Ash Wolf:
I’m a bit of a retro tech enjoyer, but I’m also pretty bad at it – I don’t have the space or the motivation to try and acquire actual old computers. Playing with 86Box/PCem is pretty fun, but it’s not quite the same.
So, instead, I make do with what I have. And the most ridiculous x86 machine I own is the Asus Eee PC 1000H, a netbook that I got in 2008 when that category was still new and exciting. It’s borderline useless nowadays (it can’t even run most up-to-date Linux distros due to its lack of x86_64 support), so sticking weird and anachronistic OSes on it is one way to keep it relevant!
I’d like to write a full-fledged blog post about these adventures at some point, but for now I’m going to focus on one particular side quest: getting acceptable video output out of the 1000H when it’s running Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
Strap in this is a long one, but as with most technical deep dives into software and hardware of yesteryear it’s fascinating. Kudos to Ash for persevering with this project, making some sense of the situation, and finding some solutions to the issue. Extra kudos for writing it all up for us to enjoy—complete with screenshots and a nice site design.