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Compaq prolinea 466 - OS to install

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Dmitriy Krotevich

Experienced Member
Joined
May 14, 2013
Messages
107
Location
St.Petersburg, Russia
Today I got a nice new addition to my setup- Compaq prolinea 466 (486 66Mhz 16RAM)

IMG_6218.jpg (now need to find proper monitor and keyboard :cool:)

Currently it's running Windows 95. But I'm interested in experimenting with alternative OSs. (Have Archlinux for everyday use, freeBSD for ftp/http server)
I'm thinking about trying OS/2. What version of OS/2 would run smoothly on such configuration? Does anyone have any experience with OS/2?
 
ok- the CMOS battery appeared to be dead. Tried to remove old battery and.. couldn't! I didn't want to apply much force to it, but it seems like the battery is soldered to the board! How is this possible?:confused:

Fortunately there's an option to connect an external battery:

IMG_6241.jpg
 
Nice machine. It wasn't uncommon for Compaqs of the time to have soldered coin batteries.

Yes OS/2 will run on that machine. I've got Warp v 3 Connect on my DECpc which has a 486DX2/66 with 16megs of ram and 320meg hdd. It's not the fastest to boot up but runs ok. Being the Connect version it has networking software as part of the package but you'll need to find out if the video, nic, sound, ect drivers are available. The peer network login takes a while too. http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?21290-Digital-decpc-LPv-series/page2

I see there's no cdrom on the machine. This would be useful installing OS/2-feeding 22 odd disks into the fdd is not for the faint hearted. Also if you have it available stick as much ram in the machine as it will take. You can also give NT 3.x/4/ an older Linux/BSD a shot. Of course there's the old standby Dos (MS-PC/DR-Novel/FreeDos) and you can have a play with the likes of Win/wfw 3.x, PC Geos, DesqVeiw/X et el ;).

If Windows 95 is running ok it may be a good idea to make a back up existing hdd, remove it and replace it with another drive or IDE -CF setup.
 
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I've connected a CD-ROM and it works, but to install it I need a set of mounting rails. I think I can replace them with some parts of construction set like this:

prod_16009.jpg :p

also tried a PCI ethernet card, but it didn't work. no drivers available :( So i guess I will play with OS/2 in VirtualBox to see if I really want this system on my hardware, because I'm afraid finding drivers might be a pain in the ass.:bomb:
 
I've ran OS/2 Warp 3 on my Prolinea 4/33 with a 40X 512 MB CF card as a hard drive, that was actually quite fast to load. At the time I had a DX2-66 in it.

You did say you put a PCI card in it, does this system even have PCI slots? I know the Prolinea 4/33 doesn't, although I don't know how late this system was released. A card to try would be a generic NE2000 clone or some of the 3Com cards, they commonly have drivers for DOS and OS/2 and Windows.
 
Yes, Prolinea 466 got one PCI-slot. The problem was in lack of drivers. the oldest driver I could find for my realtek r8169 required Win98 minimum.

Is it possible to install Win 95 and OS/2 into different partitions to switch between them when needed? I want to try OS/2 on a real hardware but I'm afraid to get an unusable system. I want this computer to serve a special purpose- If some of my guests need the internet, because normally, people are afraid of usung my linux desktop:lol:, saying "i don't want to break anything" especially if they see the terminal :cool:
 
Almost forgot. You need to install the MS products first. I can't remember if it was DOS or Windows, but when installing one to them, the installer searches for partitions on the hard drives. If it finds any that are not FAT partitions, it will format them automaticaly and trash anything on them. IMO that was quite deliberate by ScumSoft.
 
ok, seems like it's impossible to install anything from CD-ROM. There's no way to make CD-ROM bootable. So i decided to install OS/2 from diskettes. Got an OS/2 distribution of 22 diskette images 1.8Mb each. WOW how am I supposed to write an 1.8Mb image to 1.4 diskette???:hammermon:
 
The OS/2 CDs need two boot disks to work. The disk images I've used always wrote fine to a 1.4 MB disk using Winimage.

What version are you trying to install? Warp 3 Connect will probably work best for that.
 
actually i tried several distributions Warp 4, Warp 3 connect etc, they all contained 1.8Mb images. Warp 4 CD version even has a bat-file to write boot-diskettes , but it also fails.
 
Warp 3, and Warp 3 Connect CDs also have images of two you have to create to install on CD. You use XCOPY on the cd to create them. From memory you can also install v3 and v4 by copying the installation files to a directory by altering the one of 2-3 installation disk files to point to that directory, and install.

You'll most likely have to update the cdrom/ide divers onto the one of the disks as well. This is quite well documented.http://www.os2.org.nz/topics/installingos2.htm

Try booting from a dos disk with cdrom support and create the install disks that way.

Standard 1.44 disks can be in 1.8meg format. See if you have any luck with http://www.warpdoctor.org/downloads.html or
 
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ok, guys. I gave up. Maybe I will try OS/2 later on another computer. Now I have a fresh windows 95 installed and my next question is how do i get online with this computer?

I got an ethernet card. The manufacturer is unknown, but the system recognizes it as NE2000-compatible card, saying it works properly. The card is connected to Dlink dir-300 router via twisted pair:

350px-RJ-45_TIA-568B_Left.png
350px-RJ-45_TIA-568B_Right.png


TCP/IP protocol is installed. How do i configure it? because my current config doesn't seem to be correct.
 
Dmitriy Krotevich said:
ok, guys. I gave up. Maybe I will try OS/2 later on another computer. Now I have a fresh windows 95 installed and my next question is how do i get online with this computer?

I got an ethernet card. The manufacturer is unknown, but the system recognizes it as NE2000-compatible card, saying it works properly. The card is connected to Dlink dir-300 router via twisted pair:

TCP/IP protocol is installed. How do i configure it? because my current config doesn't seem to be correct.
Click to expand...

Is the router configured for DHCP? If so, all you should have to do is enable DHCP in the TCP/IP properties and Windows 95 will automatically get an IP address. Run "WINIPCFG" to verify your settings are correct. Check the port indicator lights on your router to verify the port shows a connection and the appropriate speed.

If you are trying to browse the web from 95 I would normally recommend Opera 10.10 classic installer, or the builds of SeaMonkey 1.1.20pre for Firefox 2.0.0.22pre located here but on that speed of computer, thanks to how bloated web pages are these days, you will be in for quite a wait.
 
yes. DHCP is enabled. I have two computers connected via cables and two devices connected wirelessly. The lights on a card and a router are ON, but do not blink. Do I have manually assign the address of DHCP server and gateway? (tho i did and it didn't work either)
 
Can you ping the loopback address? It'll show whether or not tcpip is installed correctly, but nothing else.

Another thing you can do is get hold of a dos packet driver the nic, along with its diagnostic software and test the hardware using the Dos mTCP suite. At least this'll varify whether or not you nic is good or not.i know you say it's a no name nic but there must be some form of identification on it. Is it pci or isa?
 
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