I’ve been experimenting with Windows on the Sega TeraDrive Model 2. Since this machine has two floppy drives and no hard drive, I’ve decided to see just how much Microsoft software I can squeeze onto a disk.

Windows 2.1 went surprisingly well. I managed to get it running from a single floppy, and even the mouse worked without too much trouble. There were a few complaints from the setup program, but the Windows 286 environment loaded and let me explore applications such as MS-DOS Executive, Calculator, Notepad, and Write.

It’s not especially glamorous compared with newer versions of Windows, but it runs rather nicely for a 10 MHz 286 with floppy storage. I even managed a quick calculation in the calculator. Twice the speed of the machine, apparently!

Next came Windows 3.00a. I stripped the installation down to the files needed to start it and somehow managed to fit the result onto a floppy disk. The Sega file manager can launch it, and I even got Solitaire running. Don’t judge me! I happen to like Solitaire.

Getting Windows running from a floppy wasn’t quite enough, though. What I really wanted was to load everything into RAM and leave both floppy drives available for other programs. With no internal hard drive, that would make the TeraDrive considerably more useful.

Loading HIMEM.SYS made things much more interesting. The system reported just under 2 MB of available memory with very little else loaded. That’s more than the capacity of a high-density floppy disk, so I reckoned it might be enough for a compact Windows installation in a RAM disk.

And here’s the end result: a self-booting Windows 3.00a floppy using MS-DOS 6.22 to prepare a RAM disk of around 1.7 MB. The startup process copies and extracts the Windows files into memory before launching the system. It takes a while to get there, but once loaded, programs such as Solitaire run considerably faster than they did directly from the floppy.

I also experimented with DOSBox to prepare the stripped-down Windows installation and work out which files were actually necessary. The TeraDrive’s limited memory means I can’t simply install a newer version of Windows without thinking about what will fit, so this has turned into a rather entertaining exercise in trimming things down.

The next challenge is still getting a hard drive into this machine. There’s an unusual 44-pin connector on the motherboard, and I might also be able to use an ISA expansion card. Either option would make life a lot easier than juggling floppy disks all evening. You can even see the change in daylight between the recordings; the sun had long since set by the time I finished! But never mind, we will be victorious!

In other news, please welcome Nintendo Game Boy to the family. I had one of these back in primary school, I think, although that was a very long time ago now.

Good times with Tetris and Super Mario Land, not to mention Snow Brothers on my dodgy 10-in-1 pirate cartridge. There’s something lovely about having one of these little grey bricks around again.

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