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windows nt 3.51 on my 486 laptop - good idea?

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linuxlove

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i was wanting to install windows nt 3.51 on my thinkpad. i found the orinoco wireless card driver for it. however, is it a good idea to install this over windows 95? i want an environment that is similar to windows 3.1, yet have 32-bit power, hence windows nt 3.51.
 
linuxlove said:
i was wanting to install windows nt 3.51 on my thinkpad. i found the orinoco wireless card driver for it. however, is it a good idea to install this over windows 95? i want an environment that is similar to windows 3.1, yet have 32-bit power, hence windows nt 3.51.
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Windows NT is much more stable then window 95. If you have NT, you don't really need windows 95 any more. I recall I had problems with windows 95, it keeps removing files from my system whenever I uninstalled something. Then that problem went away when I start using Windows 98.

Dougtronics
 
How much space do you have (RAM and disk)?

I liked NT 3.51 when it came out--it was slower than NT 4 because many device drivers (such as video) weren't run as kernel processes. But it was fairly stable.

There's no reason that you couldn't set your system up for dual-boot and have both. Not everything that runs on 95 (particularly those applications requiring their own VxDs or those that perform direct port access) will run on NT. NT typicall uses \WINNT as its system root, while 95 uses \WINDOWS, so they can exist on the same partition.
 
Chuck(G) said:
How much space do you have (RAM and disk)?

I liked NT 3.51 when it came out--it was slower than NT 4 because many device drivers (such as video) weren't run as kernel processes. But it was fairly stable.

There's no reason that you couldn't set your system up for dual-boot and have both. Not everything that runs on 95 (particularly those applications requiring their own VxDs or those that perform direct port access) will run on NT. NT typicall uses \WINNT as its system root, while 95 uses \WINDOWS, so they can exist on the same partition.
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Basically, I am not recomended dual-booting for laptop because of the limited space of everything.

Dougtronics
 
Chuck(G): i have only 8MB RAM and 340MB drive. If i can get NT 3.51 installed, i'll delete my windows 95 files to free up space (if it'll even install).
 
Well, you're going to be tight on RAM in any case. ISTR that MS wanted something like 12-16MB for 3.51. Keep your installation lean and hope things don't thrash too much.

There's also OS/2 Warp, but finding drivers may be tough.
 
ok. now, since the floppy drive borked and i have no CD-ROM drive available and the hard drive won't fit into this newer toshiba laptop i have here, my only option is to do a network install. however, i have no idea where to begin and what files to copy. where do i start?
 
In its day I found NT3.51 would only just install with 16 MB ram, and run acceptably with 32 MB minimum. Also a 486 is more than a bit underpowered.

Other than that, 3.51 with SP5 is one of my favorite OS's. A serious 32-bit OS, which to the casual observer looked like Win3.1.
 
linuxlove said:
ok. now, since the floppy drive borked and i have no CD-ROM drive available and the hard drive won't fit into this newer toshiba laptop i have here, my only option is to do a network install. however, i have no idea where to begin and what files to copy. where do i start?
Click to expand...

I am thinking may be you can first install in a computer with CD rom. then you can gost it to your laptop. Just an idea.

Dougtronics
 
linuxlove said:
ok. now, since the floppy drive borked and i have no CD-ROM drive available and the hard drive won't fit into this newer toshiba laptop i have here, my only option is to do a network install. however, i have no idea where to begin and what files to copy. where do i start?
Click to expand...

Boot DOS and load the "i386" folder to your harddrive. After that, run the "WINNT.EXE" with the needed switches for an installation without floppies. With a 486 with only 8 MB RAM you wouldnt have much fun. In my memory the installer refuses everything below 12.

I have it installed on a Pentium 100 with 16 MB RAM and its quite slow... :)
 
os/2 warp huh? well i got that (thanks allen), but it's on CD-ROM. I have no CD ROM drive on my laptop and thanks to my curiosity, no floppy drive either. so is there a way to install this from the hard drive? over windows 95? is there also an orinoco silver driver for my card? and finally, how do you get the IBM word processer to work?
 
*chuckle*, you said 'OS/2' and 'driver' in one post...

As far as I know OS/2 installs from CD, but needs 2 installation floppies to start with.
 
Yup, you need kicker1 and kicker2 boot floppies for Warp, although the eComStation people do have a liveCD version of Warp--but then, you don't have a CD-ROM drive...

FWIW, there does exist a driver for the Prism-based LAN cards for OS/2.
 
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