{"id":8,"date":"2005-08-17T20:00:48","date_gmt":"2005-08-18T03:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/?p=8"},"modified":"2009-02-07T10:40:29","modified_gmt":"2009-02-07T17:40:29","slug":"20050817","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/2005\/08\/20050817\/","title":{"rendered":"20050817"},"content":{"rendered":"
So today I got a new USB key. It's a Kingston Data Traveller. I decided \r\nthat I should set it up so that I can use it with the laptop I use on a \r\nregular basis (a very old Toshiba Satellite 310CDS that's rattling). My \r\nfirst step was to consider the file system format. I was surprised to \r\nfind that I couldn't format the device in NTFS format. I left it \r\nformated at the default FAT32 and decided to get on to other things.\r\n\r\nAt home tonight I spent some time downloading the drivers for the device \r\nand attempted to install them. The driver installer is an installshield \r\ncreated one that's been winziped into a self extracting file (sometimes \r\ncalled an sfx). Three layers of compression and installer junk managed \r\nto make the under 49KiB of driver files take over 1MB. The second \r\nfrustrating thing I ran into is the installer is designed to detect the \r\noperating system, and refuse to install if it doesn't think it'll work. \r\nWell, I guess before that I had read a faq from Kingston saying that \r\nWindows 95 doesn't support USB drives at all.\r\n\r\nBefore I get ahead of myself again, I'll go back and say that I tried to \r\ndo some research on what Windows 95 supports in the way of USB drives. I \r\ndidn't manage to find much, but I did find the usual indications that \r\nearlier versions of Win95 didn't have any USB support, or that it wasn't \r\nworking. I already knew that USB support worked on my computer.\r\n\r\nI guess I should have seen things coming ahead of time. In December I \r\nhad looked at trying to get pictures off a Fijitsu FinePix digital \r\ncamera. It too had an annoying installer, and claimed not to work with \r\nWin 95. It further had a bunch of software bundled with it's \r\ninstallation that I still haven't bothered to figure out. Luckily, the \r\ninstaller for the driver itself wasn't hard to find, and I managed to \r\nget the device driver, and some of the software installed.\r\n\r\nDespite getting things installed for the FinPix camera, the software \r\ncomplained about a missing dll function, and the driver didn't seem to be \r\nworking. I decided that with my many licences of Windows, I should try \r\nto upgrade certain dll's with versions from newer versions of Microsoft \r\nWindows. My results were of course that some of the important dll's \r\ncould not be replaced.\r\n\r\nThat got me thinking again about getting open source replacements for \r\ncertain components. I looked for a while, and decided that without a \r\nbetter understanding, I might end up accidentally installing a dll that \r\nneeds an Linux shared library (.so) or something. My following of the \r\nWine Weekly News (WWN) on http:\/\/www.winehq.com and reading the ReactOS \r\ndevelopers\/kernel mailing list indicated that some dll's from these \r\nprojects were defiantly dependent on components that I'm not ready to \r\nreplace.\r\n\r\nSo more recently (getting back to the USB key), I did another search on \r\nthe subject of replacing Microsoft Windows 95 dll's with OpenSource \r\ncompatible versions. I'm also now considering replacing the kernel and \r\nother core files. I did find that WWN shows that they've been building \r\nPE versions of their dll's for Win32, but it's not clear which can \r\nreplace the dll's in Windows 95. I get the impression that files from \r\nReactOS might be a better replacement than Wine's as they'll have less \r\nLinux, BSD, Solaris related stuff in them and be created with binary \r\ncompatibility in mind for even more core pieces (e.g. no required \r\nwineserver).\r\n\r\nTo date I've had no luck with either the USB key or digital camera under \r\nWindows 95. I've decided that in order to start replacing Win95 on this \r\nnotebook, I'd better get a better understanding of the dependencies and \r\ncompatibilities of different components. To do this I'd like to get or \r\ncreate a list of files, a graph (tree?) of the dependencies between \r\nfiles, and a fresh compatibility status of the files from whatever \r\nsource I choose. Unfortunately ReactOS's compatibility page doesn't jump \r\nout at me in searches (I remember seeing it once or twice). I also \r\nbelieve both ReactOS and Wine don't list their compatibility in relation \r\nto Windows 95, but to whatever the latest version of the component is.\r\n\r\nSo the processes I'll probably want to take will start with listing the \r\noperating system files on the computer I'm targeting. Then I'll probably \r\nuse something like dependency walker (depends.exe from systeminternals?) \r\nto figure out the dependencies of each files (as best I can). Then I'll \r\nlook at the compatibility status on the web. Last I may have to look at \r\nthe exports from both files. Since no one else seems to have published \r\nthis information, I'll probably write up my findings as I go. I might \r\neven make it easier to install Open Source replacement components for \r\nother versions of Windows by performing the same process using fresh \r\ninstalls of other versions.\r\n\r\nIt's getting late now and I'm getting tired. I was planning to also \r\nwrite about how to use unshield and winzip to extract files from \r\nannoying installers. I also felt the need several times to explain why I \r\nwanted open source replacement files, and didn't upgrade Windows \r\n(remember I do have licences to newer versions). I guess I can quickly \r\nsay that I like having free access to the source of what I'm using so \r\nthat I or just about any other programmer can enhance\/fix it. I also \r\ndon't want to install Windows98 or later on this laptop because it may \r\ntake more system resources, not run, and well I'd rather maximize the \r\nuse of my Windows 95 licences before using other ones. I've tried \r\nReactOS and Wine, and I know they're still not 100% replacements for \r\nWindows (although extremely close nowadays). I also believe that other \r\npeople share my viewpoints and\/or situations.\r\n\r\nMaybe later this week I'll write more on the topic of replacing windows \r\ncomponents or Windows Device Drivers (wdm, ndis, inf, the wonderful \r\ndpinst.exe and more), but for now it's time for me to get some sleep...\r\n\r\nOriginally from: http:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/notes\/20050817.txt<\/a><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boxheap.net\/ddaniels\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}