Thin Clients for Retro-Gaming

[CyberBob]

After much fussing with faulty floppies and finicky USB floppy drives, got DOS 6.22 on this thin client. You may have noticed the windows directory. That was a 3.11 fail (faulty floppies again). I have heard that there is a driver for 6.22 that will allow it to access USB CDROMS (OAKCDROM.SYS), but I can't find it in any reliable place (reliable meaning some assurance it doesn't come with a hidden payload). The BIOS boots to a USB CDROM just fine.

 

[CyberBob]

Now to burn a Windows 98SE CD and take the next step.

Upgraded the SSD to 4GB which DOS split into 2 partitions. Currently has 128MB memory but 512MB module on the way.

 

[CyberBob]

I have 2 more HP thin clients to work on after this one. One is smaller (t410) than this, and the other is larger (t5730).

These things can be had for $20 or less on eBay, much less if you but a lot.

 

[CyberBob]

Kyle Jones 18 days ago
I've seen a Phil's Computer Lab video about those thin clients.

Kyle Jones 18 days ago
FYI, all you need of the Windows 98 CD is the win98 folder and you can run the installation from that. It's nice because you don't later need the CD again during driver installs.

 

[CyberBob]

Unfortunately the unit boots to a USB CD, but then its contents become unavailable. The CD gets assigned drive letter a: with what looks like the contents of a DOS boot floppy. The DOS reports itself as Win98, but no further access to the CD. Same with a thumb drive. Right now trying to copy Zip DOS installer so I can get Zip drive on parallel port. (edited)

I suspect security 'features'.

No end of pain just trying to copy one file from Win10 USB floppy to DOS 6.22 USB floppy.

Well crud. Turns out zip installer (dos_551.exe) is self-extracting file that can't be extracted in Win10.

Parallel Zip drive connected. Yea.

Kyle Jones 18 days ago
Parallel ZIP, continuing the pain!

 

[CyberBob]

One of my old work zips. What secrets yet lie hidden...?

 

[CyberBob]

Memory upgraded from 128M to 512M.