Between the beginning of Windows to now, Windows 98 is perhaps the OS we reminisce most. It was not the greatest OS, but by comparison, it was the easiest to use. I dare say that Windows 98 offers me some fond memories and apparently, the same applies to one Michael Darby, AKA 314Reactor, who decided to bring back the beloved OS and into a big-ass, DIY smartwatch. The result may not appeal to all gadget lovers cos’ for one, it is a Windows 98 that is not natively designed for touch functionality and second, the operation is sluggish and as the man described it himself, “pretty much unusable,” but for someone like me who are all up for steampunk-ish, industrial gadgets, Darby’s work of art sure is apple to my eyes.
To achieve his dream wrist-worn PC, Darby enlisted the help of Raspberry Pi, a huge 2.4-inch TFT touchscreen, a 1,000 mAh lithium polymer battery, a PowerBoost 500C, an open source machine emulator known as QEMU, and finally, wrapping up with an on/off switch and a five-button setup which lined the top of the device that sees to the device operation. Some may view it as an useless hack since it does not really works, but hey, at least everyone’s beloved Minesweeper and Windows 98’s quintessential Flying Windows screensaver works – albeit painfully sloooowwwwwww..
Proceed forth to catch Darby giving you a walkthrough of his Windows 98 smartwatch and also a look at the holy place where he conjured up this ridiculously cool (and slow), but nevertheless awesome gadget.
Images: Michael Darby/314Reactor.
314Reactor via Hackster.
