Installing Windows 98 on a Single Board Computer

In this video, I took this old Altigen VoIP server I got at a thrift store and turend it into a windows 98 gaming machine! and the resaults.... are not great.
SPECS
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SBC: ADVANTECH PCI-6881 REV A2
CPU: 1.6GHz Intel Pentium M
RAM: 1GB DDR SODIMM
GPU: intel 855GME
FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE
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2nd channel: / @yarpahk
Twitter: / ionic1k
All links: linktr.ee/ionic1k
============MUSIC==============
VECTOR GRAPHICS - DESTINE: / destine
VECTOR GRAPHICS - SHINJO: / shinjo
VECTOR GRAPHICS - CONUS: / conus

[@Nebbed]

I love the idea of finding a Windows server, and then going: *"I MUST INSTALL WINDOWS 98 AND PLAY GAMES ON IT"* It's like the retro-tech equivalent of "do you have games on your phone?" Apart from that, *great video as always!*

[@KING_K_GD]

Free Windows Product key at the beginning 🔥

[@SaraMorgan-ym6ue]

imagine putting a pentium 3 computer into your amd ryzen beast🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 on a pci-e slow🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@luks1635]

i love your astolfo figure pls never stop putting them in your videos

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Something I learned long ago - never install Windows directly from CD. Boot to command prompt, format the disk, copy the contents of the Windows install folder to the hard drive, then install from the hard drive.

[@SianaGearz]

Good classic advice.

[@mmuller2402]

Why? Just speed reasons?

[@SianaGearz]

@@mmuller2402 I have encountered several reasons. One of the reasons is unreliable optical media and unreliable optical drives. You're much better off frontloading the possible risk. Somehow even if nothing else ever fails, the Windows install CD finds a way. The next is that it's plain quicker by many times for some reason, the optical disk handling of the installer is absolutely hideous, and formatting the HD is slower as well than when you do this on a fully equipped system. The other is that the installation hard disk can always be accessed by Windows 9x with fallback INT 13h routines (otherwise you're doomed anyway and have to rethink your installation strategy), but access to optical drive is often temporarily lost during installation. The way the optical drive is accessed on first boot of the installation and on subsequent ones differs. Then after the installation is finished, it always turns out after a few minutes that you need the CD again because the drivers that you install request some Windows component, and it can turn into a headache again because even the CD inserted is sometimes not found because the correct path is not set. But when you installed from hard disk and the installer is still there, the path is correct. As you see we have a special case of KOALA TEA SOFTWARE on our hands. The most rushed, badly slapped together, worst tested subsystem of Windows.

[@SianaGearz]

@@mmuller2402 Well i wrote a more elaborate reply previously but the powers that be decided for you not to see it. I'll try to keep it brief. Yes it's a LOT faster, you frontload the risk of file read error, and you work around installer bugs that cause the CD to be temporarily not available during install, and around path issues when installing drivers later. Installer is quite buggy.

[@davidmoralesgarcia9365]

Yup! that's the wy to go on Win95, 98 & Me. IF not, the installer normally fails to detect the CD and the installation gets botched.

[@dobtuwu]

Yet another great video from ionic! The astolfo figurine made sure the artifacting wouldn’t come back.

[@Ionic1k]

omg is this the real dobt?

[@dobtuwu]

@@Ionic1k its uhh me… yeah

[@Ionic1k]

@@dobtuwu 🙁

[@serenitysuccubus9231]

imagine being a server, built to maintain and store important files by some mega million dollar cooperation, everyone depended on you, just for you to be sold to some weeb and turned into a windows 98 gaming pc lol

[@YourIdeologyIsDelusional]

Not a bad retirement.

[@theengineer-dellconagher]

its always pleasant seeing the astolfo figure

[@le9038]

I've had to cover it with my hand, the box my new smartphone came in and a window.

[@garfleid2773]

I love all the stuff you do with old tech, prolly my fav channel so far, keep up the great work man

[@agustinaayala8432]

I love so much this channel!!! Amazing, also i love that astolfo figure!!!

[@plushifoxed]

the vibes on your videos are quite good. love the vaporwavey flavor

[@NdxtremePro]

Fun fact, there is a patch for Win9X to fix the memory issues. Also, that experience is very normal for that time period. I remember doing these types of things, running unsupported cards and other shenanigans back in the day.

[@TAGMedia7]

Randomly discovered your channel. Instant sub. You have the same chaotic energy as Bringus Studios, which I love. Good stuff!

[@anonuser260]

Man this channel is top shelf quality, i know for a fact you are about to blow up on youtube

[@user-lj2bf4ch5q]

Bro, I just remembered about one of your videos yesterday, but I couldn’t remember the name of the channel to find it. And today I received a notification about a new video from you Х)

[@LeeZhiWei8219]

Dude your stuff is amazing... Ngl the Windows 98 vibes reminds me of druaga1... Cool video though!

[@Leahi84]

Lol. Even though its been decades now I immediately knew what that line at the top was before you opened it. Good old Sound blaster bloatware. That brought some memories back.

[@MatthiasTheMouseWarrior]

Awesome video. I love seeing older hardware being used again. You might want to try running a memory test like memtest86+ to make sure the RAM is all good. Some of those video artifacts remind me of failing VRAM.

[@cocusar]

cool video! subbed!

[@daniel-andersson]

niice! wish my thrift store had retro hardware, or like any computer stuff in general. Best thing i've found was a Windows 7 retail copy for $1.50 (was very happy about it lol)

[@Ionic1k]

that's still super cool tho, you don't find a lot of windows copy's here for some reason

[@louiel8711]

I wish the goodwill and other thrift stores around here carried old computer hardware and games, it's all eBay priced furniture and kitchen stuff.

[@SolidSonicTH]

I have 98 on an SBC but I paired it with quite a few other gaming-specific expansions. It lives inside a full-tower case because that was the only thing with enough slots for the backplane I was using (and even then it had to be modded for the case standoff holes). It was an expensive project but I was happy I did it.

[@TheMrDarius]

“Waaaait! I’m fucking stupid!” Had me dead. We’ve all been there. I know I have more times than I can count

[@brokencrayon3476]

Good video love the astolfo feature

[@maltoNitho]

A better install method is to copy the install files from the CD (d:\win98) to the HD (c:\win98) and then run setup from the HD. Since Windows was installed from that folder, it would remember that and use those files in future without even asking you. Just do that copy after your fdisk and you’d be set. I loved the video.

[@RTheren]

My first guess would've been RDP than WebUI since it's an old server. Still, a neat piece of hardware you got there.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I love these kinds of videos. Really gives me druaga vibes.

[@nutzz734]

cool channel bro 🔥🔥🔥

[@kevgonzal85]

I like your videos!

[@TrashyYT]

hey loved the video a thing that has been killing me is where you go the theme for your pc if you could tell me where you got it i would be really happy ‼

[@t7a9]

"personal windows 2000 rig" i love this channel

[@AIC_onyt]

noice. cool piece of hardware

[@oluscano]

why you have a baofeng uv-5r on your desk? btw awesome video!!

[@darkhelmet169]

You may need to install a patch for Far Cry if you were using the retail disc version. I had similar problems with the ground textures not rendering on an Athlon XP with a 7800GS and the patch fixed it.

[@pixwarrior]

I'm defenetely not going to get some old server with loud af fan to play quake on it, but just out of curiosity, have you tried putting on some headphones and did it help to muffle the fan? Also, haaai Astolfo minifigure, hai, haaai, nice to see you :3

[@Maine69]

Astolfo figure returns yet again

[@Alex_Wentworth]

Are you daily driving NsCDE? Or regular CDE? Either way nice job

[@fabiomarca]

Curious about those baofeng's in between the machines, theres a video idea for ye.

[@nyanpasu64]

Is the artifacting from trying to display a 640x400 framebuffer into the bottom of a 640x480 video mode (so the top 1/6 of the screen was gibberish)?

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

The video chip doesn't actually have _any_ VRAM of its own, it uses main system memory, defaulting to 32 MB. It may be possible in system BIOS to configure more system RAM as VRAM, which may fix Far Cry.

[@davidmoralesgarcia9365]

I wonder if the backplane (the board holding the SBC) has standard ATX connectors? Because if that's true you can hook the hardware to a big oldie ATX case and get rid of the noise using a standard ATX power supply.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

Will you be adding a pci graphic for testing?

[@a123b890]

for older system like Server 2003, you could always burn chntpw onto a cd, boot it and remove the password, leaving everything in the original system intact.

[@TyTytheCat2004]

Genuinely curious to see what the hell would happened if you plugged that SBC Backplane computer into another computer's PCI slot.

[@jwoody8815]

Actually, In my experiance Windows 98SE will boot and run fine on 1GB RAM. One of my "Retroboxes" running 98SE is a Pentium III (Talautin, 1.2GHz @ 1.4GHz), 1GB PC133 SDRAM, 60GB IDE SSD, 3DFx Voodoo2 24MB SLI, is running Windows 98SE perfectly. (With the modern USB patch)

[@cdkw2]

Linux penguin profile pic, has a pc dedicated to win98. Makes sense

[@chapitaaa666]

1:03 Man, your desktop looks so cool! what did you use to make it look like that?

[@paulwarner5395]

Will be interested in seeing you trying the telephony cards. Was this a Voicemail system or phone system??

[@Ionic1k]

As far as i can tell this acted as both. Would love to do some stuff with these cards though.

[@smokingiscool599]

10:08 Extremely relatable moment!

[@danthompsett2894]

wait so those modem/lan card things where all connected up with some kinda IDE Ribbon that looks like old school SLI voodoo 2 style bridges why?

[@hacktrixapii]

Soooo this is my childhood laptop on a card,,,

[@adventuregamer6499]

7:02 as a gaming laptop user the fans in my laptop are louder than your server

[@alec1575]

0:33 Gotta love Astolfo

[@burrfoottopknot]

Far Cry later required 128MB of video RAM after a certain patch iirc, up from the 64MB that the box says and it also required Shader Model 3.0 support at hardware level.

[@JamesWoglom]

You can use chntpw to reset a Windows account password running off of a Linux livecd / usb drive, if you ever did want to e.g. investigate the Windows Server 2003 setup on this machine.

[@ae4e746]

Very interesting video

[@Pwnz0rServer2009]

you should have tinkered around with the winserv2003 drive more, perhaps you could've figured out what company it originally belonged to?

[@blooddumpster3427]

The original Farcry ran on some systems it shouldn't have. Really a technical marvel when it came out.

[@RedSaint83]

And fun too. I don't know how well the 'AI' was coded in that game, but guerilla warfare in that game felt good. Coming across a group of bad guys in the jungle 😘👌

[@TeamUnpro]

dude that things impressive asf for its time lol

[@coburnsdookie]

about a week ago this is tuff

[@lukasmarik6580]

Is that a Baofeng WalkieTalkie ?

[@charleshines2142]

Also note that any flicker you see from the monitor is not visible when you are in front of the monitor. It only shows on cameras. It is just a thing that CRTs did that shows up on cameras.

[@huzudra]

Ha, I have a Dell laptop with similar hardware specs, that Pentium M is very clock/watt efficient for it's time and it's IPC is pretty decent. It would easily play back 720P H264 video.

[@R4dm1n]

i love gaming servers

[@zarkeh3013]

I wonder if it could n-glide?

[@1NIGHTMAREGAMER]

There's a 4 gb patch for windows98 se

[@JohnVance]

Windows 98 on a Pentium M will run like a bat out of hell

[@daniel851]

I have the same astolfo figurine.

[@andrive]

Nice

[@FelixDrifts]

This was cool lol

[@teamkilled1227]

WINDOWSG AND ICONIC1K AT THE SAME TIME????????? CHRISTMAS IS HERE

[@w3tbstuff]

nscde user too 🔥

[@ttj_]

dude lol are you using nscde??? That's fucking awesome. I tried it out but man the functionality of it is weird

[@Ionic1k]

yeah, i actually really like it. currently switching between windowmaker and nscde

[@ttj_]

@@Ionic1k thats what im doing too lol. Idk which one to pick. I like the windowmaker aesthetic, but i feel it lacks in customizability. especially with keybindings. I come from using sway a lot so I want to be able to access everything via shortcut

[@ttj_]

i just cant' get enough of the aesthetics of window maker and nscde. They both just look so good

[@Ionic1k]

@@ttj_ for me at least, ive been getting away with using plugins for certain things on windowmaker, but ive had some issues with multi-monitor support.

[@ttj_]

@@Ionic1k Same. at some point i might as well just fork windowmaker and add in the stuff i want lol

[@dawn1berlitz]

you know you could of likely broke into the drive by using offline nt password via a USB drive as that sbc likely supports USB booting

[@Ionic1k]

i tried, the sbc has a non-acpi bios and does not support usb booting :(

[@dawn1berlitz]

hopefully offline nt password supports booting from cd

[@sedrosken831]

You would have had an easier time if you'd copied the setup files to the hard drive to begin with and then ran Windows setup from there. It's an old trick OEMs did back in the day that slowly became more and more necessary as time went on and hardware of the time started to exhibit some strange behavior in DOS.

[@xphiles2345]

Can it run Crysis?

[@Jahades]

Ah yes the early 2000s when games would still launch but would render in n64 if you tried to play on low grade hardware

[@raccoroni.]

does the goat reply ?

[@Ionic1k]

no

[@btarg1]

>finds windows XP equivalent OS on the PC >removes half the ram and installs win98

[@JunafaniFIN]

Hewwo :3

[@Ionic1k]

haii :3

[@raccoroni.]

haii :3

[@MemzWerldForU]

3:25 - 3:34 I have the same issue when I setup windows 95 in VirtualBox

[@mr.pumpkin8891]

astolfo is the real star of the show. no but really i hope that was just ironic

[@techgame_ita]

Maybe the actual password is literaly nothing,i had a windows xp with a password that was eventually just clicking login

[@Maxtraxv3]

computer make sounds? OMG ALMOST LIKE THERE MACHINES! please tell more, in fact complain about it constantly, everyone loves that.

[@Ronaldoyouruncle7272]

the first

[@CaelThunderwing]

98 WILL install w/ over 512mb ram but after the first reboot you gotta boot a dosdisk n install rloew's ram patch.

[@shadowopsairman1583]

98SE you do not, i had 2 GBs in 98SE

[@PrototypeMoxie]

Make it run on Minecraft server

[@danielktdoranie]

Install Gentoo

[@Ionic1k]

would

[@ThatVoxelBlock]

buy a poweredge then complane about that noice 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🙁

[@choppergirl]

The password was password.

[@Ionic1k]

tried that, no work

[@choppergirl]

@@Ionic1k Well then it wasn't a hacker's machine then, because we always set the password to password. We loathe paranoid security keeping us from doing our bloody job and when we have to come in an fix things. Anyone that puts a password on the bathroom gets a coffee cup through the face. Yes, I know, anybody in the world could just walk in off the street and steal the toilet. And no, I don't care. Keep bloody passwords off everything. You don't need one on your garden house even if anybody could walk up and turn it on and leave it running and cost you a fortune...

[@newyoshistudio]

My favorite MIDI is passport.mid