Windows98 in Ram Disk- Sucess! silent!

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 10:04 am

[background, can skip to Q's if u want..]
ok my plan is to get a 533-600 mhz celeron (around 11-20w depending on who/what you believe.. 11w is intel) and run it passively in a completely silent system (no moving parts atleast) to run in my bedroom perhaps hooked up to a TV [psu load should be plenty low enugh just to take out the fan]. i dont want a big hot noisy HDD there of course, and am thinking about running a small (~256mb), cheap CF card with an IDE adaptor.. and i'd have a wireless NIC too.
i would install window98SE with 98lite, which can go down to 50-70mb install space..( mine would be a little larger as i need stuff like networking).. i would then add a few applications; an IM client, firefox, winamp 2, media player classic.. this would allow me to play music streamed from the network, web browising, internet radio, IM, etc etc all from my bed and v. cheap and silent..

i have a few Q's about CF cards;

-are they all bootable? (providing IDE adaptor support that? do all?) - i dont have to look out for anything in particular do i?
-approximately what [number]x speed is comparable to a hard drive? whats the fastest? are the faster ones (even with small capacity) significantly more expensive? (if so what should i look for which would be fairly fast but not expensive)
-how about compared to a CD drive- or are they the same (ie a 24x cd drive would be as fast as a 24x CF card?)
- how does the [number]x relate to the mb/s it can do?

if its not possible to get fast cards then i guess i would probably use a USB thumb drive.. but i'm guessing any board i got that old would only have usb 1.1?

any issues u can see with the above set up?

sorry for the n00b questions i'm sure have been answered before but i searched and there were a million pages all unrelated..

Qwertyiopisme · Post by **Qwertyiopisme** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 10:49 am

You donät really want to use CF with a standard OS Filesystem, because each byte of the CF can onyl be changed from a 1 to a 0 roughly 100 000 times. There are some linux FS that are optimised for this and spread the wear over the whole card, but it will still be worn out eventually.

If you really want to do this anyway, then

-AFAIK with the right adapter they are all bootable
-no idea
-I belive this referrs to the original speed for a CF card which I do not know
-no idea

this post may not have been all too helpfull.

seeing as how many of your question I didn't know anything about

Illah · Post by **Illah** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 10:55 am

I don't *think* CF cards are bootable, and even fast ones would be slow compared to a real hard drive... I think your best bet would be to do what you plan with the crap machine but just get a quiet 2.5" drive (prob cheaper than a big/fast CF card anyway). Then just put the drive in a box, fill it with foam, add a second box if you wish, more foam, suspend the whole thing, etc... That would silence the drive and you won't have the hassles of trying to force a CF card to work. You could also use full apps and a modern OS with such a setup.

If you're really set on doing a diskless or RAM-drivel disk type setup I think there are thumbdrive-bootable Linux installs, but not Windows. There are even network bootable linux OS's, but you might need a gig of RAM to do anything useful with such a setup.

--Illah

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 11:37 am

You'll definitely want to check out this thread: Success: Compact Flash diskless PC.

To answer some of your questions:

1. With an IDE adapter, any CF card is bootable. To the motherboard, it's just an IDE hard drive like any other.

2. A gazillionX is the equivalent of a normal hard drive speed. In other words, it doesn't exist. All CF cards are SLOW. Furthermore, the 2x or 4x designations are almost entirely pure BS. Look up dpreview.com to see the straight dope about CF card speeds. It's actually a somewhat complicated situation.

3. No CF card is comparable in speed to a CD-ROM drive. No thumbdrive is comparable in speed either, AFAIK. Also, getting USB booting to work with Windows is...challenging, to say the least.

I recently got an IDE CF card adaptor. It's still in the box; I haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet. However, I don't have any spare CF cards large enough to really be useful. I'm probably going to use it to set up a basic VNC terminal.

atomidude · Post by **atomidude** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 2:33 pm

here's the cf card you might want to use:
http://www.pccasegear.com.au/prod2163.htm

the 1X speed rating is similar to cd drives rating, meaning 1X = 150kB/s

anyway, they are bloody expensive atm, but price seem to be dropping any day now.

another option would be to use a card based on tiny hdd, the microdrive. they are going to come in 8.0 GB size, and should last muchn longer than a classic CF.

Bitter Jitter · Post by **Bitter Jitter** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:04 pm

IsaacKuo wrote:3. No CF card is comparable in speed to a CD-ROM drive. No thumbdrive is comparable in speed either, AFAIK. Also, getting USB booting to work with Windows is...challenging, to say the least.

Thats not strictly true....

Corsair Flash Voyager
- Read : 19MB/sec
- Write : 13MB/sec
- 48x CD-ROM = 7.200KB/sec

That voyager is still slow by laptop hard drive standards but it is better than a CD-ROM.
Corsair do a compact flash which does 6MB/sec read speed also.

Still i agree that laptop hard drives option are the best bet. Much faster, cheaper, suited to being a boot device, get it suspended, boxed or what ever and i'm sure it will be below 15db, which would be considered silent.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 4:40 pm

Hello:

There are CF "cards" that are 1" diameter 2GB and 4GB hard drives inside...I don't think that those have any problems with the number of writes you can do.

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 8:35 pm

mb2 wrote:-are they all bootable? (providing IDE adaptor support that? do all?) - i dont have to look out for anything in particular do i?
-approximately what [number]x speed is comparable to a hard drive? whats the fastest? are the faster ones (even with small capacity) significantly more expensive? (if so what should i look for which would be fairly fast but not expensive)
-how about compared to a CD drive- or are they the same (ie a 24x cd drive would be as fast as a 24x CF card?)
- how does the [number]x relate to the mb/s it can do?

sorry for the n00b questions i'm sure have been answered before but i searched and there were a million pages all unrelated..

There are a number of threads with people proposing to use CF instead of hard drive for Windows. It's generally thought to be a bad idea.

CF cards are sometimes used, but they are usually for embedded systems. I'd used CF cards for embedded NT once upon a time.

All CF cards are bootable using a CF to IDE adapter. This is just a passive adapter - no electronics component. You can find a number of these on eBay. CF cards don't support DMA transfer yet. They only support various PIO modes, which makes it CPU intensive in addition to slow.

(By the way, the following are all megaBYTEs per second. Just want to avoid confusion. And 1x = 150 kB/s. And we have Lexar to thank for that, back when they tried to present their 4x cards as faster than Sandisk. They are not, really. But you have to read the fine print to figure out they're comparing against CD drives and not other CF cards).

A modern hard drive can transfer at up to 60 - 70 MB/s. This is equivalent to about 450x. Speed is highest at the beginning of the disk, and slows down to 30 MB/s (still 200x) towards the end. Check sites like storagereview.com for transfer speeds.

By the way, a 48x CDROM drive only reaches that speed at the outer edge of the disk. Ditto for writers.

A decent CF costs at least $60 per GB (going to $100 for top of the line Sandisk and Lexar). For that price, why not get a 40GB laptop hard drive? You don't have to worry about limited read write cycles as well, and the 2.5" drives are quiet, and small enough to put in an enclosure to muffle them further.

By the way, http://www.robgalbraith.com (a digital photography oriented web site) has a compact flash database, with card to computer transfer rate using a firewire reader somewhere near the end. I'm not too crazy about his testing methodology, but it is a basis for comparison.

Edit : Here's a direct link to the page

Lliam · Post by **Lliam** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 10:23 pm

For IDE adapters in the UK try CF IDE
Interesting project...

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 7:16 am

After reading dpreview's test results for actual CF card speeds, I am forever skeptical about manufacturer claimed specs.

I think microdrives are the most promising CF cards, especially for Windows. I have a 384meg IBM microdrive and it is MUCH quieter than the 2.5" WD Scorpio I just got. Of course, microdrives of decent capacity are shockingly expensive right now.

Still, the seeks on even a microdrive are still audible. I may still enclose it in some of my putty/shot composite.

I can understand the desire to go quieter than a 2.5" drive. As I understand it, the current 40 gig Western Digital Scorpio is among the quietest of 2.5" drives. It still has audible high pitched whine, which isn't eliminated by a suspension.

Ducky · Post by **Ducky** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:08 am

One thing people keep forgetting about CF speed vs. Hard drive speed is:

Yes, CF cards has about the same performance as a ATA33 hard drive in PIO mode in terms of max. transfer rate, since that's what the CF standard is based on. This also answers the first question -- CF cards look like a IDE hard drive to computers, so yes, they are all bootable. However, CF cards has a huge advantage over hard drives in terms of seek time -- on CF, it's essentially 0. Hard drives usually hardly hit their max. transfer rate in the real world because of seek time. CompactFlash cards, on the other hand, really can transfer at their max. speeds. What this means is: The computer will boot up in less time running on a CF card than those running on a traditional hard drive, even though it's technically slower.

lm · Post by lm » Thu Apr 07, 2005 9:40 am

If you happen to have a 24/7 server in another room, you could make the slow machine _really_ diskless, by using linux.

I had a P2/400MHz/384MB machine that did not have any drive whatsoever, but used a network file system mounted from my server which was in another room. No floppy, no cd-rom, nothing. The nic booted the machine and fetched kernel image from my server, which then booted the machine and mounted root partition over nfs from the server. It didn't feel slow.

You could use linux for all those tasks you listed: IM, firefox, playing music and movies etc. even cheaper since it's free.

Btw a P3 might also be a nice cpu for your machine.

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 11:37 am

prego_lala wrote:
lenny wrote: A modern hard drive can transfer at up to 60 - 70 MB/s.. and slows down to 30 MB/s...
60-70MB/s ... really!!!... amazin!!!!...
too bad normal use is like 25-30MB/s

unless u get a scsi...

I'm referring to raw transfer. Don't take my word for it. Check it yourself (http://storagereview.com/articles/20040 ... sit_2.html), and that doesn't include cache burst.

In normal use, it depends on what you're transferring and where in the hard disk your file is located. Too many parameters.

Since the 40x, 80x figures for CF are for raw transfers, you should be comparing the same figures.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 5:33 pm

prego_lala wrote:
lenny wrote: A modern hard drive can transfer at up to 60 - 70 MB/s.. and slows down to 30 MB/s...
60-70MB/s ... really!!!... amazin!!!!...
too bad normal use is like 25-30MB/s

unless u get a scsi...

Not really. The better modern hard drives (A Raptor or a Monaster 300+ GB Hard Drive) can sustain 60-70MBps and can burst over 100Mbps.

luggage · Post by **luggage** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 12:09 am

Shining Arcanine wrote:Not really. The better modern hard drives (A Raptor or a Monaster 300+ GB Hard Drive) can sustain 60-70MBps and can burst over 100Mbps.

Still allmost off topic in a discussion about using a flash-card or mircrodrive or a very silent 2.5" drive yes?

"I wonder can I use a compact flash card as system disk to quiten my system?"
"Yes but you will get much better perfomance with 4 15.3krpm wide SCSI drives in a raid 0 config with a dedicated PCI66 SCSI controller"
"erhm, yes?"

It's allmost like saying:
Sell your car and get a bitmicro solid state drive. It's the best flash HD i've seen.

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 11:21 am

thanks for all the input and replies..

mb2 wrote:thinking about running a small (~256mb), cheap CF card

most ppl seem to have missed this, i'm not talking about multi-GB soltuions or a performance main PC.. if i was spending that much then perhaps i would get a laptop drive..

ok i've tried to address all the issues that have been brought up so i've just put them under headings rather than quoting everyone or whatever..

Max no. of writes:
- most CF cards have good warranties: 3 5 or even lifetime
- i could have a clone of the HDD saved onto a CD; if anything was ever lost i could just copy it back over; anything i wanted to save that was important i coul put on network drive.* [see end]

linux:
this idea is basically an evolution of ideas using linux on a thumbdrive, but after using knoppix for a while i'd rather use W98 if possible; installing/drivers is a PITA w linux.. and i'd prefer to have the larger aplication base and an OS i'm used to..

Laptop HDD:
- expensive - i dont want (need) a big and fast CF card.. small and reasonably fast is ok

- louder; i have a 20gb fujitsu laptop HDD in my current system ATM; yes its v quiet but w/ fanless i can hear it and @ night w/o ambient noise (when this would be used) hearing is increased alot..
- more power; =more heat for PSU; if i decide to get a brick PSU then it will make it more expensive due to more power needed
[plus, if i used a <600mhz celeron, i still couldn't use full apps and modern OS!]

CF speed:
- looking at robgalbraith.com the CF cards only go up to around 13 MB/s; fastest is the Sandisk extreme III but it doesn't do the 20MB/s they advertise [anyone want to critique the testing method?].. also that card is v expensive.. as are microdrives.. and in the link one of them broke with a " 2" drop"!

Corsair Flash Voyager:
I also noticed this, at ebuyer, £20 inc p&p! ..we may have a winner (shame its ass ugly).
i've seen a review where sandra confirms these speeds (19MB/s read etc).. so, out of interest i downloaded sandra to check the HDD speed of my own HDDs..
- my fujitsu 2.5" 20gb got 14 MB/s
- my 4GB WD caviar got 12 MB/s
sure, they are both low RPM, the laptop drive is a few years old and the WD is way older; but they work *fine* to run an OS.. and the thumbdrive is *faster*!

what are the issues booting from USB?
if u have an option to do so in the bios is it doable the same way a CF card would w/ ide?
if there isn't an option in the bios then, can it be done w/ a boot floppy? (or even by network?)

embedded:
what actually defines a system as being embedded or not?

faster boot up/seek w/ CF:
Success: Compact Flash diskless PC thread describes boot up as 'less than a min' ..which is typical of W98 out of the box.. but i dont know how fast the CF card was.. (or how much under a minute!)

network boot:
interesting.. where/how would i learn how to do it? i would prob only have WLAN in this case but i'm interested anyway..

PIII:
i chose the 533-600 celeron as (according to Intel) they are about the lowest power CPU around, [rated 11-12W] .. as they are PIII based w/ lower voltage + less cache..
They can also be picked up on ebay for next to nothing.. (and can usually OC 50% to 100fsb if wanted [w/ fan])
does (U)LV P3 work in S370?..
an (u)LV 800mhz PIII w/ 100fsb would be nice..
are intels figures consistant with eachother? anyone have a link to actual power useage of CPUs of this era? ..and are there any AMDs which have a fighting chance of being as cheap and cool? soA would be nice to give me nice (relatively) high FSB of 133 w/ unlocked mutis

any S370 vias which could compete on performance/heat.. and price?
i have a 400mhz celeron (which i have 100% fanless @ ~60*C) i may decide to keep using.. but there is no USB2 on the motherboard so its a no-go if i do thumbdrive.. and if i get a new mobo then lower heat and the addition of SSE would be very welcome.

*this got me thinking, if i can reload OS from CDdrive in case of CF failure, and i can save files on a network drive, then why not go a step further and run the whole thing from a ramdisk?
i dont see why u couldn't run windows from a ram disk if u have a clone of a drive (already set up and running w98se lite) on a CD and then load that into a ram drive in DOS?.. i know its possible w/ linux right?
this, once loaded, would give me speeds which hard drives can only dream of.. i could use up to 512mb of ram if i had to but would prefer to use 256 if thats possible.. how can i tell how much ram i am using in windows? if i ran out of ram (and 'ramdisk' space) what would happen? a crash? or just stop me opening programs and require me to close stuff [which can seem pretty close to crashing i guess]

is this idea possible?^

Ducky · Post by **Ducky** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 11:59 am

That's actually what the person in the thread you linked to did, actually -- the CF was used simply to hold the initial OS image, which creates a ram disk, installs the OS image into the ram disk, then runs off of that instead of the CF card.

So, that's why the "less than a minute" comment was sorta "impressive" -- the thing didn't run any slower even with the additional steps done during boot-up.

Shining Arcanine · Post by **Shining Arcanine** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 12:24 pm

prego_lala wrote:60MB/s sustained....show me real life file transfer. not on a new fresh formated drive etc etc.. computers dont have empty hdds

i have 'modern' drives, mobo, so i expected >30MB/s transfer between the hdds but i dont get anything but <30MB/s... so i really dont care what those 'benchmarks' say. My tests use big files, but if they were many many small size files that speed would go even slower.
If i were to copy file to same hdd you can bet the speed would suck the most.

the only time i got >= 30MB/s was with a non intel mobo, and from a maxtor ata133 i think to my WD hdd.

Mine does. I only use like 36.3GB of my 320GB hard drive.

Anyway, I don't know what "real life transfer" you're talking about considering that there are numerous factors that can affect transfer speed but at the beginning of a hard disk transfer speeds in the BETTER modern hard drives are 60-70Mbps. The Raptor can do over 70Mbps at the beginning of its platters.

If you are referring to average sustained transfer speed, then you will be intersted in a 74GB Western Digital Raptor as my 320GB Caviar's average sustained transfer speed is 56.7Mbps.

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Fri Apr 08, 2005 3:16 pm

Ducky wrote:That's actually what the person in the thread you linked to did, actually -- the CF was used simply to hold the initial OS image, which creates a ram disk, installs the OS image into the ram disk, then runs off of that instead of the CF card.

So, that's why the "less than a minute" comment was sorta "impressive" -- the thing didn't run any slower even with the additional steps done during boot-up.

sorry most of that linked post went straight over my head.. its very unclear to me..
so he zipped windows and program files directories (why zip?)
then put them on a CF card (C:\)..
then make autoexec.bat config.sys and msdos.sys all what they say.. on the CF card.. then just booted? or what?
what programs do i need.. like pkunzip ? and doslfnbk etc?
..if anyone can explain the process clearer for me i would appreciate it

ok so the old 4GB hard drive i have currently has the install i want to run off CF/thumbdrive/Ramdrive.. basically i installed it to see how small i could keep it and if it would work ok..
so.. i may aswell use this how he used his CF card.. when booted the HDD will turn off in ~3 mins if i set it to in the power options..

|Romeo| · Post by **|Romeo|** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 11:14 am

mb2 wrote:
Ducky wrote:That's actually what the person in the thread you linked to did, actually -- the CF was used simply to hold the initial OS image, which creates a ram disk, installs the OS image into the ram disk, then runs off of that instead of the CF card.

So, that's why the "less than a minute" comment was sorta "impressive" -- the thing didn't run any slower even with the additional steps done during boot-up.
sorry most of that linked post went straight over my head.. its very unclear to me..
so he zipped windows and program files directories (why zip?)
then put them on a CF card (C:\)..
then make autoexec.bat config.sys and msdos.sys all what they say.. on the CF card.. then just booted? or what?
what programs do i need.. like pkunzip ? and doslfnbk etc?
..if anyone can explain the process clearer for me i would appreciate it

ok so the old 4GB hard drive i have currently has the install i want to run off CF/thumbdrive/Ramdrive.. basically i installed it to see how small i could keep it and if it would work ok..
so.. i may aswell use this how he used his CF card.. when booted the HDD will turn off in ~3 mins if i set it to in the power options..

What has been done in the linked thread:

The computer sees the CF card as a HD, and attempts to boot from it.
DOS is installed on the CF card, so it boots. DOS automatically executes autoexec.bat when it boots. *.bat files are called batch files, and they are essentially scripts i.e. it's as if you had typed in all the instructions in autoexec.

That's how that computer boots into DOS, which is not a lot of use as an operating system these days. So we have run windows. To do this, you need at a minimum a windows directory. Since windows 95, some things that windows looks for are stored in program files, so it's handy to have that too. Now these directories could be stored on the CF card (in the same way that they are stored on a HD in a normal computer). However storing them on the CF card would mean that everytime windows wanted to write something to disk (unfortunately fairly frequent), it would use up a write of the CF card (or if you had a disk, spin it up). So instead what Francois_ has done is create a RAMdisk (which appears and works like a HD, but is actually using RAM to store the data) and put the windows directory on that drive (d:\windows) so that the CF card is never written to (and as a side effect, every change made to windows is lost when you reboot[1]).

The RAMdisk is created afresh every time you boot, so the windows directory has to be copied into the RAMdisk. This could be done with Xcopy, but storing in a zip file is good practice, for a number of reasons (attributes, dates and the fact that it copies faster are obvious ones) so the directories are unzipped onto the RAMdisk and then autoexec causes windows to execute and you're off.

The most important points here is that the bootsector is on the CF card. Hope this helps a bit.

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 6:18 pm

|Romeo|; thanks, that helped a bit.. far from everything thou..
i searched around a bit to see if someone had written a guide on how to install w98 onto a ramdisk.. i found this which i started reading and made a little more sense of the process (slightly different to the one posted) but then i got lost with that one and came back to Francois_'s post.. which now made a bit more sense..

so.. i've been trying to get together all the files which were used on the CF card.. i have everything other than;
DBLSPACE.BIN, ATTRIB.EXE, BACKUP.LFN and EGA.CPI
i guess backup.lfn is created by doslfnbk in the process? but where do i get the others from?

- will it work for me just using Francois_'s autoexec.bat, config.sys and msdos.sys exactly as they are or do i have to change anything?

- and what about the registry? or is that saved in a file in \windows\ ?

- what level of compression should i set when zipping? i would have thought that 'none' or 'fast' would be best because surely the time saved by having a smaller transfer to the ram will be far less than the extra time it takes to decompress?
[edit: it is currently on normal and i just noticed it is 47% of the original size so i think 'none' may be a little slower after all! but still, where do u draw the line for best performance?]

- if u just have a formatted HDD, will it automatically run autoexec.bat when u try to boot? or how to i set up the HDD to boot into dos.. i dont want to lose the ability to boot into windows98 on the hard drive (so i can update/make changes).. so if its not easy to keep windows+dos able to load then i will just use (at the start atleast) floppy disks to boot dos.. would this cause any problems?/ any changes i'd have to make?

- do i have to run doslfnbk separately or will that all be handled by autoexec.bat?

- if it boots with autoexec.bat and all those files are there.. then is that all i have to do?

- i used WinRar to zip windows and program files directories.. will that be ok ie will it include hidden/system files [didn't seem to be an option] and 'do' the '8.3 option' (i can't remember what that is its a while since i've used winzip)

any input/help is appreciated

m0002a · Post by **m0002a** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 6:27 pm

Has anyone considered an Abacus?

dano · Post by **dano** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 7:34 pm

Another solid state idea, a harddrive based on RAM:

http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

Post by **Rusty075** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 8:06 pm

dano wrote:Another solid state idea, a harddrive based on RAM:

http://www.cenatek.com/product_rocketdrive.cfm

Well wouldn't ya know, we reviewed that over two years ago

StarfishChris · Post by **StarfishChris** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 2:27 am

Are you still using it? And did you ever knock the power lead out when working on that server

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 8:39 am

thanks for dragging my thread right off topic.. as nice as it is, the rocket drive *starts* at $400, my current solution will cost me from $0 (above what i already have).

can anyone help me out here? (see my previous post)

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Sun Apr 10, 2005 4:14 pm

mb2 wrote:can anyone help me out here? (see my previous post)

From what I can see, what he's doing may not be suitable for you. He has a static Windows image that never changes. If he installs new programs, he'd need to make a new Windows image. Ditto for registry changes. Is this what you want? Every time you boot up, it'll be the same exact OS / settings. Pros : no need to worry about "Windows Rot". Cons : changes to settings don't get saved.

You should be able to just install 98 straight into CF. Disable pagefile. Other than that there shouldn't be anything exotic, because the CF appears to be an IDE device to the computer.

Why ZIP? Because it's available in DOS is my guess.

DOSLFNBK is shareware. Older version is freeware. Info here

On a hard disk, the boot sector (a.k.a Master Boot Record or MBR) contains instructions on what to do. AUTOEXEC.BAT gets processed after CONFIG.SYS. But all that comes after the boot sector instructs it to load other files first (it's been a while - IO.SYS? that's program code, not configuration).

Hope this helps.

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Mon Apr 11, 2005 3:58 pm

i am happy to do what hes done.. i have decided to try this and (for the time being) abandonned using a CF card atall..

what i have now:
windows 98SE (lite, micro) install on an old 4GB hard drive.. working, drivers installed etc..

what i want to do:
get it so that it the computer will load an image of the windows98 install from the hard drive into a ram disk (rather than from the CF card like francois_) .. and then run w98 from the ramdisk.
..[yet will also allow me to boot to the 'hard' install of w98 when i want to make changes]

the reason i am not going to bother using a CF card is
1) expense
2) slower
3) short life span
4) the hard drive should turn off after 3 mins of being idle- i see no point in using a CF card to save 3 mins of noise. if it did annoy me i could no doubt leave it on 24/7 anyway it wouldn't use much power.

the plan is also that if i want to change windows for example to install a new program, i can just boot up the w98 install on the hard drive (Without having to swap drives or anythig like that), make the changes and then re-zip/ run DOSLFNBK.. shouldn't be too hard i dont imagine i'd need to do it much.
it will have a wireless card, so any normal files i download/create that i want to keep i can save to a network drive. (or the connected hard drive, but that = noise).,

i hope this is now clear, if not please ask any Qs..

pros: windows environment that is virtually spyware/adware/virus proof, no cost, very fast (i hope, once loaded)

cons: PITA to set up and find help doing it!, v small hard drive/ram space, have to boot up HDD install and rezip if installing new programs (big deal)

mb2 wrote:i've been trying to get together all the files which were used on the CF card.. i have everything other than;
DBLSPACE.BIN, ATTRIB.EXE, BACKUP.LFN and EGA.CPI
i guess backup.lfn is created by doslfnbk in the process? but where do i get the others from?

(other questions still apply but this is the priority ATM)^^

edit:i have the freeware version of DOSLFNBK

Windows98 in Ram Disk- Sucess! silent!

Windows98 in Ram Disk- Sucess! silent!

Re: CF cards as HDD

Re: CF cards as HDD

Re: CF cards as HDD

Re: CF cards as HDD

Re: CF cards as HDD

Re: where?