Transfer and Run Win98 in Snow Leopard

[sxschech]

Have an old computer with Win98 preinstalled and no CD. Would like to get rid of the computer and was wondering if I could transfer everything over, including the OS, to my mac mini running snow leopard and be able to run win98 on it with boot camp or one of the other programs that allow windows to run. The old computer has an ethernet port, and floppy drive, no usb or cd rom write capabilities. I understand I could copy over word and data files and run them fine in snow leopard without windows, but there are one or two programs that I would like to be able to run on occasion. The win98 hd is only 2 gb in size. If this is possible, how would I do this using the ethernet port rather than the floppy drive?

 

[drlex]

I don't think you'll be able to manage this.

You could just use a KVM switch and hide the WinPC away, but switch keyboard/video/mouse between it and the mac mini.

As I understand it, bootcamp will only allow XP to work by making a special version (EFI) from an existing XP installation disk. I believe your only way of running an ancient OS like 98 is within a virtual machine - you'll need either VMWare Fusion, Parallels Desktop or perhaps try Sun VirtualBox. However, these will require a Windows 98 installation disk for set-up - eBay or Craigslist should assist?

(NB You would need an intel Mac Mini for current virtualisation; the G4 version would need an earlier copy of Virtual PC with a Win98 install)

soi là, soi carré

 

[spamjim]

What are the one or two programs that you would like to run on occasion? This seems like a waste of your time to run a dead (unsupported) OS from over a decade ago.

You'd probably have more success running these old programs on Snow Leopard with Wine (without Windows).

 

[sxschech]

Thanks for the input about the operating system. If I transfer only the data files, can I do it by directly connecting the two computers via the ethernet port or is there some intermediate step I would need? Will the mac (intel) be able to read the windows hard disk this way, also the windows has a built in syquest drive and could the mac read from that too? The program that I occasionally refer to is Quicken 98.

 

[fisheromacse]

it may not be an ideal solution, but you should be able to plug both the Win98 and the OSX computers into a router, then enable file sharing on Win98 and be able to browse/copy files from Win98 share to wherever you need in OSX.
I have had some problems with Win98 file sharing in the past (both when sharing with OS X and XP) and have used FTP instead with no problems.

 

[spamjim]

If the Win98 HD is only 2GB in size, buy a USB thumb drive for $5 and copy everything to it. Verify that all data is transferred to the new computer and then burn that old computer.

I'm hoping that thing is not connected to the internet. Using a computer with such an old OS (lacking security updates) and managing your finances on it is a very very bad mix. You cannot even get common anti-virus programs to run on Win98 today.

Quicken is available for Mac.

http://quicken.intuit.com/personal-finance-software/mac-personal-financial-software.jsp

 

[sxschech]

spamjim, thanks for your suggestions. I am not actually using that computer or running quicken on that computer any longer, however, once in a while, I need to look something up for historical purposes. The last time I actively used it was in 2004. Would I be able to transfer the quicken data that is there into the mac version?

 

[spamjim]

The transfer of Quicken data might be restricted by how old your version of Quicken is. I believe most any version of Quicken can also export to a non-Quicken format for working with other programs.