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Re: Tonight's Auctions

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Wed, 09 Oct 24 4:28 AM | 30 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 59182 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 58773 by De_Composed)
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A quick update on the IBM Thinkpad won on September 21 for $5. It was advertised as "broken" which I did not notice when I bought the thing... but it turned out to work fine and be an extremely clean machine. It just has a dead battery that doesn't hold a charge very well. Oh well. I'll keep it plugged in. The software, however, was another matter. The OS was all crapped up and needed to be reinstalled. Fortunately, the laptop came with a Windows 98 CD and a Recovery disk.

Installing Windows 98 with the Windows 98 disk was a bust. For some reason, the installation hit a point where it needed to read a Notification File that was, it said, missing. The computer shut down at that point. Installation from the recovery disk worked fine.

I was really happy to get a working Windows 98 system, believe it or not. My favorite image editing package is Microsoft Digital Image Suite 10, which I own and which must be 22 or 23 years old. Amazingly, the CD is still good. However, the Suite requires Internet Explorer 6.0. If your system has IE 4 or 5, it will install 6.0 and then install the Suite. But if your system has IE 7 or later - as virtually every computer from 2005 on does, it's impossible to install the Suite. You can't back-install to get IE 6.

The nice thing about Windows 98 is that it comes with a very old version of Internet Explorer which my software Suite can upgrade to IE 6.0, thus allowing the suite to install. And it did.

That challenge overcome, I had a new problem. The laptop has a working 1.4 MB floppy drive, a CD drive, and a USB port. The images I want to edit with the Suite are frequently bigger than 1.4 MB. They can't be moved to the unit via floppy disk. CD would be an expensive way to move images. But, more importantly, the Windows 98 CD format is incompatible with newer versions of Windows. When I burned something on my Windows 10 computer and tried getting the Windows 98 box to read the CD, it couldn't. And it wasn't because of the file system, either. I checked with Microsoft and they pretty much said, "Look, it's a 26 year old operating system. One man year is equal to ten computer years, so you're expecting us to care about a 260 year old! Not gonna happen."

That left me with the USB port as a good way to move images back and forth. Except that the Recovery Disk wasn't nice enough to provide the driver that the USB port needed. The laptop had the USB hardware but not the intelligence to use it.

I hunted and came across someone who had Windows 98 USB drivers. He said they've usually worked for him. I downloaded the drivers, then hunted for some floppy disks. The first one I tried formatting had a Sector Zero error. The second one I tried had a Sector Zero error. The third one I tried had a Sector Zero error. (Have all floppies gone bad?) The fourth floppy I tried . . . WORKED! That gave me a means of moving the USB driver from the Windows 10 laptop to the Windows 98 laptop, as long as there were no other problems. But...

The next problem was that the Windows 98 box had a good floppy drive and a good floppy, but the Windows 10 box did not have a floppy drive. I went hunting through the barn and found a glitchy laptop that had both a working USB port and a working floppy drive. As I said, the laptop was glitchy but not so glitchy that I couldn't get the driver on the Windows 10 box to it via the glitchy laptop's USB port. Then I copied the driver to the floppy I'd successfully formatted and transferred it to the Windows 98 laptop and . . . magic. It installed right off and fixed the USB port just as the guy had said it would. I love it when something works as advertised.

That's all it took. Now I can move photos and other images from my Windows 10 laptop to the Windows 98 laptop, edit them with the Digital Image Suite, return them to the Windows 10 laptop and share them with a world that really doesn't give a rat's a$$.

Piece of cake, eh? Of course, I'm not mentioning a whole lot of little things. For instance, I had to find a 64 MB or smaller USB drive, 'cuz there's no way a Windows 98 box is going to read a multi-gigabyte thumb drive! But that was a small problem. I only tried four or five old thumb drives before I had one that worked. (One of those that didn't work actually crashed the Windows '98 laptop. LOL. Remember the days when THAT sort of thing used to happen??)


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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Tonight's Auctions
By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE
Sat, 28 Sep 24 9:00 AM 		Msg. 58773 of 60008

We did three auctions Wednesday night... 1,029 lots. We tried for 39 and won four. That should give you a feel for the chances of getting a "win" at a good or better price. Bidding can be stressful, and it seems to be getting harder to succeed. Maybe the word is out that auctions are an outstanding way to get interesting things at exceptional prices.

My wife did the pickups on the wins today (Friday). One was an IBM Thinkpad (a laptop) and keyboard for $5. After winning it, I read the description and saw that it was described as "Not working, parts only." Argh. Why didn't I see that?

Next, a 12' x 10' screenhouse for $7. It's in its box... condition is unknown but it will probably be good. Most things are.

The final two lots were a batch of craft stuff like yarn for $3, and a "Kitchen Cabinet Lot Incl. Hand Mixers, Electric Can Opener, Incl. Rubber Lazy Susan" for $2.

We spent a total of $19.55 including the auction premium. Pretty good except for the broken laptop which I also see is missing its external keyboard. I could blame my wife but I don't think she knew it came with a keyboard. Mostly I blame the auction house for not bringing it out. It's okay, though. I'm forgiving them - because that laptop works! It looks to be in pristine condition - the laptop, case and accessories (a docking station) are really clean. I'm surprised to find that even the battery works. How could it? It's nearly 25 years old! Even the CDs are good - two from IBM with driver and tools, and a Windows 98 disk. BUT, the OS needs to be reinstalled and I don't remember how to do it! It's been a really long time. There's FORMAT, and FDISK and... what else?

Oh well. I'll have to do some research but it will probably eventually be a working Windows '98 laptop again... which will be kind of cool. I *know* I have boxes of Windows '98 software somewhere. And a few hundred 3.5" floppies. Maybe I can get some of my old programs to work again.

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