Thinkpads Forum

Well, I like my recently acquired T40 so much that I am thinking of picking up an inexpensive 600 or 300 on eBay to replace an older(1996 vintage) P166 Dell tower machine I have that is taking up space. Here is my question, a bit complex to set up:

I use the older Dell ( Win 95 OS ) mainly to control printing on a Minolta Pageworks 20 wide-format printer ( also older ). This printer will allow one to set the size of the paper one is printing on, and it is pefect for designing stamp album pages -- one of my pursuits is philately, and I have software that will help design custom album pages on 10.5" x 11" paper, for example.

Now, the only drivers for this printer that will permit custom page size setting works with Windows 95. I am not sure if the Windows 3.1/98 drivers have a custom page size feature, because I have not seen those drivers. XP drivers exist for this printer but will not permit custom page size setting.

So, can I unistall whatever OS is on a 600 or 300 that I pick up and install Win 95 on it, then use the Win 95 driver to control the Pageworks printer? Is this very hard to do, given the hardware configurations of the 600 or 300? Is it also possible to partition the hard disk and have two operating systems, say Win 95 and Win 98 or XP loaded into each, so that the system can be booted from either partition? Or do I need separate hard drives for each OS?

My apologies if the answer is obvious -- to me, not knowing enough about the early Thinkpads, I am uncertain as to the best way to proceed.

Thank you for any information you might have.

Sudevan wrote:So, can I unistall whatever OS is on a 600 or 300 that I pick up and install Win 95 on it, then use the Win 95 driver to control the Pageworks printer? Is this very hard to do, given the hardware configurations of the 600 or 300? Is it also possible to partition the hard disk and have two operating systems, say Win 95 and Win 98 or XP loaded into each, so that the system can be booted from either partition? Or do I need separate hard drives for each OS?

Yes, you can install two operating systems on one hard drive. Some such as Windows 95 have to be on a primary partition (I think Windows 98 falls into this catagory as well). AFAIK, Windows 2000 or Windows XP can be installed on a primary partition or a logical drive.

You can have two primary partitions on one hard drive, but it's better to have one primary and the rest logical partitions.

One option Windows supports is Dual Boot.

IMHO the best option is to install a boot manager first, such as System Commander, or OS/2 Boot Manager.

I did this before with OS/2 Boot Manager, having OS/2, Windows 95, and MS-DOS all on the same hard drive. I am a little rusty as far as giving you more info. If you search enough you will find the information. You might search on microsoft.com regarding Dual Boot (or use Google).

Thank you GomJabbar. This is all good advice. I'll check out the dual boot system. My main concern was about Win 95 however, so I am happy that it will work on a 600.

Another way to do this is with VMware. It has dropped in price, so it is not too expensive any more. Additionally, you can run the legacy (or other) system simultaneously with XP. I have Windows 98, Windows NT4, Windows 2000 and Linux virtual machines. With the XP host, I can run two additional machines at the same time. Just another option, please understand. ... JD Hurst

Very intriguing, jdhurst. And thanks very much indeed. Will VMWare work with a Thinkpad 600, though?

One tip. You will want to have the latest BIOS version for the newer versions of Windows. Also you need the Windows Supplement files. You can get all that and more HERE.

Sudevan wrote:Very intriguing, jdhurst. And thanks very much indeed. Will VMWare work with a Thinkpad 600, though?

Version 5 wants a 1GHz processor, so if you have any question about your machine, download an evaluation copy and see if it runs.
... JD Hurst

Well, I have found a Thinkpad 600 that has a formatted hard disk, a CD-ROM drive and an external floppy drive, but no OS, and I am about to buy it. My plan, fairly basic, is to see if I can simply install Windows 95. From my research, it seems that I will have to create a boot floppy using my older Dell Win 95 machine, then use that to begin installing the Win 95 OS. My understanding is that the original Win 95 disk that came with the older machine should work fine with the 600, i.e., no proprietary stuff that limits it to one machine. Just to be sure, since I've never done this -- I can't simply boot off the Win 95 CD, and install it without the boot floppy, can I?

Second, if I were to buy a Boot Manager ( or even a Partition Manager ) would things be simpler? Will these types of software load directly through the CD drive into the 600, even if it does not have an OS in it? The material I have read does not mention this possibility. And would it be better from the perspective of creating a dual boot system later? My principal purpose is to get a Win 95 system functioning so I can use my older printer driver.

As always, thanks for any advice any of you might have. You have all been most kind and helpful.

Sudevan wrote:From my research, it seems that I will have to create a boot floppy using my older Dell Win 95 machine, then use that to begin installing the Win 95 OS. My understanding is that the original Win 95 disk that came with the older machine should work fine with the 600, i.e., no proprietary stuff that limits it to one machine. Just to be sure, since I've never done this -- I can't simply boot off the Win 95 CD, and install it without the boot floppy, can I?

Second, if I were to buy a Boot Manager ( or even a Partition Manager ) would things be simpler? Will these types of software load directly through the CD drive into the 600, even if it does not have an OS in it?

To the best of my recollection, you will need a floppy to install Windows 95.

Boot Manager and Partition Manager are two completely different things. A boot manager such as System Commander can and should be installed first - before you install the operating system. Most likely the boot manager program will have a utility for partitioning the hard drive. I know very little about Linux, but I believe there is a Linux boot manager that you could use, and you can get it for free (Check on the Linux forum for info on this). There may be shareware boot managers available as well.

All versions of Windows also have a utility for partitioning the hard drive. That utility is called fdisk. Fdisk is used on the primary hard drive only before the operating system or boot manager is loaded. If you run it after, it will delete all information on the hard drive.

Partition Manager is a program that creates and resizes partitions on the hard drive. This is really only necessary when you already have an operating system installed, and you do not wish to lose the operating system and data on the hard drive.

Thanks very much, GomJabbar. I looked up System Commander, and it appears to require an OS to exist before it can be installed. The 600 I am getting does not have an OS, just a formatted hard disk. Will that still work, can I still install System Commander? And I suppose I will still need the boot floppy after System Commander has been installed.

Take a look at this guide and see if it answers your questions.

EDIT: It appears you are right, you do need Windows installed first with System Commander. I personally have not used System Commander, just read about it, and read that it had good reviews. I used OS/2 boot manager as stated previously. Here are the system requirements for System Commander (and the site for the manufacturer of the software).

Thanks again, GomJabbar. Based on what you said and the PCMechanic reference you sent me ( very useful ), my strategy will be to install Win 95 first using a boot floppy I can make on my Old Dell, so that the 600 will have Win 95 running in Partition 1. I can then install System Commander, and add another OS, perhaps Win 98SE.

I just bought the 600 on eBay, so I am looking forward to getting it and learning new things, like how to install an OS and a dual boot system. In the past, machines arrived with OSs installed, and I never had any trouble requiring even a reinstallation -- just lucky, I suppose. If I am really brave, I might even try for Linux as a second OS. But one thing at a time...

Thanks to you and all others who helped with great advice. What a terrific forum this is!

Sudevan

A tech-minded colleague of mine and I tried to install Win 95 on the 600. We partitioned the 5 GB disk into a primary partition and an extended partition with two logical drives and one physical drive. The we tried to install Win 95 after copying all of the System files onto C: It did not work -- we received an error message as follows:

First, we got the following before the setup even commenced during the scandisk phase:

"Setup found a compressed volume or a disk-cache utililty on your computer. Quit setup and check your compressed volume with the disk compression software or remove the disk-cache utility. Then run setup again."

This doesn't make sense, as we re-partitioned the drive and formatted everything. But anyway, if we continue we soon see:

"Error SU-0013

Setup could not create files on your startup drive and cannot set up Windows.

If you have HPFS or Windows NT file system, you must create an MS-DOS boot partition. If you have LANtastic server or Superstor compression, disable it before running setup."

These don't make much sense to us, as there is no compression on the hard drive, nor is the bootup configured to load anything like this. Any ideas on why the Windows 95 setup disk is cancelling the installation?

Thanks for any advice any of you might have.

Sudevan ( and Patrick )

Just curious, have you tried using Win98SE WITH the Win95 driver for your printer? Sometimes you can get away with using drivers made for a different versions of windows.

If it works, this would eliminate the need for partitioning the drive at all.

One more question now that I am thinking about it. What did you use to format the Hard Drive? Was it done as a Fat 32 or a Fat 16?

It's been too long since I have worked with Windows 95, but I believe if you start out with just a partitioned drive (one primary and any remaining logical), but no formatting, when you boot up the Windows 95 Startup floppy disk, it will give the option to format the C: drive. I would leave the Windows 95 install CD in the CD drive rather than trying to copy the files from the CD to the Hard Drive. At any rate, I would use the format utility from the Windows 95 Startup disk. In fact, if you partitioned your hard drive with something other than fdisk that comes with Windows 95, that may be your problem.

If the Windows 95 CD you have is just a recovery disk for a Dell, it's possible it may not work on a non-Dell computer.

Thanks very much for your suggestions. I will try the approach that GomJabbar suggests and see if formatting from the Win95 disk will work.
As for the other question, we used a CD that I picked up on eBay which was ( supposedly) a boot disk and also contained all of the IBM 600 drivers. ( Thought I would be able to use all of the drivers there rather than download from the IBM site ). We did try making a boot floppy from the CD, then start up and load Win 95, but that did not work either.

Now, I think I will create a new boot floppy tonight from my old Dell computer with the System Disk utility, then try installing Win 95 using the approach that GomJabbar suggested. And I believe we created a FAT32 partition. We did it from DOS -- my colleague was doing this, so I am not 100% sure how he did this.

So I will try these suggestions you have given me. And if this fails, then I will try to get a Win98SE disk and see if I can install that and run my printer driver with it. I have a Win 98SE upgrade disk that came with my 600 computer, but that alone will not help, I think. I have no special attachment to any OS, I just want to get it to work with the printer driver!


Thanks, chaps.. You are all so terrific, and so swift to respond.

Sudevan

I just checked, and the original Windows 95 only works with FAT16. When Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2 (OSR2) came out, it supported FAT32. If you have an original Windows 95 disk and not an OSR2 version, FAT32 will not work. This could very likely be your problem. I believe most of the Windows 95 discs out there are the original version. See following link.

Description of the FAT32 File System

Good observation, GomJabbar. I will check very carefully tomorrow on what we had installed. My Win 95 disk has hardly any information on it, and it is not labelled with any OSR designation. The system was purchased in 1996, so it may well be one of the early FAT16 systems. I'll see if I can unearth some information about the File Allocation Table from the Dell machine sitting here next to me. I left the disk and documentation in my office at work, so I will have to wait until tomorrow to check there.

Thanks again.

Sudevan

The Win95 drivers for the printer should work with Win98SE. Since you're having trouble getting 95 to load, I'd load 98SE (assuming you have that) and try it. 98SE will load and run on the 600E without all the IBM specific drivers, but you want the drivers for a better display and such. You can load 98SE and run as it installs long enough to load the printer driver and test it out.

You're right on 95! I bought the Win98SE upgrade years back, and every time I had to reload my machine from scratch due to a crash or hardware upgrade (I usually back up data then reload HD from scratch when doing a HD, MB, or processor upgrade) I had to load DOS 6.0, load CD-ROM drivers, then Win95, THEN the upgrade to 98SE! All because I didn't make and keep a 95 boot disk! Since you have 95 up and running, it should give you the option of making a boot disk with CD support. Boot with that and everything should work fine. The FAT16/32 issue may be a problem though, if you're not sure if it's the first or second release.

Well, success finally. Everything is working, and it's a bloody nice feeling!

tfflivemb2 gets tremendous credit for swinging by my town and helping me out -- he lives an hour and half away and was going to be here on business, so he graciously offered to work with me on my 600 late last week. A public thank you to him. Another reason why this Forum has the finest people on the Internet.

He helped load Win98SE on the TP 600, working in my university office ( by this time I had talked to my philatelist friend Rick who has the same Minolta wideformat printer and he confirmed that the Win95 driver would work with Win98SE ). We also got the IBM drivers off a CD I picked up on eBay and onto the machine. He found some additional drivers from 3COM for the LAN card, but they somehow did not work -- although this is not a big deal, I was going to use this pretty much as a dedicated machine for album pages.

It took a bit more time and some trial and error before I could load the Minolta driver. Another CD from eBay, supposedly with all the Minolta drivers did not work ( I am going to be wary of these things from now on, I can hear Forum members chuckling ). Next I installed the drivers from the Win98SE CD ( or even from the eBay CD, not sure ), but they were PostScript drivers and caused some problems with the PCL printer emulating PS -- I think. So, I found the floppy I had made last year to save the Win95 drivers, copied them onto a CD, uninstalled the PostScript drivers that I had accidentally placed on the 600 and reinstalled the Win95 driver. Then I set my custom page size ( Can you imagine, it will take page sizes to 0.01 inches? ) and printed a page which came out looking like a beauty, the image centred on a 10" x 11.5" page. So now I can enjoy all the real estate on my desk.

Thanks for your post, Farna. Points well taken.

And the icing on the cake? I just received a 600E that I found on eBay. It is in lovely shape, a bit of dirt inside the screen, barely visible, otherwise it looks like a new machine. I must be hooked.

Sudevan