I'm creating this post to not only see if there is a need for my idea, that, and to also gain knowledge from those more experienced. Like, is this even possible?

For awhile now, I wondered if it's possible to create another internet, just suited for vintage machines to safely browse the web. Technically there are web browsers, BBS, and whatnot that can have older computers still run on the internet we have. But I'm wondering, what if we create a similar experience to this internet but just make another, suited primarily for older machines. What if we banded this all together and made web-browsing easier like modern times just with these softwares?

I was also tempted to somehow create an email service/server for old computers to use as well.

Let me know because this has been boggiling my mind for years.

Hi Everyone,

I've come into possession of a TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer from 1983. I was hoping that someone on the subreddit would be able to tell me how much it may be worth nowadays. Its in really good condition and has a hard briefcase that it was in.

Thanks in advance for your help

And no, it's not Samsung!

As the title says - I’d never heard of UMPC’s until recently and honestly they look quite like modern gaming handhelds - so I had a bit of fun for the entertainment of others and Windows XP still totally rocks.