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Hot Wheels PC

D

Dokken

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 27, 2018
Messages
254
Location
TN
Hot Wheels PC from a local estate sale. I picked this up a few months ago and it wouldn't turn on so I put it aside until this past weekend.

Celeron, 32mb, no expansion slots. It is in decent physical shape. the only broken part is the plastic gearshift but all the parts are there and can likely be repaired.

I originally pulled the CR2032 battery when I first got it. turns out it seems to require this battery to boot. a new battery and it boots/posts, but will not boot to the hard drive. I imaged the drive and can see most/all of the original contents.

My immediate goal is to get it running with Win98SE on a CF/SD drive while keeping the original floppy drive and CD drive, then pull any special files from the original HD.

I have it booting to an SD card with an SD IDE adapter. I'm to the point of having a DOS-bootable C: SD drive and a 3.5" 98 boot disk. I need to get the CD drive set up as the slave IDE, but I cannot get this to work. My cheap SD IDE does not have a primary/secondary jumper, so it shows up in bios as primary. with the CD drive hooked to the secondary position and jumpered as secondary, it show as secondary in bios, but does not show as a valid device (no D drive shows, only the C:SD card. So I cannot get the two IDE devices to cooperate.

I tried the same as above but with a standard IDE hard drive. same result, I can format c:, make it dos /s, but cannot see C and D at the same time. A floppy works.

So I am unable to install windows from CD.

Any thoughts or suggestions?



hot wheels.png
 
These things were $500 (super budget) computers. I remember when they were brand new being sold at toys R Us. Which is ironic as they hadnt sold computers since the 1980s for the most part.

Regardless its still a really nice looking setup and you have the whole kit. Its of a pretty borring time in computing but its really nice. I sure wouldnt mind the monitor.

Good find.

Do you plan on putting in a real had drive or do you want the CF aspect of it? I would just copy the contents of the 98 cd to a separate partion on the CF card and load it that way.
 
Thanks.

I was familiar with this PC from some recent videos and the talk of the rarity of this model. For all the interest, it is a really lame setup. but unique. I'd guess most of these were thrown out with the toys at some point.

My windows/dos skills have faded and I have to relearn how to configure these things, but they're super fun. I've been on a 90s kick with 386/pentium stuff lately. a mostly simpler time.

I like to keep the original drives but like the idea of using modern CF/SD/SSD for normal use.

I'll get this thing running one way or another!
 
No comments (other than best of luck) but maybe some inspiration from Clint on LGR (3-Part series):



 
Dokken said:
My cheap SD IDE does not have a primary/secondary jumper, so it shows up in bios as primary. with the CD drive hooked to the secondary position and jumpered as secondary, it show as secondary in bios, but does not show as a valid device (no D drive shows, only the C:SD card. So I cannot get the two IDE devices to cooperate.
Click to expand...

Just to sanity check, have you installed all the drivers you need for the CD-ROM drive? CD-ROM drives don't show up as a drive letter without a both a low-level device driver like OAKCDROM.SYS and the MSCDEX.EXE DOS extensions loaded. Does your Windows 98 boot floppy have them set up? I'm little unclear about the "a floppy works" in this statement:

Dokken said:
I tried the same as above but with a standard IDE hard drive. same result, I can format c:, make it dos /s, but cannot see C and D at the same time. A floppy works.
Click to expand...

IE, can you see the CD-ROM drive when you boot from the floppy but only if the hard disk isn't attached, or... ?

As for the SD-IDE adapter not having a primary/secondary jumper, I *think* that they're intended to be used with a Cable Select-enabled cable, IE, if you use a CS cable and set your CD-ROM drive to CS it *should* resolve correctly. Although I'd think if your BIOS is correctly ID-ing them as is it might be defaulting to master even without the cable?

I do have one of these adapters but it'd be really awkward for me to try to attach a second drive to it in the case it's in. :(
 
Last edited:
Eudimorphodon said:
Just to sanity check, have you installed all the drivers you need for the CD-ROM drive? CD-ROM drives don't show up as a drive letter without a both a low-level device driver like OAKCDROM.SYS and the MSCDEX.EXE DOS extensions loaded. Does your Windows 98 boot floppy have them set up? I'm little unclear about the "a floppy works" in this statement:
Click to expand...

this is very helpful, and no, I do not have a separate driver loading. let me play with that. there's a tutorial by Phil's computer lab that mentions this step.
 
This Windows 98 SE bootdisk I made long time ago I used it to boot old computers to access the CD-ROM, drivers and MSCDEX.EXE are auto loaded in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with a couple of other utilities
 

Attachments

  • [1.44MB]WIN98SE.zip
    1.2 MB · Views: 3
  • rawwritewin-0.7.zip
    209.8 KB · Views: 3
MasawVx said:
This Windows 98 SE bootdisk I made long time ago I used it to boot old computers to access the CD-ROM, drivers and MSCDEX.EXE are auto loaded in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with a couple of other utilities
Click to expand...

Thank you!! very nice to have.
 
Finally got it booting to Win98SE with stock CD/floppy and an SSD using a SATA/IDE connector. the SD/IDE adapter would not play nice with the CD drive.


hotwheels win98 2.png
 
MasawVx said:
This Windows 98 SE bootdisk I made long time ago I used it to boot old computers to access the CD-ROM, drivers and MSCDEX.EXE are auto loaded in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with a couple of other utilities
Click to expand...

Thank you! these images have been very helpful!!
 
Been assembling and testing today. I had replaced three 1k mf caps (red caps bottom right in picture), and they're too large to close the mobo panel (I used some 20v I had). I found some others that are 10v like the originals and are smaller, so everything fits now.

I tried formatting some floppies, and the stock drive would fail at the same point every time. another 3.5 drive works fine. I may try cleaning/lubing the stock drive again. worst case I'll use the new drive with the blue bezel.

also, there's one listed on eBay now. ended today without selling and he resisted it. Seems like an outrageous price for this thing. he does not have the mouse. but he does have the keyboard wrist rest which I do not have.

www.ebay.com

Hot Wheels Computer - Patriot EHC400P - Restored & Working | eBay

All buttons on every part & the speakers are working (watch the linked videos for in-depth workings of the computer). The original CPU fan bearings were shot and was replaced non-invasively with a Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX fan.
www.ebay.com
 
I still have not gotten back to working on my hot wheels pc, but I've been following the above listing. it has gone through a couple of cycles without selling, but it looks like it will sell today. 3 hours to go and $2025 after 19 bids. wow.
 
Dokken said:
I still have not gotten back to working on my hot wheels pc, but I've been following the above listing. it has gone through a couple of cycles without selling, but it looks like it will sell today. 3 hours to go and $2025 after 19 bids. wow.
Click to expand...
sold for
Winning bid:
US $2,475.00
 
hot wheels Screenshot 2023-01-02 at 2.41.41 PM.png

Had some time to get back to this thing. Fully working with everything stock except the floppy drive (replaced) and an SD card for HDD. Win98SE and all drivers. works well for a Celeron.

Now I need to fix the gear shift on the steering wheel control which is broken. And load whatever hot wheels game came on it.
 
If that were my machine, I'd be trying to shoehorn the most powerful hardware that would fit in it lol.

Maybe a Ryzen 5600G on a ITX board.
 
I speak from experience that you stuff anything remotely modern (or even anything performance from that era) into that case it will overheat.
Appreciate it for the OEM it is and leave the stupid sleeper builds to Reddit.
 
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