The ongoing saga of Thunk.
A couple months ago or so I refurbished an IBM Thinkpad 600e which had the unfortunate legacy of running Windows 98. I wasn't fond of W98 but put up with it because the old Thunk was practically free, a throw-away from my wife's work.
But then I wondered, now that W98 is no longer supported by Microsoft, should I bother replacing it with something more modern? This is not a 3gigahertz machine, just a 300 megahertz (or slower) Pentium II, and I haven't had good experiences with slow machines using XP.
I happened to have an unused copy of NT (still shrink wrapped) and wondered, "Hmm? Should I try to upgrade to NT?" Boy was that a mistake -- and a blessing in disguise.
Anyway, I backed up everything on Thunk over Ethernet to my XP Battle Cruiser and plunged right in, stuck the CD in the slot and booted NT.
The first problem-- NT doesn't deal with large disks (i.e. >2gig) so it immediately wiped out W98 and screwed up the disk partition. No going back. Next, NT didn't have Thinkpad video drivers so I had to work in 640 x 480 vga mode for most of the day. Then it didn't have Xircom Ethernet drivers for the little PCMIA card.
It doesn't do USB, period, so I can't use my el-cheapo Linksys wireless or my USB mouse.
NT didn't have the right sound drivers. It didn't even have a working Internet Explorer (1.0?) when I did manage to find the right driver for the Ethernet (via the XP machine to a writable CD).
Thunk doesn't even have a floppy disk, only a CD. On top of all that, NT didn't have support from Microsoft either. But I found an old CD with NT service pack 6 and that repaired things a little bit. At least it could ALMOST access www.microsoft.com so long as I pressed OK, OK for every JavaScript error and web security violation.
Fortunately I did have other, modern, working XP systems on a fast Internet. I searched and searched and downloaded dozens of trial versions of stuff until bit by bit and 24 hours later, I finally succeeded in getting a "modern" version of NT running, complete with service pack 6a, 24bit color full resolution, modern Internet Explorer 6.x, Firefox 1.5, and everything. The only thing I am missing now is USB. Fortunately I have a long Ethernet cable and a junk box with old non-USB mice.
The one benefit that Thunk gave me, a machine to sit in the garden and browse Internet with, is gone -- until I can figure out some wireless thing that works with NT on a Thinkpad.
Now, after all this, I still have an "obsolete" operating system on an "obsolete" computer. But you know what? I think NT was one of the most efficient Microsoft operating systems made for 32 bit computing. Even with everything I have running at the same time it only takes about 64 mb of RAM, leaving more than 200 mb still left over. And things run very fast, even on this old Thunker. Not so many layers of Microsoft Crud Code.
So here I am, posting this from Thunk, living its second new life in the blogosphere. I cringe to think that I might have to dump all of this someday anyway and suck the Microsoft weenie, when even XP is no longer supported. By that time I think I'll give up on computers -- or go back to an even earlier life -- Unix -- unless by some miracle MS actually makes decent software.
Boy do my carpal tunnels hate me today.
A couple months ago or so I refurbished an IBM Thinkpad 600e which had the unfortunate legacy of running Windows 98. I wasn't fond of W98 but put up with it because the old Thunk was practically free, a throw-away from my wife's work.
But then I wondered, now that W98 is no longer supported by Microsoft, should I bother replacing it with something more modern? This is not a 3gigahertz machine, just a 300 megahertz (or slower) Pentium II, and I haven't had good experiences with slow machines using XP.
I happened to have an unused copy of NT (still shrink wrapped) and wondered, "Hmm? Should I try to upgrade to NT?" Boy was that a mistake -- and a blessing in disguise.
Anyway, I backed up everything on Thunk over Ethernet to my XP Battle Cruiser and plunged right in, stuck the CD in the slot and booted NT.
The first problem-- NT doesn't deal with large disks (i.e. >2gig) so it immediately wiped out W98 and screwed up the disk partition. No going back. Next, NT didn't have Thinkpad video drivers so I had to work in 640 x 480 vga mode for most of the day. Then it didn't have Xircom Ethernet drivers for the little PCMIA card.
It doesn't do USB, period, so I can't use my el-cheapo Linksys wireless or my USB mouse.
NT didn't have the right sound drivers. It didn't even have a working Internet Explorer (1.0?) when I did manage to find the right driver for the Ethernet (via the XP machine to a writable CD).
Thunk doesn't even have a floppy disk, only a CD. On top of all that, NT didn't have support from Microsoft either. But I found an old CD with NT service pack 6 and that repaired things a little bit. At least it could ALMOST access www.microsoft.com so long as I pressed OK, OK for every JavaScript error and web security violation.
Fortunately I did have other, modern, working XP systems on a fast Internet. I searched and searched and downloaded dozens of trial versions of stuff until bit by bit and 24 hours later, I finally succeeded in getting a "modern" version of NT running, complete with service pack 6a, 24bit color full resolution, modern Internet Explorer 6.x, Firefox 1.5, and everything. The only thing I am missing now is USB. Fortunately I have a long Ethernet cable and a junk box with old non-USB mice.
The one benefit that Thunk gave me, a machine to sit in the garden and browse Internet with, is gone -- until I can figure out some wireless thing that works with NT on a Thinkpad.
Now, after all this, I still have an "obsolete" operating system on an "obsolete" computer. But you know what? I think NT was one of the most efficient Microsoft operating systems made for 32 bit computing. Even with everything I have running at the same time it only takes about 64 mb of RAM, leaving more than 200 mb still left over. And things run very fast, even on this old Thunker. Not so many layers of Microsoft Crud Code.
So here I am, posting this from Thunk, living its second new life in the blogosphere. I cringe to think that I might have to dump all of this someday anyway and suck the Microsoft weenie, when even XP is no longer supported. By that time I think I'll give up on computers -- or go back to an even earlier life -- Unix -- unless by some miracle MS actually makes decent software.
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