Retro PC drive upgrade, which OS to pick and how to install?

[Eastman51]

Background: I have this 26 year old Pentium 1 PC that I picked up from my grandparents around 2 years ago. The system works great, except for one fatal flaw, the IDE HDD boot drive is slower than a snail. So, I have decided to slap in an SSD (for better or for worse) with a SATA to IDE adapter. I am at the stage where the SSD is hooked up and detected, but I need to reinstall the OS. 

 

Presently the old IDE HDD has Windows 98 installed on it (I plan on keeping the IDE drive in there for authenticity and originality). 
I'm not sure which retro OS to install, as I can pick from quite a few; but the bigger issue is how to go about installing an OS at all. The discs that I have are all upgrade discs, meaning that they aren't bootable and require an already installed OS. I doubt that these things are fancy enough to let me install to a slave drive (swap drive placement on cable, try to install to SSD while booted to HDD), so I'm probably going to need to install DOS and then load one of my upgrade discs and go from there.

 

So the problem that now arises is how to get DOS onto this machine. I have an iso file for DOS 7.1, but I don't have any CDs. I don't think this PC can read DVDs, so I'm thinking that I have to go floppy. I don't have a USB floppy reader (big sad), but I have a Pentium 4 machine with XP installed (and it can read DVDs) so I should be able to create a bootable floppy disk.

 

My question here is, can you burn an iso to a floppy disk and will that make it bootable?

I also would like suggestions on what OS to install:

-Windows 95

-Windows 98

-Windows 98 SE

-Windows ME

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Windows 98 SE would likely be the best bet, because by the time that was released, it should've had some sort of support for whatever hardware your PC has. I believe XP also has the ability to make a bootable floppy as an option when you format one.

 

You can also find a bootable Windows 98 SE ISO that you can burn to a CD, which is how I got my retro PC an OS without needing DOS or a floppy drive.

[Eastman51]

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Windows 98 SE would likely be the best bet, because by the time that was released, it should've had some sort of support for whatever hardware your PC has. I believe XP also has the ability to make a bootable floppy as an option when you format one.

 

You can also find a bootable Windows 98 SE ISO that you can burn to a CD, which is how I got my retro PC an OS without needing DOS or a floppy drive.

If I had a CD, I would consider trying to make a bootable installer.

For now I will try to create a bootable floppy for DOS.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Firstly, did you choose an SSD small enough to work?  I'd imagine you could run into problems with BIOS support for most normal sizes of SSD.

Ideally you need a bootable OS CD, personally I'd go Win98SE.  The trick is going to be finding the right version that will support the original registration code.  As I recall if you have Win98 OEM edition installed you can only reinstall that exact version, not a newer or retail revision.

 

I don't envy you using floppy.  I've had no luck reinstalling my Pentium 4 laptops WinXP because I originally had recovery CDs that I no longer can find and none of the ISOs I have found accept the registration code.

[Eastman51]

Just now, Alex Atkin UK said:

Firstly, did you choose an SSD small enough to work?  I'd imagine you could run into problems with BIOS support for most normal sizes of SSD.

Ideally you need a bootable OS CD, personally I'd go Win98SE.  The trick is going to be finding the right version that will support the original registration code.  As I recall if you have Win98 OEM edition installed you can only reinstall that exact version, not a newer or retail revision.

I grabbed a 120GB SSD, so it should be fine.

Thanks for the tip on the OS. I may have to stick with my upgrade discs, since they have keys printed on the case; will probably be my best bet for successful activation

[Eastman51]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I don't envy you using floppy.

You can say that again. Its been a trip, but I've made progress. DOS didn't want to load to a floppy, so I ended up making a boot loader floppy for Win98 that makes the PC boot the upgrade disc in the CDROM reader. However, I've hit another roadblock where setup.exe doesn't do anything more than begin to scan the registry and then freezing with a blinking cursor.