I have an old Fujitsu LifeBook that I want to install Windows 98 on.
I burned a Windows 98 CD and verified it works, but the LifeBook's CD drive cant seem to read it. I do know the CD drive works, as it had Windows 95 (before I erased it) on it. I think it cant read it is because I cant burn the CD slower than 10x on a newer computer with a much faster writer and I believe the Fujitsu's CD drive is 1 or 2x.
The LifeBook does have a USB port. However, it is not a boot option. I remembered FreeDOS supports USB, so I thought Id try that. So I did it old school and created the FreeDOS floppies and installed in on the laptop. This erased the Win95 instalation. After futzing around, I realized the USB support was third party and got that software installed. It kind of almost works. It recognizes the USB host controller and once in a while can read the a directory on the a USB stick, but fails more or less immediately. I tried fat12, fat16, and fat32 drives. I cant seem to see any limitation in FreeDOS or the USB support. As far as I can tell, there shouldnt be any.
Perhaps I am missing something obvious? How can I use a USB stick on FreeDOS.
Ultimately, if all else fails, I can take the hard drive out and deal with it that way. However, I was talking to someone who said they remember these machines and said they are a massive pain to open up get to the hard drive.
C:\WININST
and then run the installation from there. (Electrically, CF cards are funny-shaped PCMCIA cards that boot in "16-bit ISA mode" or "IDE/PATA hard drive mode" depending on a sense pin. Starting with Win95, support for the PCMCIA passive adapters came standard.)