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PostPosted: March 23rd, 2013, 7:54 am 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
So I found a PC-98 of my own a while back - it's a PC-9821Cf with 72MB RAM and a Pentium Overdrive. I've been meaning to replace the original drive (which is only 500mb and has Windows 3.1 on it), and I'm wondering what the maximum useable drive size is, as it varies between DOS/Windows versions. Apparently the hard limit is 8GB, as the machine refuses to boot even from floppy with an 8.4GB drive installed.

Windows 95 can use 8GB drives if it's the OSR2 version, but otherwise they have to be partitioned into 2GB chunks, apparently. Is the PC-98 version any different? Is there a PC-98 version of 95OSR2 floating around?

I also have a Windows 98 CD, but I'm not sure if the boot floppy I have works properly. I get into this menu:
Image
And no matter what I pick I get to this screen:
Image
Eventually I get a prompt (the screen stays that way for quite a few minutes), but I can't access the CD. Do I have the right boot floppy? My specific machine doesn't seem to be listed in the choices in that first menu.

Any idea where I can find Windows 95 OSR2 for this machine?


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PostPosted: March 29th, 2013, 5:20 am 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
Tried an 8GB CF card, no go. It won't boot off of floppy. I'll try a 2GB CF card next.

There's also a couple of gotchas. On this machine, the power and IDE connectors for the hard drive are BACKWARDS on the motherboard! The cables it comes with reverses them back to normal, but if you need to use your own power and/or IDE cable, it could be tremendously dangerous. I was lucky I caught this before I turned the machine on! Always check with a multimeter first!

Still looking for a copy of Windows 95OSR2 with the appropriate bootdisk. Apparently there's a copy over at betaarchive, but I have not been able to get access to their file repository yet.


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PostPosted: January 13th, 2014, 7:59 pm 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
So if I pick option 8, I eventually get a DOS prompt and I can access the CD, and I can format the hard drive using FDISK (which behaves more or less the same as it's western counterpart).

However, I'm getting an even more bizarre message when I actually run the installer. I'll either get this message:
Image
Or this message:
Image
It doesn't seem to have a counterpart in Western Windows. Any ideas? Are there any BIOS settings that could be tripping me up?


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PostPosted: January 13th, 2014, 11:20 pm 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
I ffigured out how to get past that message - just pull the boot floppy when it first appears. It then gets into the windows 98 install, but it is shot down by the SU0013 error every time and no matter how freshly the hd has been formatted.


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PostPosted: January 15th, 2014, 8:55 am 
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Joined: October 27th, 2009, 5:04 am
Posts: 57
Gave up and installed DOS 6.2, like I should have done from the start. Now to get CDs working!


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PostPosted: February 11th, 2014, 5:41 am 
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Joined: January 31st, 2014, 5:44 am
Posts: 12
I know papa_november in meat space so he knows this already, but...

I had the same problem on my NEC PC-9821Na12 laptop. I tracked down the problem using Google search in Japanese & it turns out that there is a straightforward way to get this to work:
1. Install DOS onto the hard disk (in my case a 2GB CF card) where you want to install Windows.
2. Make sure that the HD is bootable to a DOS prompt.
3. Set up CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT to load your CD-ROM driver + MSCDEX.EXE. Make sure the CD-ROM drive works.
4. Reboot into DOS.
5. Start installation from CD.

The "mistake" that I made was to assume that I had to boot from a floppy disk to start the install. For whatever weird reason that approach does not work & there is no error message that would clue you in, regardless of your Japanese abilities.

Hopefully this helps someone in the future. Hell, maybe I'll forget how I solved this & find my own post in a few years time! :roll:


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