28 Jan
2016
28 Jan
'16
8:44 a.m.
I run Windows 98SE on a 14 year old Pentium III. I have
replaced the power supply twice and all three hard disk drives.
It is a really good system to run the Ersatz-11 emulator for the
PDP-11, specifically RT-11. Since Ersatz-11 has built-in VT100
emulation, I don't need a separate terminal emulator. I also run
Netscape 7.2 for e-mail and newsgroups. And that is all - no
surfing the internet or google of any sort. Incidentally, I use
Ghost 7.0 for backups to DVDs.
Aside from the daylight savings time changing 3 weeks too late
in the spring and a week early in the fall, I really like the system
and I would like to use it for another 20 years. Since I am
77 years old now, I figure that will be just about satisfactory.
The Pentium III hardware is more than a bit of a concern. I would
be very pleased to upgrade to 64-bit Windows 10, but the DOS
variant of Ersatz-11 is not supported and I really would prefer to
keep using Netscape 7.2 since I have over 100,000 e-mails
and posts to newsgroups that it is important to be able to keep.
QUESTION: Is it even possible to run Win98SE on a current
Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard disk drives? I realize that it might
be possible under a virtual machine, but I really want all of the
advantages that Win98SE provides. One problem, of course,
is that there must be a patch to Win98SE when more than 1 GB
of actual physical RAM is present. But I can't seem to find out
anything else.
What leads me to believe that there is a reasonable chance is
that the IDENTICAL 3.5" floppy media is able to boot DOS
from drive A: and run on both the Pentium III (with a
3.5" HD
floppy drive, of course) AND on a Q9550 Core 2 quad CPU
which also has a 3.5" HD floppy drive which currently runs
64-bit Windows 7 from the C: drive, of course, using three
SATA hard drives where the C: drive has an NTFS file
structure and all the other partitions on all of the SATA drives
have a FAT32 file structure. So without really understanding
the details of the device drivers and the BIOS, it would seem
that the SATA drive hardware and software is compatible.
Ghost 7.0 is a file on the F: drive of the Q9550 CPU
(first extended partition of the 1st physical SATA hard drive).
Ghost is able to take a file produced as a backup image on
the Pentium III system (and copied over the router connecting
the Pentium III and the Q9500 systems - that also provides
internet access for both systems) and re-create the same files
on a specified partition on the Q9550 via the Ghost 7.0
program while the Q9550 is booted from the 3.5" floppy
media.
Since the SATA hard drives on the Q9550 system don't seem
to have a problem with DOS on the floppy, then I have some
hope that Win98SE could manage them as well. Has anyone
experience or knowledge about being able to run Win98SE
using an Intel I7 CPU with SATA hard drives all of them using
a FAT32 file structure?
Alternatively, does it seem reasonable to attempt to keep a
system with a Pentium III CPU and associated hardware
running for another 20 years?
Jerome Fine