oscardog

Out of interest has anybody altered SetThreadAffinityMask to the second core of a dual core cpu, (disclaimer ms says this shouldnt be done on win9x) or ran any cpu info utility to see if it produces any data whatsoever regarding the extra core/s. As a side note while looking into this subject, I notice that the 20 odd year old os/2 based os has a dual core add in available from ecomstation. I am not saying this will be useful to us but might indicate what could happen. Perhaps again from glancing at os2s achievements, people who like win9x could go the way of http://www.os2world.com/bounties if they require dual core or hardware drivers etc. I do not know if this would motivate people who would not normally get involved or not, but might be worth considering. As a side side note I also see win4lin (should be cheaper now they have given up on win9x although recent modified nix kernels can still be bought) can run win9x apparently near native speed whilst running a linux single/multicore aware kernel simultaneously. All the best

It boils down to the aptitude of people, rewriting the kernel is not necessary, that is why we have ntkern written by people who had the foresight before we were directed to migrate to nt5, IMO identifying the driver (obviously not the kernel/ntkern) that can access the registers of dual core cpus is the main stumbling block, parsing this to vmm is secondary, hence dissecting win2ks uni/multicore cpu ability may be helpful, which it is more than capable of doing, although struggling in scheduling hyperthreading. I imagine the information is available for people to do this now, it will probably happen after such people desire to write device drivers for latter day hardware and move on from that.

You think altering vcache.vxd would help that cause? Lowering vcache.vxd`s internal limit to 200 meg or so should certainly leave plenty of addresses available in the system arena, this lower amount should also be plenty for the file system drivers to use. If nothing else it will alleviate the required system.ini entries and begin to track down which part prevents us from using the full amount of memory and even going above this limit by using 36 bit (win2k`s method) available in cpu`s from ages ago. It would be also interesting to find out if it is this file or if not which one that interacts with the cpu memory protection management hardware checking the segment limit in the descriptor table entry.

Technically Windows 98 SE with some patches can have up to 1gb of classical ram Just out of interest win9x can have 4 gig of "classical" ram being 32bit, altering vcache.vxd might be a start in enabling this. All the best

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/272620 perhaps

I suggest you study this subject a little bit more, then perhaps you may have answers rather than to create further inaccurate questions. My latter answer dealt directly with windows in this particular forum in responding to your questions I would have thought you might have ascertained that(for windows take it that it means the relevant os being discussed hence win9x). The original poster asked Microsoft Windows 98 to recognize Dual-Core processors (project?), A place where we can gather all together to make this happen. The differences between the 3 different win2k uni and multiprocessor files, perhaps the examination of the previous use of a modified ntoskrnl.exe etc when dealing with ntfs, and above all the start of vxd,wdm programming might be a start. I suggested clustering mainly because it could suffice until this forum gets up to speed on stubbing and/or filtering vxds,wdms.

It would be advantageous for win9x and this forum if people started to get some imputous in this area, I do hope so

Many thanks marxo, we just need some threads on driver development now and win9x can step up a gear

Excellent research very well done, only problems I am aware of would be decrease in hd performance and higher fragmentation,would be an ideal cluster size for lots of small files though. I do not know if this might be of interest to you but I wonder how ext2 performs with the dos/windows drivers available for download

"excuse me" Microsoft marketing adopted Windows 95 as the product name for Chicago when it was released on August 24, 1995. Microsoft had a double gain from its release: first it made it impossible for consumers to run Windows 95 on a cheaper, non-Microsoft DOS; secondly, although traces of DOS were never completely removed from the system, and a version of DOS would be loaded briefly as a part of the booting process, Windows 95 applications ran solely in 386 Enhanced Mode, with a flat 32-bit address space and virtual memory. These features make it possible for Win32 applications to address up to 2 gigabytes of virtual RAM (with another 2GB reserved for the operating system), and in theory prevents them from inadvertently corrupting the memory space of other Win32 applications. In this respect the functionality of Windows 95 moved closer to Windows NT You try and run a 32 bit app from a pure ms-dos prompt,i.e ping,traceroute not via windows but f5 on boot up,just because ms-dos is included for backwards compatibility does not mean that windows is a gui for 16 bit dos.

infact, Windows 98 is more or less the GUI that runs on a DOS-based layer, so assuming now correctly i assume, Windows 98 does run on top of DOS. No, I don't think Win9x does run on top of a DOS layer. http://win32assembly.online.fr/vxd-tut1.html DOS is apparently used in the boot sequence of Win 95 and 98 (but not ME which is why it boots faster) but that's it. Once Windows is running there is no DOS layer running underneath it. Unless I am wrong but in this case you'll have to show where is this DOS layer that runs underneath the 9x GUI. Re-read the referenced link. VMM (I believe) is interfacing with IO.SYS (the "DOS layer"), ergo DOS!All Win 1.x/2.x/3.x and Win9x (including WinME) run "on top of DOS" That's why you can Upgrade from Past (DOS) through "current" WinME (with the appropriate Windows Upgrade sequences). Note that certain DOS modules are either replaced or eliminated as part of the Upgrade process (compatability). Also note that there is a "patch" for WinMe that allows you to "boot into pure DOS Command Mode" available on the internet. WinME from MS simply eliminated the access to it to phase Consumers into WinXP (an offshoot of NT, no DOS involved). Kind of like the difference between IBM Mainframe DOS-based (now defunct) and OS-based (still going strong). Trust me, I've installed them all (including the IBM stuff)! It is definitely DOS-based (symantecs aside)! And forget modifying 9x to use dual-core! It's definitely not worth the effort (ref. IBM stuff; look it up...). The systems specs are too radically different... Windows 9x uses a new system file, IO.SYS, which replaces the MS-DOS system files (IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS). This real-mode operating system file contains the information needed to start the computer. The actual underlying os in win9x is the base system and the real core is the virtual machine manager hence it allowing multiple threads in multiple memory address spaces

98lite will enable you to strip out unneeded accessories/system utils etc, burning to cd then removing your inf folder if all your hardware is installed, www.ccleaner.com will remove unneeded files or http://www.kturby.com/pcdelete1.htm for a guide

I do hope they keep you well away from guns Anyway back on track, as previously mentioned I would imagine the kernel and device drivers would need to be modified, perhaps bios.vxd for the motherboard to instruct the os the number of cpus onboard and how to use them. Also the kernel or a filter driver to handle the threads etc to each individual cpu. Software would need to be re written to then take advantage of this. Far easier would be just to make a farm of diskless win9x`s and have them boot up, map their network drives and get to work compressing videos or what have you

sleekv2.exe is the patched 95 shell from litepc for 98 compatability

Try consize-vc from ftp://ftp.franken.de/pub/win32/develop/gn...size/index.html

If of any help the said video plays on win98se using a later version of vlc.

Look at Q4 http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy13.htm, supports incremental backup,restore of only new files,file exclude and any other functions you might need for backup restore. Works even better if your program files are installed to a new folder you create called prog

My analogy was more pointing to an instant system restore, lfn\internet and driver friendly scenario with a gui, making detection of any problems other than hardware unnecessary.

As far as i am aware upper memory blocks in the upper memory area are not available to win98 without a driver such as umbpci which allows them to be used as normal memory if any is left, after any memory resident progs,ramdisk/drivers have been loaded. By disabling your shadow rom and having your drivers loaded from its area. Being that himem.sys has been called via io.sys then extended before a ramdisk has been created via config.sys,autoexec etc, if this results in vcache.vxd only seeing the remaining 1 gig of ram not the full 1.5 gig and allows you to boot normally.

If you are unable to alter you bus/clock multiplier or equivalent to AMDs cool and quiet as already mentioned, you could always use (if you are happy messing around with some electronics) the old thermistor/voltage regulator trick to vary fan speed to heatsink temperature. It only requires buying a couple of cheap components. Or even go to the rubbish dump and get a hold of an old p2/3 system for free, put win9x on it, power the cpu fan from your 5volt line and use that for your downloads. It will be really quiet and use next to no power.

wow...ummm okay then, that is a great compliment there, but when stating that, are u refering to when having Win98Se installed? or WinXPSP2 on? and yes, technically, those are the things i tend to do, and dont forget 3D modelling, although i havent got a 8800 GTS yet. from that when, what is better? Win98SE or XPSP2 then may i ask? I think the only way for you to be 100% is to try both os`s side by side, have a look in sys info when using one of your resource hungry apps for mem/swapfile usage and see which one does the job better for you. All the best

A pleasure, interestingly from previous research I understand the vcache driver is internally limited to a maximum of 800 meg, if this could be altered and its other interupts adjusted, I wonder if none of the system.ini tricks would be needed allowing upto the max 4 gig of ram on a 32bit system

You have a system of a McLaren, in my opinion in the pc realm the similarities end there, if you desire to just browse the web,edit video,compress mp3s,record tv to hd,do day to day tasks etc your system is overkill. You are via the inefficiencies of photonic energy lossess of transformers taking the place of a good few trees needlessly. If you are happy that you can portrait yourself according to Harry Endfield as the "considerably richer than you" brigade carry on. Otherwise get a P1/2 system (depending upon what you want to do) then use your latter day system for some serious number crunching or gaming if you do not possess a 360 or ps3. Just a thought

Well if you are going upto/over 4 gig of ram you will be looking towards a 64bit os 2^32

I suppose ultimately it will be judged on the inventive qualities of the individuals producing the means to enable their favoured os to carry on. As vistas shadow falls over all of us, irrespective of our personal choice. I am surprised with all the graduates from universities world wide we cannot produce later day device drivers or even start a topic covering it,or enable certain nt based software to function(apart from xeno`s sole project)