Gateway 80486-DX2/50 Revival

[eccerr0r]

I don't think I've ever seen a 2.88MB floppy drive. I think I've seen a 2.88MB disk once with its weird ED logo, but not the drive.

I think I've seen a superdisk (LS120) drive before, but no media...

Both I think are pretty much unobtanium at least cheaply, nowadays.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

I don't think I've ever seen a 2.88MB floppy drive. I think I've seen a 2.88MB disk once with its weird ED logo, but not the drive.

I think I've seen a superdisk (LS120) drive before, but no media...

Both I think are pretty much unobtanium at least cheaply, nowadays.

I have a couple vintage IBM PS/2's with 2.88mb floppy drives in them and a couple of the disks floating around. LS120's used to be a dime a dozen, I haven't looked for them in a long time....I have a few in the pile somewhere and a bunch of disks for them.... I've always made due with 1.44mb.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

wtf, was firefox never supported on win95?

What browsers were ever supported on win95? Oh no I have to go back to Netscape?

firefox support for win98 was very sketchy also. the only version of firefox ever supported on win98 was firefox v2.0 or something.

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

due to the CF card, it's so quiet I can't tell this thing is madly thrashing while trying to work with the installer...

just look at the hd activity indicator led. it should work even with a cf card since the cf interface is pin compatible with ide but with a different sized connector, that is all.

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

(and I still can't explain why it thinks it has no disk space left, it looks like it has plenty... perhaps the win98 msvcrt.dll has unintended side effects when running on win95...)

the only thing i can think of is to just run scandisk to fix the free disk space count. sometimes the free disk space count on the drive can become focked for some reason. running scandisk fixes it.

otherwise, yes it could be some sort of integer overflow error in the dll causing improper recognition of the free space available. one other thing u can try that i found using some of my google-fu is to try cleaning up the windows\temp folder. see if it fixes that problem.

i also found a thread on bugzilla that shows this problem in the v2.0 branch of firefox.
Bugzilla - 385333 - Insufficient disk space error when there is sufficient disk space
so it seems to be some kind of a problem with the way the installation path is specified. try entering it manually without the trailing backslash at the end of the path.

[Uranium-235]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Yay was able to extract win95 from the failed CDRs and got a basic install on my 486dx4/75 on a 512M CF card. At 16MB RAM, don't think I'd want anything newer.

Now need to find drivers...

You know I havn't read all the way through this thread but you can get the windows 95 iso on the web for free

[eccerr0r]

damn. no dice.
"Disk" is only 512MB and well within sizes of that day and era, overflows not likely?
Scandisk fixed nothing, was clean (but had some warnings).
removing trailing backslash had no effect, it still reports disk doesn't have enough space.
hmm..though windows\temp ... now this is a clue.... at least scandisk warned some stuff there...

[TechGeek]

Got the 428MB drive in, and things are looking good.

Starting off with a followup to the battery corrosion. Got the corrosion neutralized with vinegar and mostly cleaned up. Looks much better.


Replacement hard drive.


Installed. Had to uninstall the PSU to get the drive cage out of the system.


And here's the PSU.


PSU manufactured April 24, 1992.


SpinRite Level 5 time against the new hard drive.


And here's how I deal with troublesome floppy diskettes:


And if that doesn't fix them, then this certainly will


I did a teardown of the failed hard drive. Coming up next.

[TechGeek]

Tearing into the failed WD 850MB hard drive to find out what went wrong.

I'd already gotten pretty deep into the drive by this point, but what the hey. Signs of a disaster present from the moment I popped the drive open. Platters aren't supposed to have a brushed finish to them.


A closer look at the evidence.


Here's a different angle. You can see the damage better.


The covered side of the drive's PCB, seeing the light of day for the first time in more than 27 years.


Protective foam that almost didn't want to come off.


Head stack.


Cause of death: Head Crash. This was lurking on the bottom side of the top platter.


Bottom platter, top side.


Bottom platter, bottom side. Notice the brushed finish to the platters on every single platter side.


Removable spindle motor! Still looks good.


The drive chassis, stripped bare.


-----------------------------
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming...


SpinRite 6 found nothing wrong with the replacement drive.


A fresh install of DOS and now for Windows 95.


While Windows 95 didn't take too long to install, it definitely chugs on the hard drive with only 8MB of RAM to play around with. It also breaks the drivers for the Sound Blaster Vibra/16 card, and it doesn't play nice with the card's wave controller. I'm probably gonna roll it back to WfW3.11 or OS/2.

The hard drive had some old DOS installations on it, as well as an old Windows 3.1 install. For now, I've filed it all away to some temp folders and I'll sort through all of that, pick out the interesting bits that I care about, and then format the drive and start with a fresh install of DOS.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by TechGeek

Cause of death: Head Crash. This was lurking on the bottom side of the top platter.

Looks like it's time for a shave!!

[stj]

about your battery leak
the 8042 keyboard controller socket is totally fucked and the chip pins need severly cleaning.

[Topcat]

Originally Posted by stj

about your battery leak
the 8042 keyboard controller socket is totally fucked and the chip pins need severly cleaning.

Good catch....and 100% correct!

[eccerr0r]

Well his keyboard is working... just need to know if he can get in/out of protected mode...

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Well his keyboard is working... just need to know if he can get in/out of protected mode...

Yep...

[Topcat]

I would still clean that rot off of there...

[stj]

it doesnt sleep, it just acts very slowly

[Topcat]

I just cleaned this trash up...it better stay that way or next time I'll just get rid of the thread.