need help with device drivers and APIs
 

Hi all,

I am trying to recycle an old laptop into a useful PIM device, but I
am having trouble with drivers and APIs. The hardware won't support
2000 or XP so I am left with 98, ME or NT4.

NT4 runs on the hardware, but it is slow and is missing APIs needed by
some of the modern PIM software. 98SE doesn't recognize the video
controller but I have managed [with problems] to use an old 3.11 vga
driver. ME doesn't recognize either the disk or video controllers ...
as with 98 I can get it to use the 3.11 vga driver, but disk ops run
in dos compatibility mode.

[One has to wonder why progressively newer operating systems support
progressively fewer existing devices. I know support is a popularity
contest, but judging from a survey of anguished postings in the
newsgroups, the devices in question are found in many laptops which,
but for lack of device support, could run the new OSes quite
acceptably.]


So questions:

Is it possible to use NT drivers in ME? And if so, how can I identify
which NT files are necessary and convince ME to use them?

If it is not possible to use NT drivers in ME, is there some better
source for applying some of the newer APIs to NT4 other than
progressively installing new IE, Outlook, Media Player, DirectX, etc.
versions until the problem software works?


Thanks for any advice,
George
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