FYI I am typing this post on my Windows 98 PC in Word Pad 6.0 and was able to send the document over with a floppy disk. Back in 2015 when I was searching for a Windows 98 computer that is in good shape (near mint) and a computer that works! But it was out of pure luck that I found a Windows 98 computer that caught my attention. I clicked on price for 100 dollars for 'brand new old stock' and was a complete computer set up with not only the computer but the monitor, accessories, software and everything I need for a Windows 98 PC and more. I messaged the seller on eBay who was located out in Texas. I messaged the seller asking if the they didn't include the monitor because I already had a CRT monitor that was a 15" monitor instead of the 17" Pionex monitor that was included. The Acer View monitor that I ordered a few weeks before which was 20 dollars was the perfect monitor that I was looking for my 90s PC. It is a perfect size monitor that doesn't consume all my desk space and the resolution is fantastic! Anyway after I made my order the PC arrived within a week and... oh boy there were a lot of boxes... I was surprised it was free shipping and it arrived so fast at my house. It came in a big box with smaller boxes inside containing the keyboard and mouse peripherals and speakers, microphone and a TON of software! I really was surprised that seller wasn't kidding that they didn't know what to do with it! So with excitement I set the everything up and try and see what is on the hard drive in the system and it said on the auction it was 11Gb drive. So I do a power on cell test and boot the system up for the first time in its life since it was turned on by the previous owner to load all the software in 20 years ago then it was put away in the box and was stored in a church for most of its life then was sold to me on eBay. So as it powers up the hard drive begins to spin up and at first it sounded normal but then right away as I started using it for the first time it was already beginning to make all sorts of skipping, popping and grinding noises. I knew right away that it needed replacing. Later on, I was installed a new HDD and a planing on giving the RAM a 128mb upgrade! The Pionex machine originally came with 96mb of RAM and now with a 128mb upgrade I will have 230mb of RAM which is plenty of RAM for this system and enough to get a lot of work done and run heavier programs that take a bit of the resources up and will be more than enough for what I need to run games and such. This machine is a beast! And is only getting better with more upgrades! 20 years old and I got it to work as if it came out of the factory yesterday. I ordered DOOM II on eBay and I will install and play some classic DOOM
on a system that it was designed to run on.with it! So with excitement I set the everything up and try and see what is on the hard drive in the system and it said on the auction it was 11Gb drive. So I do a power on cell test and boot the system up for the first time in its life since it was turned on by the previous owner to load all the software in 20 years ago then it was put away in the box and was stored in a church for most of its life then was sold to me on eBay. So as it powers up the hard drive begins to spin up and at first it sounded normal and then... well yeah it was very, very slow and it was making popping ans skipping sounds so I decided to change the drive and get a new one. This computer has seen 5 different drives and now I a recently upgraded it to a 20gig one. I am planing on giving the RAM a 128mb upgrade! The Pionex machine originally came with 96mb of RAM and now with a 128mb upgrade I will have 230mb of RAM which is plenty of RAM for this system and enough to get a lot of work done and run heavier programs that take a bit of the resources up and will be more than enough for what I need to run games and such. This machine is a beast! And is only getting better with more upgrades! 20 years old and I got it to work as if it came out of the factory yesterday. I ordered DOOM II on eBay and I will install and play some classic DOOM on a system that it was designed to run on.
I have looked for a 90s PC for a long time and wanted one that can work with new hardware and one that can run DOS applications and older games as well if I so please to install them. Anyway my next step on transferring data between a modern system from the 2018 and has parts that date back to 2014 in my sleeper build. This machine has a Haswell 4th Intel Core i5 4460 3.4Ghz Processor with 8Gb of DDr3 1600 RAM and runs Windows 10 with a modification to the UI. I tweaked the shell by converting it back to the Windows XP Luna theme and re-arranged how the operating system works by these simple modifications with the program that I downloaded 'Classic Shell' which you can modify the entire start menu to your needs and what I was going for was the Windows XP look.And it came out looking good though the it is still Windows 10, like for instance Cortana exists and the metro apps are accessed by hitting the Windows key and the Shift key at the same time which gives you the Windows 8.1 metro app start menu. So my mods made Windows 10 a whole lot better and a lot more usable and catered to what I am familiar with for so many years. Anyway, I plan to get these two systems connected vial serial connection. So, I can easily transfer data instead of having to only just rely on floppy disks. Serial is slower than say Ethernet but I want to try something different and something that can make this old Windows 98 machine more useful. I will be posting more on this machine and I think that it will be getting another system that is a a few years older than the 98' PC because I still have plans to an OS/2 Warp computer up and running. I was planning on running OS/2 on here but I chose Win 98 because it was easy and I was already familiar with the process. I am planning in the future to run build a early to mid 90s PC that runs OS/2 or maybe buy an IBM and run it on something that it was originally designed to run on. Either way, I have plans for the future and hope to see what I can do next for my next vintage computers I have my sights on.
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