CDROM Support from scratch. Windows onto relic PC's

[JAFO]

I have recently "inherited" a few old clunky PC's (486-100's and sub 100 Pentiums).
Several of them have CDROMS already installed and were known to work well with them, others have space to install some low-spec IDE CDROM drives which I have also "inherited".
The main problem is that the Hard Drives have all been wiped (either formated or just DELTREE'd) and I cannot seem to get any of my generic CDROM support disks (like a win 98 boot disks) to work.

So, the question is this : Given a totally blank HDD and a known working CDROM - How on earth do I get windows back onto one of these beasts?

[Paleo Pete]

If you'll go to Boot Disk (http://www.bootdisk.com) you'll find instructions for making a bootdisk with CD ROM support for Win 95, and you can go to WinDrivers (http://www.windrivers.com) or WinFiles (http://www.winfiles.com) and get drivers for almost anyting you can think of.

If these machines will be running FAT16 instead of FAT32, which is likely on older ones, install DOS first, then install the DOS CD ROM drivers. Then you can install Windows 95 from CD.

In multiple drive situations it may be necessary to adda switch to the config.sys file to force a different drive letter on the CD ROM. I would have to see the config.sys file to know exactly where to put it, and what to add.

I would also consider running Win 3.11 on machines of that caliber. If you do decide to run Win 95, make sure and run fdisk and check to see whether the drives are set up as Fat 16 or 32.

Identify the CD ROM drives, some may be the Panasonic interface, which require a sound card controller, in which case the sound card must be installed and operating before the CD ROM will work. Again DOS drivers will be necessary.

Check the link below as well, might take some searching, but you might find some good info on building and troubleshooting.

------------------
If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)