Thinkpads Forum

Greetings!
Has anyone tried installing Win 98 on x60s? There are no official drivers, but still... I'm wondering whether a) it's possible at all, and if yes, b) sound and CardBus work. To my surprise googling did not give any results. So hope that forum members have some experimental data on this topic.
Before you ask why would one need to do that - mostly for fun, but I also have a couple of PCMCIA MIDI synthesizers that have only Win 98 driivers. It would be very convenient for me to use them on my x60s.

Sound could be an issue, as the X60s has Intel HDA audio, which didn't exist yet during Win 98's time in the limelight. Windows 2000 might work though.

I think the bigger issue would be graphics. AFAIK even the GMA 900 graphics on the iGPU T43/R52's do not have Windows 98 drivers, so you'd have no chance on the X60 with the 945GM generation.

I am a bit late with my reply, but there seems to have been someone on the Reddit Thinkpad website who has achieved installing Windows 98 with sound on their X61:
https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comme ... including/

I am actually interested in installing Windows 98 on the X6x machines myself.
I have an X61 with X60 bottom case and X61s lid, that I call X601, and so I have been searching online and also here for any answers.

If anyone here has figured it out this late in the game, I would gladly appreciate any information.
And of course, if I get it working when I get around to it, I will share information as well.

I plan on making an account on that website and messaging the poster since they still seem active to this day.

Oh great! Thanks a lot, jcdbm. You're not too late at all, as it's never too late and nothing is too old when it comes to retro activities
This looks very promising. I've checked the links and the sublilnks. Most of the files are still available, except for latest versions of HDAICOUT.HDA file. I'm going to try this all out and report back here, when I find the time. And also hope that you'll keep us updated about your progress too.

That was me that posted on Reddit about getting 98 working on my X61. I thought I posted here, too, but maybe not.

Honestly, everything except the HD Audio is pretty easy to do (no harder than installing Windows 98 ever was). It's all well documented elsewhere. The user-made generic VESA driver won't do hardware acceleration, but does support most resolutions at least, including 1024x768. For the Thinkpad, as I mentioned on Reddit, older drivers for the X40 series that you can get here on thinkpads.com will work for many of the non-essential peripherals that there's no custom drivers for.

As for the HD Audio, here's the HDAICOUT.HDA file that works (including PC speaker) on my X61. It may also work for other systems with an AD1984 chip.

https://pastebin.com/CQCYGd19

Lines starting with a semi-colon are commented out, but I left them in for debugging in case anything goes wrong, though this has worked just fine for me for a few years now.

I doubt it will work as is for the X60, which has an AD1981 chip, but with some reference to the original datasheet for that chip, it can probably be adapted. I'd recommend seeking help on the msfn.org forums.

Thanks for the info, Sweater Fish Deluxe!
I finally got to installing Win98 on my X60s, and stumbled right in the very beginning, lol. Setup doesn't run, just black screen. I first installed pure DOS 6.22 on a 2 gig partition, changed sata mode ot Compatibility. Also tried to remove 1 gig ram stick, leaving just 1 gig. Bypassed config/autoexec too. No result.
DOS runs just fine, games etc..
What could it be?

I installed using a self-booting Win98SE install CD (actually the same CD-R I copied from a friend in something like 2000) and didn't have any issues at all. In fact, it was much easier than I remember installing 98 being in the old days. After the installation, I had to adjust some things in system.ini and install plenty of custom drivers. I just followed a tutorial...probably either on vogons or msfn.org.

I've seen some people recommend installing on a virtual machine first and then writing the virtual disk image to a physical partition.

I tried booting from CD as well. It boots fine, then the installation seems to start. It tells that it's intended for systems that have no OS and asks whether I want to replace the current OS (DOS 6.22). When I hit "yes" to continue installation I get same black screen, as if it starts the same setup.exe.
I loked through BIOS to see what settings could prevent the setup fro staring, but nothing caught my eye.
Any ideas?

A little update. As setup.exe refused to run I tried setupcor.exe and it worked. As I understood it's some alternative setup executable either for restoring a corrupted system of for glitchy/faulty hardware. Whatever it is, it worked, and the system installed fine, almost. After first reboot during the installation windows didn't boot complaining that there is not enough memory. Installing patchmem https://archive.org/details/PATCHMEM solved the issue and the installation continued fine. My x60s has 2 gigs of ram.
Installing video drivers was very easy and they work fine in native resolution of 1024x768.
As for audio, I did not install the modified HDA drivers as I was planning to use a PCMCIA sound card. My concern was if the PCMCIA slot wil work. And it did. Sound card drivers installed fine and the sound works.
So, yeah, I call it a success.
Will try some other pc cards in the future to see if they all work.