Maybe you read my post a few hours ago about installing Windows 98, an OS I've used plenty in the past, but never actually installed myself. I haven't actually installed very many OS's at all, XP & 7 have so far been the only ones I've installed regularly, and of which the installs have been successful. As it turns out Win 98 wasn't a very easy OS to install.

The procedure took a couple of hours and when all was finally done things still were not working right. For starters, the system didn't support more than 16 colors. To get more I'd have to install better (or rather, the proper) drives. After some searching I managed to find drivers that seemed to suit my computer perfectly. I downloaded them through my stationary computer and was about to put them on a floppy when I realized something. The floppy (1.44MB) didn't have enough space for a single one of the drivers I was about to install! At this point I could have burned a CD with the drivers, but fate has it I'm running low on CDs right now and it felt like a waste to use one of them for just 20-30MB worth of drivers that might not even work. I stashed the files on a USB drive instead and plugged it into my Armada.

Turns out Windows 98 doesn't have built-in drivers to handle USB 'Mass Storage Devices' as it calls them, so it tried to search for a driver that worked. It didn't find one. I searched for a driver that worked manually, but it didn't exist. I then downloaded the driver for USB 'Mass Storage Devices' on the stationary computer. It was only around 700KB large fortunately, so I stuffed it on a Floppy and stuffed the floppy in my Armada. The Floppy wasn't recognized at all.

I'm not sure if I should blame it on a faulty floppy, Windows 7 formatting the floppy in the wrong format, or Windows 98 just being a pile of crap, but whatever it was, I decided not to use Windows 98 after all. It's a shame, since I have a bunch of games I'd love to play that don't work on newer systems... probably mentioned that already.

So what next? I booted up Killdisc again and wiped the drive clean while searching for some better alternative. I don't know much about Linux, but apart from old Operating Systems and Internet-based ones (and I don't plan to use Internet at all on this antique computer) like Google Chrome, there isn't much else to chose from. Linux builds tend to be complicated. I'm not used to typing in commands or anything like that, so after looking around for a Linux I could probably have some fun with without complication, one with a GUI, I settled for the OS I had picked initially, Slax. Turns out there was a module to simplify installing the OS, so, module added to my previously saved (lucky) build, I downloaded it, burned it, and booted my now completely clean Armada once more to install it.

Error. Disc not recognized.

The Slax CD I burned earlier during the day had worked fine with a wiped drive to boot. This one didn't. After much trial and error and utter failure I gave up on the disc (it worked fine on the other computer btw) and tried the old CD that couldn't be installed. Didn't work. I tried Killdisc and that worked fine. Thought about installing Windows 98 again but that doesn't seem like such a wise choice. My sister has an old laptop with Windows 2000, so I suppose it's time to give that one a try. As I type this a new partition is already halfway formatted and the installation on its way.

I'll keep you posted.