I just got around to reading this post and I have some specific information that you might find useful.
I also still have an old PC Chips K6-2-500 motherboard with the SiS 530 AGP video. It is set up in a box with a hard drive drawer connected as the primary IDE master so I can just stick in any of numerous old hard drives I have around and install an OS. Just something I play around with at times. Just last week I took an old hard drive and installed Windows XP SP3 on this machine, and was surprised to find that it works just fine. My box currently has 384MB of DIMM ram, I would suspect that would be the minimum to try such a thing. As an experiment, I also tried running the latest version of the Firefox browser on this setup, and it did not run so well. So, while the OS seems to do just fine, I am not claiming that this will enable you to effectively run any major current software on this machine. But, I'm sure you could run Windows 2000 on your computer, especially if you shut down all the unnecessary services. The video driver is available on the Internet, the one I found is packaged as: "530_108e_win2000.zip" I don't remember the specific site, but I didn't have to register to get the file, it is only 125KB. It was released in 2000 and is, I believe, the last driver ever released for this video adapter. It works just fine in XP. Also, the SiS 530 doesn't seem to provide any VESA 2.0 support. Until this driver was installed, Windows XP only had the standard 640x480 16-color VGA display. Finally, I do not encourage violating the EULA for anybody's software, it is good to respect the developer and legal owner's wishes about these things. However, if all your talking about is using old copies of software that you once actually paid for a single user license on your own old computers in your own home, Microsoft doesn't care. They will NEVER say they don't care, but they really don't care. Not even Microsoft twits are that big of twits. It is "illegal" the same as riding in a car without a seat belt is "illegal", or going 3 miles per hour over the posted speed limit is "illegal". And even if there is somebody at Microsoft who actually cares, they would NEVER attempt to prosecute a private individual for this activity for, at least, 2 reasons: 1. It is a potential PR disaster that can gain them nothing financially. 2. Even with highly paid MS lawyers up against a local-yokel attorney, there is still a 50-50 chance that some judge would bang his/her gavel and declare the activity "fair use" (it has never been officially challenged), and that is something Microsoft would NEVER take such a chance over something so trivial. On 12/20/12, Michael Robinson <plu...@robinson-west.com> wrote: > Windows 98 sort of running on top of a DOS system doesn't work with > ipxwrapper-0.4.0. There is an error that iplphapi.dll can't be found > or something similar. Turns out, this DLL probably doesn't show up > till Windows 2000. So the thought of using Windows 98 boxes and > Windows 7 boxes together goes out the Window. A game that was > originally run from the DOS command line if I'm not mistaken can't > be run from Windows 98SE when Windows 7 is the master server. Yikes! > > Hmm, I guess I could run 2000 instead even though the computer is only > a K6-2 500 and I'd probably have to search for SIS 530 W2K video > drivers. Don't have a legal 2nd copy of 2000, but there doesn't seem to > be a legal way to solve this. There are a lot of games that aren't > DOS games and aren't NT games. Windows 98 in my opinion is a sort > of aberration, Microsoft should have skipped Windows 9x in favor of > bringing everyone into an NT environment sooner. > > I'm sure there is a dos driver for my Realtek 8139 10/100 network card. > But ipxwrapper is intended for NT and HX probably won't run Warcraft II. > > I'd love something legal that isn't the full blown Windows 98SE to run > games like Warcraft II and Diablo II that are in that transitional > period. I just hope that the ReactOS developers get something stable > put together soon. > > I have a Windows XP Home upgrade kit, it is in use though. I'm worried > that XP won't even run on this old machine, but I guess stripped down I > can get away with it. Sadly, XP phones home so Microsoft will know that > I'm running it illegally. > > What is needed is a protected mode DOS like Windows 98SE, but much > lighter, that can run directx 6 or so and do the ipxwrapper trick. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial > Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support > Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services > Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers > http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LogMeIn Rescue: Anywhere, Anytime Remote support for IT. Free Trial Remotely access PCs and mobile devices and provide instant support Improve your efficiency, and focus on delivering more value-add services Discover what IT Professionals Know. Rescue delivers http://p.sf.net/sfu/logmein_12329d2d _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
