Entry 1508: Blog: 1

I refuse to have any of my computers in a none functioning
state. I also try as best I can to maintain machines as
they were originally intended. Whilst being a very keen
Amiga user I did sadly have to move over to Windows 95
in 1996 given that I needed better graphics, internet,
scanner and CD. 

My original Windows 95 machine was bought in July 1996
from Colossus and boasted a Pentium 120 and 1GB hard drive.
I fitted a SWAP bay to the machine plus SCSI scanner
and ZIP drive. She ran without fault until January 2000.

My main issue with the machine in truth was storage. 
I was amazed when I got the machine to find that of the
1GB hard drive space there was literally only around 300MB
left for use. That is why I fitted the 3.1GB SWAP bay.
The machine also uses a ZIP drive and external Iomega
CD writer, though in truth the CD writer was worse than
useless.

Most useful was the SCSI scanner which still has to be 
the best scanner I have ever used.

Sadly though, this week, the hard drive finally gave up.
I did try all night to recover the drive using Norton
and Disk Doctor. But even though Norton reported that all
was fixed, the machine just switched off immediately
after launching Windows.

And so to replacing the hard drive. I had a 2.1GB Seagate
available and that appeared to be working fine. The problem
though was when I cracked the case I could not access the
original hard drive. It was trapped below the PSU and sealed
from the main computer bay. Man did I scratch my head. Then
I noticed a 'post box' slot plate on the back of the machine.
I carfeully removed it and there was the hard drive. I did
have to remove the PSU to access it. 

Having fitted everything back together, albeit, in a very
very dusty box, I proceeded to install the OS. I always
knew this was going to be tricky.

First up FDISK and Logical Partitions. The hard drive had
a small none DOS partition which I believe held factory
settings for the drive. This was confusing the software and
I was not able to format the drive. In the end I deleted
the existing primary partition and started over. 

Next up FORMAT and FORMAT c:/s to transfer the system files
necessary for the install. Another problem is having the
CD support on your install disks. Sadly the original OS did
not have these. I have disks specially created with FDISK,
FORMAT and the CD support, which amazingly were not on the
original Windows 95 setup disks.

The process of installation was pretty seamless and all
worked fine. I installed the ZIP drive and fitted the 3.1GB
drive having first rebooted, entered DELETE and auto detected
the drives through the BIOS.

My main problem is that I have an OS in 16 colours. I cannot
install the graphics drivers cus they are on old DOS based
disks and they keep asking for the Windows 95 disk 2. This
is a challenge cus somewhere in my vast repository is the
set of Windows 95 disks.... Where I do not know. Not a today
problem. 

Lara, my Windows 95 computer, is now working fine. Just need
to replace the DL2032 battery. £1.65 off Ebay.

I have attached a few pictures. Excuse the dust. The pictures
of the computer are in tungsten light without flash so very
yellow. I had to do this to show the monitor screen.

And so lost, but not for long. 

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Last updated 13th September 2015

Chandraise Kingdom

Keep the Faith