CD-ROM in 5.25 Floppy's Place???

NTL1991

Hello Everyone! I am getting an old 486 today and I was wondering if I could put a CD-ROM Drive in the OLD 5.25 Inch Floppy Drive's place, and use the CD-ROM drive to install Windows 95A on it. Any support would be great. I'm getting it in an hour, and I want to be prepared to get it up and running quick. Thanks, Nick

NTL1991

Oh Yeah! Can I put my 6.4 GB HardDrive in too if I partition it in 2 GB each? Yes, Thats GB, not gigs

Ka0s

First, you can put a CD-ROM there, gigs and GB are the same thing, and 6.4GB is probably too big for a 486 to handle, it may show up as like 2.1GB instead.

stitch

Yup, unscrew the bigass floppy drive, take it out, slip the cdrom in it, screw that in, and plug it into an ide cable.

have an ide cable on hand.

NTL1991

I have tons of cables. So I cant go and partition it into 2 GB Partitions?

stitch

What kinda drive is it?

What brand?

NTL1991

Fujitsu 6.4 GB

IDE

stitch

Ummm, WD has something called EasyDrive, which i used on my old 486 acer to add a 4gb drive in. Look to see if Fujitsu has something like that.

NitricAcid666

couldnt a 486 dx 2 or dx 4 handle a big drive like that, what if you had win 98 on it?

Q

I've used CDROMs in 486 DX2s and 4s before without any problems. The only problem is that you need the driver(s) to be able to recognize the drive and assign it a letter, etc.

-Q

NitricAcid666

well i guess you cold edit autoexec to load generic cd rom drivers right

Q

I'd just copy what they do in the 98SE EBD. The only other thing is having a workable (One that'll take a CDROM drive) IDE "controller" and BIOS. However I"m not that up on the exact details. Try it and see what you get.

-Q

Slash

I think if your 486 has updated BIOS, it can support large drives... like my 486...

NTL1991

Thanx for your feedback...

Though, It's not a 486. It's not what I was told it was.

It's Better! A Pentium 2 MMX 233 Mhz Compaq DeskPro with 64 MB RAM--I'm gunna upgrade to max= 384 MB SDRAM-- It has a cool cd-rom drive that has no drawer that comes out. It's like the iBooks, it slides in the slot...

It came with integrates Ethernet, an SCSI Port, USB 2.0, a 3.0 GB HDD, 3 1/2 Floppy and EWWWW- Windows 95B. It came with TONS of ports on the back. I dont know half of them. Infared, SCSI, etc. I took the HDD out because it was small and everytime it was active it would make a clicking noise-- I guess that's normal-- I have 98 on it, and i have the disks for 2000, but I don't know how it would be running that big of an OS. I fried my Packard Bell- 300 Mhz Cyrix MII (really 266) MMX and the same 6.4 HDD, floppy and USB and all that. Would this current Compaq be better since it has a P2 in it?

BEST OF ALL, IT WAS FREE!!! It was at a doctors office and they were throwing them away

Ka0s

NTL1991 wrote:

Thanx for your feedback...

Though, It's not a 486. It's not what I was told it was.

It's Better! A Pentium 2 MMX 233 Mhz Compaq DeskPro with 64 MB RAM--I'm gunna upgrade to max= 384 MB SDRAM-- It has a cool cd-rom drive that has no drawer that comes out. It's like the iBooks, it slides in the slot...

Q will have alot to say about this.

DevilsJim89

hey NTL1991 - NICE FIND MAN! thats so cool. Why would you wanna divide the partitions up now? Keep that big 6.4GB like it is.

SurfinShell23

Nice. You could prbly run 2k on that, especially with all that RAM.

Bash

NTL1991 wrote:

Thanx for your feedback...

Though, It's not a 486. It's not what I was told it was.

It's Better! A Pentium 2 MMX 233 Mhz Compaq DeskPro with 64 MB RAM--I'm gunna upgrade to max= 384 MB SDRAM-- It has a cool cd-rom drive that has no drawer that comes out. It's like the iBooks, it slides in the slot...

It came with integrates Ethernet, an SCSI Port, USB 2.0, a 3.0 GB HDD, 3 1/2 Floppy and EWWWW- Windows 95B. It came with TONS of ports on the back. I dont know half of them. Infared, SCSI, etc. I took the HDD out because it was small and everytime it was active it would make a clicking noise-- I guess that's normal-- I have 98 on it, and i have the disks for 2000, but I don't know how it would be running that big of an OS. I fried my Packard Bell- 300 Mhz Cyrix MII (really 266) MMX and the same 6.4 HDD, floppy and USB and all that. Would this current Compaq be better since it has a P2 in it?

BEST OF ALL, IT WAS FREE!!! It was at a doctors office and they were throwing them away

tht drive that you are talking about, it is in all laptops. But great find. If Windows 2000 won't run on it, then NT4 will.

Slash

P2 is cool. Much better than just a 486.
No problems with hard drives...
And about Compaq... Q will explain you.. I'm sure...

SurfinShell23

If the drive he's talking about is like the suction type, it's not in all laptops, at least not the one's I've used. PwrBks have it tho.

I know the new PowerBooks have it.

If it's just like this standard laptop deal that my Dell laptop and the iBook I'm using have then it is on most laptops.

NTL1991

Isn't the Pentium 2 kinda ahead of it's time for a 233? I know of 500 Mhz one's that have Pentium 2's in them. I have all the installation CD's and i'm gunna put Office XP Pro, Photoshop 7, Ghost, FireFox (First Thing), THen try to install 2K Pro on it. I think the min. Requirements for 2K Pro is a P2 233 with 128 MB RAM Right?

NTL1991

I also put ZoneAlarm Pro 5.5 because it's better than Norton Internet Security which sucks cause it takes up all your memory just sitting there in the System Tray

Slowed down my system like I had no processor in it

SurfinShell23

Nah, there are plenty of 233 PII's. I think they only go to 400 or 450. 233 may have been the first PII. I've put 2K on much less than P2 233/128


You might want to install the OS first.

MentalMadness

The Pentium II Will probably be better in games, but the Cyrix and the Intel will probably have roughly equal performance when it comes to office applications.

Q

Yes I DO have something to say about that. While I certainly congradulate you for making use of the opportunity (Reuse is better then recycling), I will warn you that Compaqs have MANY problems:

• Many don't have a BIOS in the usuall sense of the word, instead requiring "Diagnostic disks" or a seperate partition for the "ROMpaq" or "Softpaq" (I forget which it it)
• Those that DO have a normal BIOS frequently have a very crippled one, and hide the means of entrance (Usually F10)
• Older (486) Deskpros were infamous for their outrageous lack of standardization in hardware: PSU was soldered to the systemboard, unnatural power/datacables interface, strange processor/memory card slots, and on, and on.
• Compaqs in general frequently have VERY poor design, sometimes requiring you to do ridiculous things to do what should be rather simple

And a bunch of ports, many unintelligible... Fish, is it just me or does that sound ALOT like the infamous "Compaq Daignostics" machine you got from C@H!?

-Q

wingzeroismine

NTL1991 wrote:

Isn't the Pentium 2 kinda ahead of it's time for a 233? I know of 500 Mhz one's that have Pentium 2's in them. I have all the installation CD's and i'm gunna put Office XP Pro, Photoshop 7, Ghost, FireFox (First Thing), THen try to install 2K Pro on it. I think the min. Requirements for 2K Pro is a P2 233 with 128 MB RAM Right?

Yeah.. uh... you did find a nice machine. The pentium 1 family went to 233, so your P2 isn't ahead of it's time.. more like the begining of it's time. The P2 family did go up to 450Mhz. 2k pro will run just fine on that... 2k's requirements are much lower. The first builds only needed 32MB, while others need 64. And, the minimum cpu requirement is a pentium 1 @ 133Mhz.

Wouldn't it make more sense to just format and install 2000? Then install all those programs? You say that it has windows 95b on it, so any cds that it came with would contain drivers for that. 2000 will probably support most of the hardware by iteslf. Since the 2000 you have is an upgrade, all you have to do is boot from it, it will ask for a previous windows cd, just pop the 95 cd in when it asks for it, that way you can format the drive and install 2000 fresh.

NTL1991

I tried to put the Hard Drive in and I had to take the Power supply out just to reach the cables on the old one. When I installed windows 98, I FDISKed the drive and I deleted this 47 MB Non-DOS partition and the FAT-32 one, and now my BIOS wont work. I looked on Sorry-Computing.net- and someone told me that the 47 MB Partition was the BIOS and that I need to download a VP/System Setup SoftPaq of 3 floppies and to install them. I installed them, but the partition didn't like to be created. I FDISKed the drive again, left 50 MB of space unpartitioned and did a regular FAT-32 Partition and it doesn't want to install. I guess your right Q...

wingzeroismine

yeah... didn't we mention those small partitions... NEVER TOUCH THEM !!!!! Well... you'll find something to get it working eventually....

Q

Some of the "small ones" are just crap and deletable (EG. Crapaq "Restore" partitions), and some are vital (EG. Crapaq ROMpaqs). What's worse is some companies (EG. Compaq again!) do BOTH.

-Q

NTL1991

Yeah... I updated the BIOS sucessfully though... it was at 1997 and now it's at 1999. I didn't come with any CD's though. The Requirements are that low??? I thought it was a solid 128 MB RAM... Would a 233 P2 MMX run at least OK on 2k Pro? I know it wouldn't be as fast as any computer today with 2000, but would I be able to do the normal WinWorld and maybe Photoshop and FrontPage and crap like that?

OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm sooooo happy today because I took XP Pro off my machine and moved the super Windows 2000!! It's WAY faster than XP Pro could ever try to be! I tired to network my DeskPro and It didn't work and I found out that I had to add a User Name in my Other Compaq I just put 2K on, to let 98 talk to 2000. I will put 2K Pro on my DeskPro tonight and see how it works... Thanks!


-Nick

SurfinShell23

2k4ev!