So today I got a new USB key. It's a Kingston Data Traveller. I decided
that I should set it up so that I can use it with the laptop I use on a
regular basis (a very old Toshiba Satellite 310CDS that's rattling). My
first step was to consider the file system format. I was surprised to
find that I couldn't format the device in NTFS format. I left it
formated at the default FAT32 and decided to get on to other things.
At home tonight I spent some time downloading the drivers for the device
and attempted to install them. The driver installer is an installshield
created one that's been winziped into a self extracting file (sometimes
called an sfx). Three layers of compression and installer junk managed
to make the under 49KiB of driver files take over 1MB. The second
frustrating thing I ran into is the installer is designed to detect the
operating system, and refuse to install if it doesn't think it'll work.
Well, I guess before that I had read a faq from Kingston saying that
Windows 95 doesn't support USB drives at all.
Before I get ahead of myself again, I'll go back and say that I tried to
do some research on what Windows 95 supports in the way of USB drives. I
didn't manage to find much, but I did find the usual indications that
earlier versions of Win95 didn't have any USB support, or that it wasn't
working. I already knew that USB support worked on my computer.
I guess I should have seen things coming ahead of time. In December I
had looked at trying to get pictures off a Fijitsu FinePix digital
camera. It too had an annoying installer, and claimed not to work with
Win 95. It further had a bunch of software bundled with it's
installation that I still haven't bothered to figure out. Luckily, the
installer for the driver itself wasn't hard to find, and I managed to
get the device driver, and some of the software installed.
Despite getting things installed for the FinPix camera, the software
complained about a missing dll function, and the driver didn't seem to be
working. I decided that with my many licences of Windows, I should try
to upgrade certain dll's with versions from newer versions of Microsoft
Windows. My results were of course that some of the important dll's
could not be replaced.
That got me thinking again about getting open source replacements for
certain components. I looked for a while, and decided that without a
better understanding, I might end up accidentally installing a dll that
needs an Linux shared library (.so) or something. My following of the
Wine Weekly News (WWN) on http://www.winehq.com and reading the ReactOS
developers/kernel mailing list indicated that some dll's from these
projects were defiantly dependent on components that I'm not ready to
replace.
So more recently (getting back to the USB key), I did another search on
the subject of replacing Microsoft Windows 95 dll's with OpenSource
compatible versions. I'm also now considering replacing the kernel and
other core files. I did find that WWN shows that they've been building
PE versions of their dll's for Win32, but it's not clear which can
replace the dll's in Windows 95. I get the impression that files from
ReactOS might be a better replacement than Wine's as they'll have less
Linux, BSD, Solaris related stuff in them and be created with binary
compatibility in mind for even more core pieces (e.g. no required
wineserver).
To date I've had no luck with either the USB key or digital camera under
Windows 95. I've decided that in order to start replacing Win95 on this
notebook, I'd better get a better understanding of the dependencies and
compatibilities of different components. To do this I'd like to get or
create a list of files, a graph (tree?) of the dependencies between
files, and a fresh compatibility status of the files from whatever
source I choose. Unfortunately ReactOS's compatibility page doesn't jump
out at me in searches (I remember seeing it once or twice). I also
believe both ReactOS and Wine don't list their compatibility in relation
to Windows 95, but to whatever the latest version of the component is.
So the processes I'll probably want to take will start with listing the
operating system files on the computer I'm targeting. Then I'll probably
use something like dependency walker (depends.exe from systeminternals?)
to figure out the dependencies of each files (as best I can). Then I'll
look at the compatibility status on the web. Last I may have to look at
the exports from both files. Since no one else seems to have published
this information, I'll probably write up my findings as I go. I might
even make it easier to install Open Source replacement components for
other versions of Windows by performing the same process using fresh
installs of other versions.
It's getting late now and I'm getting tired. I was planning to also
write about how to use unshield and winzip to extract files from
annoying installers. I also felt the need several times to explain why I
wanted open source replacement files, and didn't upgrade Windows
(remember I do have licences to newer versions). I guess I can quickly
say that I like having free access to the source of what I'm using so
that I or just about any other programmer can enhance/fix it. I also
don't want to install Windows98 or later on this laptop because it may
take more system resources, not run, and well I'd rather maximize the
use of my Windows 95 licences before using other ones. I've tried
ReactOS and Wine, and I know they're still not 100% replacements for
Windows (although extremely close nowadays). I also believe that other
people share my viewpoints and/or situations.
Maybe later this week I'll write more on the topic of replacing windows
components or Windows Device Drivers (wdm, ndis, inf, the wonderful
dpinst.exe and more), but for now it's time for me to get some sleep...
Originally from: http://www.boxheap.net/ddaniels/notes/20050817.txt
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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