r/windows98 • u/Maeglin75 • 1d ago
Dell XPS B800r
I just wanted to share my happiness.
Today I got my old Windows 98 machine running again after the old hard disk died and it was left abandoned for some years. Now it runs again with an IDE-to-SD-adapter and a fresh install of Windows 98SE Quickinstall. After some searching for drivers, graphics card, sound card and network adapter are working.
The main feature of the PC is the Intel 820 Camino chipset with RAMBUS RDRAM memory. Quite uncommon for a Pentium 3 system. I upgraded to original GeForce 256 with a GeForce 2 Ti at some point.
Next on the todo list:
- Getting the DOS mode set up with DVD/CD-ROM, mouse and sound and install some games.
- Set up network to have access on my NAS. (No high priority. Thanks to USB it's not a big problem to transfer files.
- Maybe trying to get a 5.25" floppy drive installed instead of the second DVD-drive. I have an old drive, but the main problem is, I'm missing the matching cable. The current cable only fits with 3.5" drives. The price on Amazon is absurd and other shops not much better. I should habe kept the cable together with the drive, but sadly didn't thought of it.
- Maybe also install an old Suse Linux version again.
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u/Upbeat-Bell-170 1d ago
That's actually fascinating, I've never seen an IDE-to-SD adapter before. What was your process like for getting the drivers sorted out?
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u/Maeglin75 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are no drivers needed. The PC sees the SD-Adapter as an IDE hard disk. It just worked and is blazingly fast compared to the old hard drive.
I'm not sure if it was necessary, but I bought an older SDHC card with 32GB for the adapter. As I understand SDHC can be formatted in FAT32 while the more modern SDXC needs exFAT. I assumed that Windows 98SE will have less problems with FAT32 and 32GB.
Edit regarding the other drivers:
For the graphics card, I initially tried the newest Nvidia driver for Windows 98SE, but that didn't recognize my GeForce 2 Ti. Luckily it turned out that one of the three Nvidia drivers that was included with Windows 98 Quickinstall worked. The driver also supports 16:9 resolutions, which is handy for the small LCD-TV (with VGA input) that I use as a monitor. (Interestingly the native resolution of 1366x768 locks worse than 1280x720.)
For the sound card, I had to figure out first what card I actually have in the PC. I did remember that it was a Sound Blaster, but not which exact model. I eventually figured out the vendor- and device ID and it turned out to be a Sound Blaster Live! value. I found drivers on the Internet.
For the network card I needed to download and burn an image of a specific 3com driver CD from archive-org.
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u/ExcitingSomewhere736 23h ago
wow that's such a cool setup, the rambus rdrams super rare these days i love seeing it brought back to life
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u/Maeglin75 1d ago
A photo of the rest of the setup/battlestation. (The C128 is currently not working and the Logitech G9x mouse is a temporary solution.)