What this whole thing turned into

Right, so, as it turns out it's a horrible idea to just expect a Win9x based system to 'just work' in the modern day. It was no fault of the Millennium Edition itself, but rather the old, underlying OS base. It does not deal well with modern file shares, and passive FTP on non-standard ports. Stuff just doesn't work. Explorers locking up, FTP not connecting properly and not reading file structures, among other things. Oh, and I found out quickly that if you play an internet radio stream and at the same time try to access a file share, the whole computer just locks up. lol.

So I ditched the whole idea, and will re-visit it further down the road with some support systems to be able to live with its quirks. I shifted gears to something running XP instead, because I was so fed up with it all, and wanted something that would just work. And oh boy, that it did not.

Late at the end of day 1 I dug out an old HP Elitebook 8350p from the basement, that had an XP install on it, but no drivers installed. I quickly remembered why.. That's one of the fun systems were even the USB isn't working without extra drivers, so a disc has to be made to stuff drivers in that way. That in itself isn't a problem really. I burn discs all the time. But it was a drag. I started downloading what should be the correct drivers from HP and set out to install them the same evening. Funnily enough, however, even the supposedly correct drivers refused to even install on the thing. Very annoyed, I then went to bed.

On the morning of day 2 I drove to work to rummage around in the ancient crypt that is the back of the computer stuff storage, and found a slightly newer Elitebook 8440p. It's a 1st gen. core-i5 machine that's really no faster than the older 8350p (it being a Core 2 Duo). Released in 2010 it's a little new for my liking, but at least it works. I stole the system drive out of my XP lab computer with a bunch of stuff already installed, patched it with the right drivers and called it done. 

While changing stuff up I cobbled together some kind of mid 2000s trash workstation-type-thing that I can only describe as 'Student got a new laptop for christmas' due to the mashup of various old bits.

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The original plan..

This year around I was kind of unsure what to do for the longest time, tinkering around with random Linux setups and things, considered doing XP and all sorts. But in the end I landed on Windows Me, of all things. It's mostly thanks to the computer I'm running. I came across A Compaq Presario 1400 and instantly felt like I needed it in my life. Me being a Compaq nutter, and it being a direct competitor to the Apple iBook G3 Clamshell, but for the PC market. It's a total weirdo. So weird in fact, that Compaq themselves were too square and boring to make it. They contracted a design firm called Leverage Design who came up with a glorious blobby, colorful and somewhat transparent plastics. So, why Windows Me then? Well, the laptop is so damn weird that Compaq, now HP don't even really recognize it as one of theirs. So even finding drivers for it is nearly impossible. But another friendly weirdo did upload the WinMe recovery discs for the machine on archive.org. So I just restored it from those. It's accurate for the system anyways.
Plus, I felt that I wanted to take a proper look at Windows Me, as it's so hopelessly hated by everyone, yet no one can really say what's so fucking bad about it. So far it has been very much like any other of the Win98-era versions, but one with Windows 2000 icons. The point is, I want to experience it for myself and see how it actually is.

Some specs, of what then turned out to be a real adventure in pain.

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