Nostalgic factor is in trend this year. After the reveal of the Nokia 3310 (with snake!), Redditor Lord_of_Bone revealed his little side project – making a functional, wearable version of Windows 98 on Raspberry Pi.
The self proclaimed amateur technology project maker wrote on his electronics project blog 314reactor about the project and showed off his creation. Which looks as “ridiculous and awesome” as you’d imagine.
Posting as 314creator, his key goals for the projects was firstly, to “emulate Windows 98 on a Raspberry Pi” and “make it wrist-wearable”.
Quoting a soft spot for Windows 98, despite the 90s specs driving more frustrations and making for a good laugh by today’s standards (“on my old Pentium II system with 64mb RAM and using some god awful on-board graphics” he wrote) – the creator decided to go ahead and made a wearable, touch screen, Windows 98.
“I also love emulation, the idea of running an operating system on virtual hardware? That’s awesome. It’s like the Matrix, or something. On top of this I love wearable/small tech and nowadays I have the ability to make things like this. So I thought, wouldn’t it be ridiculous and awesome to have Windows 98 on my wrist?”
The finish product was said to load after “forever”, so while he did some overclocking, he hasn’t tested for any hardware failures as a result of that though.
He also wrote that he’s thinking of having the different buttons launch different versions of old unsupported windows, including 95, ME and XP. Although he notes, and we agree, the XP might perform worse than the 98.
If you really want to know how it works, his blog details his processes. And if you want to know about his projects a bit more, he’s posted on Youtube under Press Down To Jump.
