Hardware

Detailed info can be found here

Drivers and software used

• Dos
  • Oakcdrom - General purpose CDROM driver
  • PKUNZIP - Unzip tool for dos
  • MSDOS 6.22 Supplemental disk - Supplemental utilities(such as dvorak keyboard layout
  • SHSUCD - Toolkit for mounting ISO files in DOS
  • VT6105 Packet driver - DOS Packet diver, this has yet to appear
  • mTCP - DOS TCPIP stack, this has yet to appear
• Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
  • Installation - Flattened installation floppies
  • W311 TCPIP stack - TCPIP stack
  • VT6105 - Network card
  • Sound blaster - Sound blaster driver(I couldn't get it to work with the emulation mode from the Live!
  • Internet explorer 3.3 - Don't install the dialup functionality if you want to use it with TCP/IP
• Windows 95
  • Installation - Installation CD
  • CPU Fix - This fixes the protection error due to the too high clockspeed
  • Microsoft installerr - Needed for some installations like daemon tools
  • Internet Explorer 5.5SP2 - IE 5.5, this is also a windows 95 update
  • Sound blaster live driver - This includes SB16 emulation on windows level
  • AC 97 driver - While this does make the system recognize the chip I couldn't get the audio to work
  • Chipset drivers - Make sure you have a PS2 keyboard or mouse attached because this will recognize the usb root hubs and will disable BIOS legacy PS2 emulation
  • USB Stack - This also includes support for usb thumbdrive, floppy and cd drivers, however UDF CD's are not supported
  • Daemon tools - Easy tool to mount ISO's. This requires the IE5.5 update
  • Winzip 7.0 - Handy GUI zip tool, I couldn't get PKUNZIP to work properly in 95

Iteration 1: Microsoft DOS 6.22

I found out that the network card included in this model had drivers for all os'es including dos and windows 3.11. Thus I started to try freedos and friends on this box. This all worked fine but I couldn't get it to boot from the flash driver. The MBR was never installed correctly from a bootable USB stick. However after I picked up a USB floppy drive and installed from there it worked fine. Freedos or MSDOS 6.22 were working fine. Unfortunatly, networking was the only thing that worked.

Iteration 2: Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

After doing some research I thought it would be smart to install Windows 3.11 alongside the MSDOS 6.22. Very soon the hard disk space ran out so I got a IDE to compact flash adapter. This all worked but gave a lot of IO erors so I resorted back to an old laptop IDE drive that was generously gifted.

Installation of all the hardware went fine, however, the on board sound card didn't have drivers available for windows 3.11 so I started to hunt down a PCI Sound Blaster since there was a PCI slot available. After some time I found a Sound Blaster Live! which was the last card to include legacy sound blaster emulation. This worked for one game(skyroads) and did not work for others. Also, in windows the sound card was not recognized. This all led to the realization that I had to install windows 95 since that comes with sound blaster emulation included.

Iteration 3: Windows 95

Installing Windows 95 went like a breeze since it supports hard disk installation and did not even required me to format anything. After installing the clock speed fix everything seemed to work. Installing the drivers however... After a lot of messing around I finally got almost everything working: sound via the sound blaster live!, network with the onboard card, usb with the usbsupp patch from microsoft and even some DOS games were recognizing the sound card via the built-in emulation. Unfortunatly I could only use the keyboard OR mouse since through installing the USB support the BIOS's legacy PS2 emulation stopped and there is only 1 PS2 port on the device. For this I've ordered a PS2 to Serial converter for my mouse to be able to use both since there are no USB HID drivers for Windows 95 as far as I know. Also when I tried to get my ZIP drive to work on the parallel port it rendered the windows installation unbootable since the interrupts conflicted. This still has to be fixed.