A New Storage Upgrade For the Pionex PC

So today, I decided to work on my Windows 98 PC that I bought when I was 15 and it was on eBay as 'brand new old stock'  Pionex PC with an Pentium II MMX 350Mhz CPU and 94mb of ram it was brand new. It included a monitor keyboard mouse, speakers and everything like software and old subscriptions to AOL 4.0. I’ll be honest I didn’t know what the original card was (still don’t) and also the entire setup came with all the accessories but not the monitor because due space constraints that have to deal with. I would’ve gotten it with the entire setup but I had a 15” Acer View 55L on the way that was 20 bucks which I had ordered from Memphis Tennessee. I upgraded to a new graphics cards like the Nvidia TNT m64 and I mainly now use this machine for working in MS Visual C++ 5.0. I am able utilize CD-ROM drives to transfer my documents through CD-ROMs. So, I can easily transfer data between my main PC and my Windows 98 one. It has been a working progress with this machine, due to the fact that I want to learn more about older machines. Especially machines of the late 97 all the way to 2000. I have been using this old PC for tests on different versions of Windows 98 and trying different cards. From all my experimentation on this machine and trying configurations and running all kinds programs of the 90s.

I finally took out the quantum big foot drive out of the computer and it was a pretty obscure way of doing it. Basically when I removed the power supply and then proceeded to remove all IDE cables, I began to push the drive up against the 5.25” bezel cover and like that, the cover popped off. I move on to sliding this drive out of the chassis and was surprised how much this thing weighed. I haven’t put on a scale yet but I’m going to give a guess between 5-7 lbs. It is a 5400RPM Quantum Big Foot 11Gb HDD. When I did receive it back in 2015. When I first booted it up the drive was making grinding noises and skipping and popping. I came to the conclusion right away that the old hard drive was on its last limb. It was not even 20 years old yet at the time when I purchased the machine back in 2015. That old Quantum Big Foot drive had I believe 7gigs worth of preinstalled software and Pionex bloatware. I was too laggy and was at some parts when I would try to open explorer it would freeze then lag out. I bought a lot of different storage solutions for its new life and had fresh copies of Windows 98 SE installed. Now I’m installing Windows 98 again because the operating system is 20 years old. So, in order to celebrate its 20 years existence and how it was one of the many operating systems that contributed to the modern Windows we know today by shaping how you used multimedia and being able to render some impressive 3D graphics at the time. Though like I said before I am not exactly sure what Graphics card it is all the computer recognizes it as in the Device Manger and even in the Bios is ‘16bit PCI Graphics Card’. I look all over online on the chip set and the serial numbers and also the manufacturers of the card and couldn’t find a thing, not even any drivers that worked and I wasted a lot of floppy disks and CD-ROMs to figure this out. Though I got the solution to that problem… just buy a newer graphics card and get swap it out. Which is what I did and got the Nvidia TNT2 m64 16mb Graphics Card that is quite powerful in the standers of PCs in circa 1998. But all though it may seem like a laughable amount of onboard RAM on Graphics card but it packs a punch with DOOM II Quake and Fallout 2. I’ve made mention of this card before on my blog but I always like how powerful it can make an old PC like this run well with that Pentium II MMX technology under the hood.

I now finally uninstalled that old drive and put in a Maxtor Drive like I mentioned lasted post. (If you haven’t read it highly recommend). Since its the same speed as the original drive it makes the boot up times feel more authentic, so 20.4gb is more than enough to run Windows 98 and have MS Visual C++ installed. I might install games but I mainly want use this machine as workstation because I want to have a real use for my old machines and not just use them for games but as a tool. Because a PC is meant to also do work and I want to be that guy in 2018 to be using Windows 98 in 2018 and lives an AESTHETIC Life Style. I will be posting more updates on this machine soon this is all for now and it is another one of Chunky Onions late night posts. Anyway that’s enough for now, I’ll be posting more before I am off to college but when I’m off to college doesn’t mean I won’t be able to post on my blog Chunky Onion always keeping it alive and living that Aesthetic Vibe. GOOD Night fam.