Monthly Archives: May 2024

Sharp AV18P

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A first time look at a Sharp OEM install. Sharp was a manufacturer of compact laptops that were popular in Japan, but also made a few for the western market. They did have some sort of a retail presence in the UK as you could find their laptops in stores like Curry’s, but they were always sub-notebooks. Like Fujitsu and NEC, Sharp also made computers for the 8/16bit home computer market in Japan.

Product Information

The recovery utility which seems to want us to split the disk into two partitions. This was common across some OEM’s with the belief that storing user data on the second partition would help with fragmentation whilst leaving the operating system and program files on the main partition. Though your document folder would still be mapped to the main partition also.

Going through the OOBE, theres no logo in the top right corner as we’ve seen with other OEM installs

The desktop, with a custom wallpaper. Resolution is a little but understandable considering this is a netbook class of computer

Windows Help & Support with a touch of Sharp

Network Setup Utility, each icon represents a network settings or profile. It looks a little blank as it was intended for use with the notebooks internal WiFi card.

Here is what it’s supposed to look like. The different icons represent the types of network you can connect to and the profiles can represent the different sharing settings. This isn’t too different to what modern Windows does when it asks you to set either a Home, Work or Public connection which affect the file sharing ability, since you might not want to enable Public file sharing when you’re connected to a public hotspot

Drag’n Drop CD+DVD – disc burning application. This places a sidebar to the bottom right of the screen where you can drag files to be copied to a CD.

This appears to have been developed by Sonic Solutions who also went to develop RecordNow! Seen on other OEM installs.

Here you can rip an audio CD, or burn existing files to disc. It a bit clunky to operate and the UI looks like something you would see out of a Hollywood TV, it’s rare to see a program refer to itself as a window.

And Norton Antivirus 2003 comers included

Lastly we have InterVideo WinDVD4 which serves as the default DDVD player. Amazing this worked within the virtual machine so this must provide some sort of software MPEG2 recorder. At least I thought it worked, it decoded the first frame and was then froze on that frame. The audio was still playing however and when I eventually closed, a quick shot of the last frame came up before closing the program.

Recovery Media Download – From Archive.org, This version is unlocked to function on any machine

Fujitsu LifeBook S6120

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A look at the Fujitsu LifeBook S6120 Windows install, running in a Parallels Virtual machine. Fujitsu are a well known brand in Japan for Personal Computers and are no stranger in the West either, having enterprise contracts with various corporations and governments for IT solutions. Fujitsu also produced FM Townes Marty range of computers that were popular with the Japanese market and used x86 processors. 

Starting the recovery process. At first i thought the graphics were corrupted, probably not a good idea to use this effect for recovery software

We need to reset the HDDcontroller settings in the Windows registry, to do this we need Hiren’s boot cd. Start Mini windows XP and then click on Hiren’s Menu and select Fix HDD controller form the Registry menu. If you’re stuck at this point, refer to the two screens above which will point you in the right direction

Once the console comes up, select option 2 and then enter the install directory of the Windows folder, which will be C:\Windows.

If unsure, Alt Tab out and check in my Computer to see which drive letter its mounted as

When everything is correct, you can reboot into the install

Windows XP Fujitsu

The OOBE with the Fujitsu Logo

Fujitsu desktop

And the desktop, with a custom Fujitsu wallpaper. A few others come included that have the Fujitsu infinite logo, which reminds me of that hidden Sonic CD screen (fun is infinite)

Now lets take a look at some of the software

Zinio Reader, appears to be a magazine reader of sorts. Kind of like Adobe Reader but has a few documents on there already which look to be magazines.

Unfortunately whilst I can open them, trying to turn the page causes the VM to freak out and suspend with a graphics error. I’m guessing the program is trying to do something that the virtual GPU does not like. This happens quite friendly and you can see a bunch of blue lines appear when it happens.

Included magazines appear to be from BuisnessWeek, Harvard Business Review, Sporting News and PC Magazine. This service is actually still going, and you can still purchase magazines from there, although this version of the client is long obsolete.

NewsStand Reader

There’s also NewsStand reader, which serves the same purpose

Netscape Fujitsu

Netscape version 7 comes included, with some Fujitsu branding

Norton Antivirus 2003

Norton AntiVirus 2003 is the security software included here. This only includes the antivirus, not the internet security suite. I couldn’t get this to update unlike the Norton Internet Security that was seen in the VAIO RG620

Veritas RecordNow DX

Veritas RecordNow – I’m sure this was originally made by Sonic (Sonic RecordNow!) or they might have acquired off them. Either way this is the software used to burn CD and DVD’s containing either data or music.

A CD player application comes invoiced that can play audio compact discs. You might think why does this exist when you have Windows Media Player installed but this is a dedicated CD pLayer application and have a very compact interface, ideal if you just want to listen to CD’s without the bloat of Windows Media Player. This only plays from the primary CD player, so connecting a USB CD drive didn’t work at first until I 69’d the drive letters in disk management so that the USB drive was the D:\ drive.

It’s a nice program to listen to music to whilst you work, and you can possibly control the playback via the media keys on the laptop itself.

There is also a security panel application, but this does not load. Instead we are treated to this error message. Chances are its BIOS locked to Fujitsu laptops.

Microsoft Works comes included here which serves as a basic productivity suite. Im surprised this here as this class of laptops would have been used in an office environment where Microsoft Office would have been used instead.

Other software that comes with, but not already installed is Microsoft Reader and Windows Journal Viewer. This can be installed by clicking on the Third Party Software icon on the desktop which opens the folder where the installers are located

Fujitsu Windows XP

A look at the OEM branding in the system properties

Inserting the second CD-ROM starts the easy instillation which is used to install additional software. So far everything appears to be installed already from the recovery image, though this might be used to install supplementary software the retailer might have included as part of a bundle.

If you’re wondering what the Click Me! link in the start menu does, it displays this message and then disappears, along with the shortcut itself. Probably self terminates if it detects it’s not on a legit Fujitsu machine

Sony VAIO PCV-RX360

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Another day another VAIO. This one is A Windows ME desktop PC orientated with video and multimedia features. Whilst eMachines, HP and Compaq were after the low end market with internet ready PCs, Sony hung out in the multimedia sector with their machines being built out of box for photo and video editing with its bundled software and iLink support for DV cameras.

The VAIO desktop with a cool blue background

Some remaining software that needs to be installed

The VAIO support agent which features a quick fix wizard to diagnose problems with your installed applications. Not exactly sure what this does but it might undo any changes made to applications.

Issues with PictureGear already?

Looks like a registry setting has changed. My guess is to not mess with it unless there’s an actual issue with the software.

The VAIO tour which is also set as the default screensaver. This is an advertisement of the computer itself and its features and would have been used in a shop setting.

Sony Screenblast take you to a website, sadly It wasn’t archived well. According to a few older articles it was a video editing and music creation software you could purchase for editing. 

Further Information

ImageStation – Sony’s solution for printing images online, like HP’s Snapfish. Photo printers were still expensive at the time.

RealProducer – capture digital video or still images from a capture device

Adaptec EasyCD creator 4 – As Windows ME did not provide support for CD burning from within explore, you needed dedicated software to do that instead. This kind of system would have come with a CD-RW drive, along with a DVD-ROM drive installed as the secondary drive. You also have an assistant in the style of the Microsoft Office assistants, to guide you through the burning process.

Adobe PhotoDeluxe – An entry level photo editing software for manipulating photographs and can be used to make greeting cards. It has an easy-to-use interface, making it accessible to users who were not necessarily experienced in graphic design or image editing. Basic image editing tools provided were as cropping, resizing, rotating, adjusting brightness and contrast, and applying various filters and effects.

DVgate Motion, MediaBar, MovieShaker, PictureGear and VisualFlow are other bits of software included that only runs on a Sony VAIO system, due to the BIOS check.

The system does come with Tomb Raider Chronicles preinstalled. Not the best Tomb Raider but does serve as a good demo of what the graphics hardware can do.

McAfee security comes as standard

Trying to download new updated virus definitions, McAfee wants address and location details just to update.

Worth a try, but the update server is long gone

Recovery Download – Archive.org

Compaq Presario 5222

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Compaq Presario 5222

To restore the image, you need to manually select the recovery image from the explorer window, select the FACTORY.PQI from the Q drive (That’s the CD drive mapped to Q)

Password is ZZZHIND

The program can be quite unresponsive, the only thing you can do is wait until it loads.

Norton Ghost

After recovery has completed, the system will reboot into the Setup screen here you will need to enter the OEM serial key and registration details as with your typical Windows 98 setup.

Windows starts to detect the new hardware and we get a BSOD from the Aureal driver. This ends up crashing the entire PC. Rebooting will take us back into the driver wizard but we still get blue screens due to the sound driver

Aureal

Trying to remove the old driver by booting into safe mode and uninstalling it from there, this mostly worked but then encountered a hard crash with the below:

Not sure if this is considered a fix but I ended top removed the entry from the system.ini file and that seemed to stop the crashing. Not sure what this does but hey, as long as it works

Don’t know what this thing that keeps crashing, a quick search revels some Yamaha sound driver

On the subject of sound, the VmWare sound drivers will fail to install since they expect 98SE, and this is the first edition of 98. There were further problems with installing the standard Creative driers since these VM’s use a fucked up PCI/IRQ steering which the drivers cannot handle. The solution was to edit the VMX file to remove the PCI bridges, and to manually add the legacy sound card.

Following this archived guide is what worked for me:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200808203541/https://www.howson.pro/windows-98-vmware-fusion-sound-fix/

What’s annoying is most of the online literature assumes Windows 98 is 98Se which isn’t the case for this version, so a lot of the solutions will not work. I suppose you could always upgrade it to Windows 98SE, but that’s too easy isn’t it?

Don’t forget to uninstall the Yamaha and Aureal drivers, they will cause issues with the Creative sound card. You can easily do this form the Add/Remote programs applet from the control panel

Eventually we get the system into usable state

The main desktop, its defiantly an Internet PC which means a low end Celeron/Cyrix system with a 56K modem and internet orientated software.

Compaq Remote Control

Compaq Carbon Copy – A remote support software. In the event you experience technical problems, you can contact Compaq who would then be able to connect to your PC and provide remote support. Looking in the software you can also use this over a LAN with other computers that have this software installed. You can also use this to transfer files and voice chat to the other user, kind of amazing pulling that off on a dial up connection.

Netscape Communicator 4.06

Netscape Communication also makes an appearance, this appears to be a customised Compaq version that has additional bookmarks added by Compaq. The Quicken 99 is included along with Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 99, this seems to be very common with OEM systems. Encarta was like our Wikipedia of the 90s, only it wasn’t publicly editable since all the data was held on the CD-ROM.

This version of Netscape also comes with support for the Cosmo VMRL plugin which allows the browser to display 3D models and graphics within the browser.

Compaq QuickRestore which is a utility to restore your system back to factory defaults, and to create boot disks. This interface is very 90s, even with the spinning Q logo.

Intel Video Phone

Intel Video Phone, to make visual phone calls. This software typically came with Intel branded webcams. Now I’m not sure if both users had to be running the same software or if it was comparable with other video phone software like VDOPhone, I believe there was a standard (H.263) butI’m not sure how well adopted or supported this was. The help file does reference calling recipients with other software so it might have been compatible in that regard.

You can also make traditional phone calls, though not when your PC was connected to the internet.

I don’t believe this would have worked with 3G phone when they arrived, as they would have used the 3GP standard.

Compaq’s easy access utility lets you adjust the soft keys that are featured on the Compaq keyboard. You can configure this to point to a specific website or program. By default this would have launched your homepage or opened your default email client.

Compaq easy access

There is also a tray icon with a menu that can be brought up by right clicking on it. This appears to emulate the soft keys on the keyboard.

The is an onscreen display that appears when you adjust the volume. This can be adjusted or disabled altogether and is similar to the OSD of a regular TV of the time.

And that’s it, there is additional software like the Yamaha and Aureal sound programs, but these won’t function without the actual hardware being present.