Diskless Windows 98
This reports about several steps I've taken in order to be able to obtain a stable and
usable configuration for Windows 98 in a diskless PC. I hope this can be of any use to
others.
Based on:
- NetBoot/EtherBoot package
- MS-RAMDRIVE compressed with Drvspace 3
- 100 Mbps Network
- Windows 98 is installed on a local disk and compressed with ms-drvspace3 creating a
volume file named drvspace.000.
- We found out the drvspace.000 file can be copied to an ms-ramdrive and then mounted as
drive C: with scandisk /mount (*).
This is a local setup for Windows 98 with at least 128 Mb RAMDRIVE
For "high-performance" new machines (minimum Pentium 200 MHz with 256 Mb),
because we use high compression the CPU must be fast. Depending on how much of the
file-system you are able to move to network servers the RAM required may be much less.
This configuration, intended for high performance, doesn't require any special changes
to a "standard" installation. The motivation for this type of configuration is
that RAM cost tends to decrease much faster than HDD cost. Currently you can buy 128 Mb
RAM for a lower price than an HDD.
- This is a totally local set-up; files available in the ramdrive grant the normal boot of
windows without requiring any files from the network. So Windows 98 network drivers are
used.
- Because the network isn't available at boot time, the swap file must be local (the swap
file will be compressed too).
- The compressed volume file must be copied from the network and mounted, to achieve this
we use again ODI/VLM, however when the copy is done we unload the drivers, the steps at
boot are very similar:
- Load the ramdisk (in config.sys). Because of drvspace3 high compression,128 Mb this will
result in more than 250 Mb in C:.
- Load ODI/VLM Shell (or any other shell that you can unload later)
- Copy drvspace.000 from the server to the ramdisk
- Unload the Shell
- Mount the compressed volume with scandisk c: /mount.
- Configure registry, remove NetBoot ramdisk and other minor settings.
- Start windows
How to setup and manage
You must use a local disk for instalation and administration, say at least 250 Mb.
- Install Windows 98 on the local disk.
- Compress the local disk using maximum compression.
- Copy drvspace.000 hidden file from the root of your uncompressed drive to a network file
server.
- ....
(*) - yes we´ve tried to mount a compressed volume on a network
drive unfortunatly scandisk doesn´t allow this. However this would be very interesting
because network trafic would be compressed.
andre@dei.isep.ipp.pt
http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/~andre
Departamento de Engenharia Informática (DEI)
Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP)
Instituto Politécnico do Porto (IPP)
Rua de S. Tomé, 4000 - Porto, Portugal