TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Ruru]

Should i go for a PS2 mouse like Mr olds saud ,i will need a PS2 Mouse for 98 sde or ME. Why does the wireless keyboard wirk and not the USB Mouse?
I will get a PS2 mouse if i can,t get this USB Mouse working in here i will need it in the future ,and it would be better to go for a mouse rather than an adapter which might not work with this USB mouse.This message keeps on coming up and other stuff.
*Disk read error occurred*

You can use your USB ones, just get these adapters

 

[Greenslade]

You can use your USB ones, just get these adapters

View attachment 251258

Yes i know but baring in mind with the USB Mouse not wotking it might not work with that,I thing i would be better off buying PS2 mouse from Amazon ,hope fully one with out thous crap ball mice. The snappy drivers are showing up now.It is another thing to able to click the one with the drivers, with no mouse. I can,t do itWhen i shut down the fan is still spinning.

 

[68Olds]

Do you see the dashed box around "Read our privacy policy"? You can use the Tab key to move the dash box to one of the "Yes" circles, Space Bar to click the circle, then Tab Tab... to the Next button, Space Bar to click. There are keyboard strokes for almost all mouse commands.

 

[Ruru]

Yes i know but baring in mind with the USB Mouse not wotking it might not work with that,I thing i would be better off buying PS2 mouse from Amazon ,hope fully one with out thous crap ball mice. The snappy drivers are showing up now.It is another thing to able to click the one with the drivers, with no mouse. I can,t do it

Just get an adapter so you don't need a new mouse.

Do you see the dashed box around "Read our privacy policy"? You can use the Tab key to move the dash box to one of the "Yes" circles, Space Bar to click the circle, then Tab Tab... to the Next button, Space Bar to click. There are keyboard strokes for almost all mouse commands.

Exactly, keyboard works fine there.

 

[Greenslade]

Do you see the dashed box around "Read our privacy policy"? You can use the Tab key to move the dash box to one of the "Yes" circles, Space Bar to click the circle, then Tab Tab... to the Next button, Space Bar to click. There are keyboard strokes for almost all mouse commands.

I see that thanks Snappy drivers got this far selected drovers but when i click nothing. Sometimes it works other times it does not The mouse was not showing again ,all though it is in the same portLike in the other ports that it does not show in the device manager the light is on the mouse.

 

[Valantar]

I had a USB flash drive working on my AMD 1700+ rig & screwed something up. Now it blue screens when I plug the drive in.

Ah, the joys of older OSes and their immaculate stability. "You connected a device I do not recognize, and while it changes absolutely nothing meaningful about the workings of the rest of the system, I will now hard crash just for the sake of it. Hope you didn't have any unsaved work!" Can't say I miss that era

 

[Ruru]

Ah, the joys of older OSes and their immaculate stability. "You connected a device I do not recognize, and while it changes absolutely nothing meaningful about the workings of the rest of the system, I will now hard crash just for the sake of it. Hope you didn't have any unsaved work!" Can't say I miss that era

Yeah, the day when I moved from 98SE to 2000 was a victory.

 

[Greenslade]

Yeah, the day when I moved from 98SE to 2000 was a victory.

I just oarded one ,just hope it works.Funny you should mention about 98se someone who bought one about 98se saying it was more like 98se not liking it because it did not work. 90 of them sold from this seller.I have just disconected the PC and praying that it works with that adapter.Heres a video from one of my fav Aussies Brian about PS2 devices intresting video

PS2 is more complex than a USB one.

 

[Ruru]

I just oarded one ,just hope it works.Funny you should mention about 98se someone who bought one about 98se saying it was more like 98se not liking it because it did not work. 90 of them sold from this seller.

Even though I'm a retro PC dude, I don't miss 98SE at all.. 2000 was hella fine.

 

[Greenslade]

Even though I'm a retro PC dude, I don't miss 98SE at all.. 2000 was hella fine.

What about Lex,s fav os *ME*?.I will have to go with that as i have 2gb of Corsar Ram .

 

[68Olds]

Ah, the joys of older OSes and their immaculate stability. "You connected a device I do not recognize, and while it changes absolutely nothing meaningful about the workings of the rest of the system, I will now hard crash just for the sake of it. Hope you didn't have any unsaved work!" Can't say I miss that era

I can still use the OS, just can't plug in the flash drive. Probably corrupted the driver for the flash drive & just need to reinstall it. We will see. The only programs installed on this PC are 3dMark 1999, 2000, & 2001 - nothing to lose other than a benchmark screenshot. This is an old Win98SE install & I'll probably format the drive & start over with it.

I'm planning to install Win2k on another hdd & WinME on yet another hdd. I have a few stacks of old IDE spinners from 20GB up to 250GB that I've collected & saved over the years.

 

[Greenslade]

Heres an old school video about ide drives

by some weird looking geezer.

I can still use the OS, just can't plug in the flash drive. Probably corrupted the driver for the flash drive & just need to reinstall it. We will see. The only programs installed on this PC are 3dMark 1999, 2000, & 2001 - nothing to lose other than a benchmark screenshot. This is an old Win98SE install & I'll probably format the drive & start over with it.

I'm planning to install Win2k on another hdd & WinME on yet another hdd. I have a few stacks of old IDE spinners from 20GB up to 250GB that I've collected & saved over the years.

Bios/Settings
Do you know how i can get to the settings on my ASUS Desktiop?,
Aparently as he says in the video Laptops are *Delete* to get to the settings ,
What are they on a Asus desktop?
My Fav uk tech man talking about bios.

 

[Valantar]

Even though I'm a retro PC dude, I don't miss 98SE at all.. 2000 was hella fine.

W2K was amazing. Heck, I never actually used XP as a daily driver simply due to how great 2K was - by the time it started missing out on features, I was already using Vista. Which was ... eh, not quite as great, at least in the early days. But to this day I'm still happy I never had to interact with that primary colored Fischer-Price-design OS more than intermittently.

Bios/Settings
Do you know how i can get to the settings on my ASUS Desktiop?,
Aparently as he says in the video Laptops are *Delete* to get to the settings ,
What are they on a Asus desktop?

I can't recall ever coming across a PC where the BIOS key isn't either F2, F12 or Del. Just mash all three like there's no tomorrow as you're turning the PC on, and you should be able to get into settings. The POST screen should also say "Press [key] to enter Setup" or some such - typically in the lower right corner.

 

[Ruru]

W2K was amazing. Heck, I never actually used XP as a daily driver simply due to how great 2K was - by the time it started missing out on features, I was already using Vista. Which was ... eh, not quite as great, at least in the early days. But to this day I'm still happy I never had to interact with that primary colored Fischer-Price-design OS more than intermittently.

What the fuck, are you me? Sounds so familiar

 

[Valantar]

I can still use the OS, just can't plug in the flash drive. Probably corrupted the driver for the flash drive & just need to reinstall it. We will see.

Yeah, I got that, but it's still rather funny how what was a surefire full system crash back in the day would currently cause ... possibly a weird bleep as you connected it, a "this hardware isn't working correctly" popup notification, and a yellow triangle in Device Manager. Times have changed!

 

[Greenslade]

W2K was amazing. Heck, I never actually used XP as a daily driver simply due to how great 2K was - by the time it started missing out on features, I was already using Vista. Which was ... eh, not quite as great, at least in the early days. But to this day I'm still happy I never had to interact with that primary colored Fischer-Price-design OS more than intermittently.

I can't recall ever coming across a PC where the BIOS key isn't either F2, F12 or Del. Just mash all three like there's no tomorrow as you're turning the PC on, and you should be able to get into settings. The POST screen should also say "Press [key] to enter Setup" or some such - typically in the lower right corner.

Thanks for that. but they move to another page very quickly..I know thouse settings are for Dell.

 

[Valantar]

Thanks for that. but they move to another page very quickly..I know thouse settings are for Dell.

You need to start pressing those keys before anything shows up on screen. LCDs go into sleep mode when they don't receive a signal, and often take a few seconds to wake up. That is often sufficient time for the system to have POSTed and moved on. You need to be mashing those keys rapidly and repeatedly as soon as you've pressed the power button on the PC, and don't stop until you see on-screen confirmation that you've entered the BIOS.

What the fuck, are you me? Sounds so familiar

You're probably my long-lost Finnish twin or something

 

[Ruru]

You're probably my long-lost Finnish twin or something

Probably damn I loved 2K

 

[Valantar]

This guy says the Bios is different to Dell and HP

He says the BIOS layout and design is different, which will be true across all manufacturers and even typically between different motherboards. Broadly speaking, they all work in the same way, and are all accessed by pressing a designated keyboard key on POST. But the key differs, the layout and available options will differ, and so on. But why are you looking at laptop troubleshooting videos? And videos on BIOSes from an entirely different era than your retro PC? You're not likely to find much of use there outside of very general things.

 

[stinger608]

I'll tell ya @Greenslade , if you're going to mess around with old nostalgic systems, you should get a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. At least 1 of each.

LOL, yeah, I remember messing with IDE drives when using multiple drives. Had to set the master for the OS and slaves for storage drives.

Hell, I still have a fair size pile of old IDE drives. I should check to see if any of them are still good. LOL

 

[Greenslade]

I'll tell ya @Greenslade , if you're going to mess around with old nostalgic systems, you should get a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. At least 1 of each.

LOL, yeah, I remember messing with IDE drives when using multiple drives. Had to set the master for the OS and slaves for storage drives.

Hell, I still have a fair size pile of old IDE drives. I should check to see if any of them are still good. LOL

I have orderd a PS2 mouse adapter for starters.Hopefully yjay will sirt the problem with the mouse not working. I got all that now.Yes i was thinking about having two drives on it.But i understand that new ide cables new cabals don,t have the the pin
like the old ones is what this guy is saying.It seems silly to chane it for no reason.

When and if i get the mouse to work I will take Lex,s advice and get a CF Card and one of these , I think the IDE cabale will reach. Then i can have a couple of systems on the cards.But i would like to have the HDD as the slave.But i will have to work out what size of ide cable i will need,to get the old cable with the pin on it.I don,t fancy drilling out a hole in the cable.

 

[The red spirit]

W2K was amazing. Heck, I never actually used XP as a daily driver simply due to how great 2K was - by the time it started missing out on features, I was already using Vista. Which was ... eh, not quite as great, at least in the early days. But to this day I'm still happy I never had to interact with that primary colored Fischer-Price-design OS more than intermittently.

It had classic Windows theme built in. You can just select it and it would look exactly the same as 2k. But to be fair, I'm not too fan of XP either. It was surprisingly hard to troubleshoot sometimes, it lacks proper problem reporting, task manager HW monitor was frankly poo and it seemingly got rid of many more poweruser suited menus and options from 2K and yet somehow at idle it seems to use more RAM, despite seemingly being less feature rich.

 

[Valantar]

I have orderd a PS2 mouse adapter for starters.Hopefully yjay will sirt the problem with the mouse not working. I got all that now.Yes i was thinking about having two drives on it.But i understand that new ide cables new cabals don,t have the the pin
like the old ones is what this guy is saiong.It seems silly to chane it for no reason.

That guy is working on a DOS-based PC much older than the one you've got - ca 1998 - and it seems to use an older version of IDE with a pin that has since been left out (it's likely pin 20, which is a non-connected pin used for keying the connector so it only goes in one way, meaning his motherboard had a non-standard connector). It would be very strange if your much newer WinXP PC had that same obsolete pin in its motherboard-side IDE connector. You really need to work on being more focused and selective in where you go looking for information - issues and methods for a system a decade newer or half a decade older than yours are not necessarily likely to be applicable to your PC. Most likely your motherboard and drives all use the bog-standard IDE cable with the one pin removed. All you need is a working IDE cable and two drives with master/slave jumpers set correctly, and you should be off to the races.

It had classic Windows theme built in. You can just select it and it would look exactly the same as 2k. But to be fair, I'm not too fan of XP either. It was surprisingly hard to troubleshoot sometimes, it lacks proper problem reporting, task manager HW monitor was frankly poo and it seemingly got rid of many more poweruser suited menus and options from 2K and yet somehow at idle it seems to use more RAM, despite seemingly being less feature rich.

I know it could be changed, but I saw no reason to upgrade to XP at the time (especially as it wasn't exactly cheap!), and I couldn't go around setting every XP PC I came across back to the classic theme. And IIRC the classic theme was also kind of iffy in certain areas that were more heavily tuned towards the stock XP visual design, which just made the simplicity of 2K all the more attractive to me.

I think you're right about XP being dumbed down from 2K though - 2K was a direct descendant of NT after all, and never marketed towards consumers, while XP took that kernel and codebase and tried to make it "friendly". And as with most ill-informed/poorly thought through attempts at doing so, that meant hiding or removing useful advanced options.

 

[Greenslade]

You need to start pressing those keys before anything shows up on screen. LCDs go into sleep mode when they don't receive a signal, and often take a few seconds to wake up. That is often sufficient time for the system to have POSTed and moved on. You need to be mashing those keys rapidly and repeatedly as soon as you've pressed the power button on the PC, and don't stop until you see on-screen confirmation that you've entered the BIOS.

You're probably my long-lost Finnish twin or something

That guy is working on a DOS-based PC much older than the one you've got - ca 1998 - and it seems to use an older version of IDE with a pin that has since been left out (it's likely pin 20, which is a non-connected pin used for keying the connector so it only goes in one way, meaning his motherboard had a non-standard connector). It would be very strange if your much newer WinXP PC had that same obsolete pin in its motherboard-side IDE connector. You really need to work on being more focused and selective in where you go looking for information - issues and methods for a system a decade newer or half a decade older than yours are not necessarily likely to be applicable to your PC. Most likely your motherboard and drives all use the bog-standard IDE cable with the one pin removed. All you need is a working IDE cable and two drives with master/slave jumpers set correctly, and you should be off to the races.


I know it could be changed, but I saw no reason to upgrade to XP at the time (especially as it wasn't exactly cheap!), and I couldn't go around setting every XP PC I came across back to the classic theme. And IIRC the classic theme was also kind of iffy in certain areas that were more heavily tuned towards the stock XP visual design, which just made the simplicity of 2K all the more attractive to me.

I think you're right about XP being dumbed down from 2K though - 2K was a direct descendant of NT after all, and never marketed towards consumers, while XP took that kernel and codebase and tried to make it "friendly". And as with most ill-informed/poorly thought through attempts at doing so, that meant hiding or removing useful advanced options.

That guy is working on a DOS-based PC much older than the one you've got - ca 1998 - and it seems to use an older version of IDE with a pin that has since been left out (it's likely pin 20, which is a non-connected pin used for keying the connector so it only goes in one way, meaning his motherboard had a non-standard connector). It would be very strange if your much newer WinXP PC had that same obsolete pin in its motherboard-side IDE connector. You really need to work on being more focused and selective in where you go looking for information - issues and methods for a system a decade newer or half a decade older than yours are not necessarily likely to be applicable to your PC. Most likely your motherboard and drives all use the bog-standard IDE cable with the one pin removed. All you need is a working IDE cable and two drives with master/slave jumpers set correctly, and you should be off to the races.


I know it could be changed, but I saw no reason to upgrade to XP at the time (especially as it wasn't exactly cheap!), and I couldn't go around setting every XP PC I came across back to the classic theme. And IIRC the classic theme was also kind of iffy in certain areas that were more heavily tuned towards the stock XP visual design, which just made the simplicity of 2K all the more attractive to me.

I think you're right about XP being dumbed down from 2K though - 2K was a direct descendant of NT after all, and never marketed towards consumers, while XP took that kernel and codebase and tried to make it "friendly". And as with most ill-informed/poorly thought through attempts at doing so, that meant hiding or removing useful advanced options.

That guy is working on a DOS-based PC much older than the one you've got - ca 1998 - and it seems to use an older version of IDE with a pin that has since been left out (it's likely pin 20, which is a non-connected pin used for keying the connector so it only goes in one way, meaning his motherboard had a non-standard connector). It would be very strange if your much newer WinXP PC had that same obsolete pin in its motherboard-side IDE connector. You really need to work on being more focused and selective in where you go looking for information - issues and methods for a system a decade newer or half a decade older than yours are not necessarily likely to be applicable to your PC. Most likely your motherboard and drives all use the bog-standard IDE cable with the one pin removed. All you need is a working IDE cable and two drives with master/slave jumpers set correctly, and you should be off to the races.


I know it could be changed, but I saw no reason to upgrade to XP at the time (especially as it wasn't exactly cheap!), and I couldn't go around setting every XP PC I came across back to the classic theme. And IIRC the classic theme was also kind of iffy in certain areas that were more heavily tuned towards the stock XP visual design, which just made the simplicity of 2K all the more attractive to me.

I think you're right about XP being dumbed down from 2K though - 2K was a direct descendant of NT after all, and never marketed towards consumers, while XP took that kernel and codebase and tried to make it "friendly". And as with most ill-informed/poorly thought through attempts at doing so, that meant hiding or removing useful advanced options.

Thanks once again for your good advice.

 

[The red spirit]

I know it could be changed, but I saw no reason to upgrade to XP at the time (especially as it wasn't exactly cheap!), and I couldn't go around setting every XP PC I came across back to the classic theme. And IIRC the classic theme was also kind of iffy in certain areas that were more heavily tuned towards the stock XP visual design, which just made the simplicity of 2K all the more attractive to me.

Wait, you actually bought Windows? In Eastern Europe, basically everyone back then just asked friends to burn cracked Windows on DVD, which they downloaded from FTP and then just installed it and got key from keygen or from already pre-generated code. That's not even a small operation. Those were like literally everyone, unless they got work laptop or worked in legit IT company. Same deal with games too. Also same deal with PS2 or Xbox. Like 60-70% of PS2s or Xboxes were flashed and most likely never saw a single original DVD ever. I still have one of those cracked Windows XP installs from back then and it still works fine. But now if you are more sophisticated, you can just download legit Windows ISO and find key on old computer ads. At this point nobody cares if someone nicks their XP key.