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well here are my opinions about Vcache settings without patch. MinFileCache and maxfilechache should have the same value (i am not sure about it but it worked for me, althought i dont use it ). Also it depends on Video Graphics which you have installed on system how often the bug appears. With older graphics it is not so. I have Ati Radeon 9800 with 128Mb vram (and aperture for AGP graphics is also 128 mb). For my system which has 1024mb of ram (do not count ramdisk) i am using right now MaxFileCache=65535 because with 131072 some bugs with the cache apeared after a longer period (several hours when system was online and opening and closing vcache critical apps). With 260144 they appeared quite often. Vcache critical apps are mostly: - command line - dos apps - bat files - tv tuner apps - apps running on separate virtual machine engine - older windows games

so i installed the fix as described and i set the MaxFileCache to 393210. after reboot i turn on the TV tuner. No image has been rendered. then i run Ultima Online with *.bat file. I received Error message and the system has frozen. Config: 1,5 Gb of ram. Windows 98SE (4.10.2222), Exuberants Service pack 1, KernelEX. XMSDSK is using 524288 kbytes. Base Memory is UMBFILLed (and it prevents reboots). No MaxPhysPage is defined in System.ini. Free memory available to windows is 1024mb (without few bytes from umb). it doesnt work for me.

Since WinXP hardware developers splitted their drivers in two different ways. First group is so called Win9x group. These drivers are intended for Windows 95,98,98SE and Millenium Edition. Basically all these drivers are VXD based or in some cases WDM based. Second group is Windows XP/2k. These are compatible only with these systems and they are mostly WDM based. Since Windows 98SE to Windows XP all systems are able to use WDM standard driver. That brings us to an idea how to create new driver if there is no Win9x driver available, but 2k/XP are. Mostly is there only one difference - in construction of *.INF file which contains information how to install driver onto system. Since i was unable to recreate a new driver using XP/2k driver and modified inf file i want to ask for some hints about limitations and about construction of *.inf files.

I have here some TV stuff so i have been playin with it around... For few months i was examining problem with low agp utilisation, and some serious conflicts between two video streams... If the TV tuner application is running on Direct X 9 video renderer (VMR9) and the video player is running on VMR9 too the image is choppy and in some time it can lead to BSOD. This mostly depends on GART driver and its version. If video player and tv tuner app are running on DX7 renderer (VMR7) video is not affected... I tried same drivers and apps in Windows 2000. No trouble with rendering occured... This leads me to an idea that low agp utilization is caused by some subsystem which is not working like in win2k. It could be the gart driver or the DX interface. Problem is surely software based... Right now i dont have any idea where to find bug and how to fix it...

Althought system based on DOS layer has some disatvantages one major advantage is possibility to use Dos based drivers, apps and TSR to change whole system environment as you want. Also full compatibility with Dos apps is very good reason...

The reason of slowness are attempts to reach multitasking. Even now the multitasking feature is not working so as many of its developers want. Real multitasking means that you run one, or more jobs on background and still you can run 3d game without any afflictions from other apps. Since Windows 95 the multitasking feature is still same and still far from perfection. It is caused by hardware and software and still cannot perform as some users want and as is known multitasks can affect major (or user preffered) task in negative way. Thats why i im rather trying to build up system pseudo-Singletasking system on win98.

For this reason i use Adaptec's Parallel SCSI Adapter and i have here one Cheetah. Highly reliable, compatible and effective solutions, and as long i know the prices are going down rapidly (even still much more expensive as other solutions)

i thought that 286 till 486 were 16 bit and first 32 bit was Pentium (and since win9x were 16/32bit it sounded logical to me as reason why to build hybrid kernel). Win NT was 32 bit, but it was not indended for desktop use but for server workstations. I will recheck my sources. Now there is very possible that Microsoft shall be concurrent to itself. Old producs (XP) will be blocking steps to newer ones (Vista). For now i have no idea why to use DirectX10 (wikipedia says that there is only 18 games produced or in production), and it shall took a lot of time while people shall use newer graphics cards and OS as well. Just ask why to change graphic accelerator, and OS if you wish to see how DX10 works and if it is worth it... (and i dont count money for new board, cpu or memory if you are using AGP) The OS support for HW is this time here instantly, but are there products which will use the potential now? I doubt it. It will take some time...

I dont like easy ways I did some comparisons of win98 and win2000. Yes it was usable for video recording much more as win98 was and the support for win2k is also much better and throught winXp there is enough drivers for everything, but even when few system bugs were gone, new system bugs appeared. If i should build up new system it should be 32 bit system based on Core (32bit) platform with windows 2000, but until then i shall still use windows 98. For 64bit cpus there is just no suitable OS which i want to use. and as long i know there is a lot of hi-quality capturing programs which work good here in win98. Just the FAt...

When the 2ghz limit has been hit only few users are interested in stronger machines, just because they dont know how to use their potiential. I am not talking about maniacs which will buy newest hardware just because it it newest, i am talking about common users which want to use computer for movies, music, internet and other multimedia content. Windows XP means for many users some kind of standard which do not need any additional upgrade, and because common users do not understand why to use "Content protection" on hardware level. Mostly they dont even know why to protect their data. For now many skilled users do not feel the need to upgrade to Vista just because they are considering Windows XP as good choice for present and for future. It took only 1 year between Pentium III and Pentium 4, but it took 6 years to deliver Core class processors. With Windows 98 it was similar, and with Windows XP the lifespan should be much more longer than anybody expects. Key to sucess is compatibility, and new DRM drivers and 64 bit systems are failing in this way. For now. since 8-bit era there has been some attempts to start completely new computer platform based on 16 bits. Some contestants suceeded but the winner was PC standard by IBM, which was most compatible and 3rd party manufacturers were most involved in production of new components. Systems like Amiga were quite popular, but now they belongs to the past. The next step was 32 bit. Even when first computers based on 32bit processor (intel pentium 1) were available in 1990 it took five years to deliver just 16/32 bit operating system - Windows 95 and most of us know what trouble it meant to leave Dos. First fully 32 bit operating system from microsoft for desktop users was Windows 2000. It has taken 10 years to produce operating system for platform like Pentium I 100 Mhz. Now Microsoft is trying to advance to next step - 64 bit, with features like DRM, or DX10, HD format, but even when there is such hardware there is still no use for such powerful system and it still lacks compatibility with 32bit era and as we can see now there is different market as 10-15 years ago. Windows XP is also 32 bit, but there is 64 bit version which means that this system can be described as 32/64 bit, like win9x were 16/32 bit. It seems to me that only what matter is Bit Era in which we are now and what are the current standards for files. Market can move different ways. The question is if users shall be willing to leave 32 bit platform with all apps, including lots of games. For now i just plan to build up a 32 bit system, and wait until 64 bit shall be developed enough...

those installations which makes windows able to read (and something write) from other filesystems are mostly working as a driver comparable to compression software - in this case they are not usable. They can consume some part of cpu and they negatively affect entire harddisk behaviour. Best should be compatible file system, without need of any additional software, and also filesystem which is freeware. Now i am really interested in FAT64 based filesystems and in their free (or partially free) versions, but if there is possibility to patch windows 98 to break throught 4gb barrier. For now i was able to store 4,200 mb of data in one file.

well this system has been patched to break throught 2gb barrier. I really dont know if the 4gb barrier is caused only by the filesystem or by the other things and i dont have acess to network disk with NTFS. all i can do is to format one disk to ntfs and then use winternals ntfs98 driver but its performance was not usable for video capturing. Did someone of you use other filesystem than FAT32 (or older) with win98 or Dos?

I was trying to turn my win98 based system to video recorder but i reached 2gb barrier and after some patching 4gb barrier, this time caused by FAT32 filesystem. At this point i tried to find so much information as possible to break this limit with ability to run Dos based OS and Win98 at all - ant it means completely change filesystem at least on one disk. Some inspiration: http://www.ebsembeddedsoftware.com/product...fs_overview.htm The question is which filesystem can be used with win98/dos, fully compatible with FAT32 and its limits are similar to NTFS or Linux based filesystem. I have possibility to buy the ERTFS product but first i want to know what possibilities are there, and what limitations are here.

Abit VH6-T is quite masterpiece. They still use SDram as most boards of this type, but the memory and bus efficiency is extremely high - 97% ( if we compare real memory throughtput to theoretical memory bandwith), so if i can theoretically read from RAM 1264 mb/s i am able to read 1214mb/s. Few SDRam and even DDRam based boards are able to reach such efectivness. Thats why i have chosen this board as basement for the rest of system - win98 based

Ram or chipset in this case is surely not a bottleneck. If there is a bottleneck it can be only gpu and cpu, no other component. Maybe the Video ram is really large enough to keep all data necessary for apps. Capacitators are ok here. I bought this board few months ago. it was used with coppermine 900, so i put there Pentium III 1,13 and overclocked it. Since i use very good PSU i can say that no leaking here occurs. I can safely lower cpu voltage from 1,475v default to 1,125 even when it is overclocked and the system works (temperature is very low, when in room was 20 degrees, on cpu was 22 degrees with air cooling ) Bios has been modded by modbin utility som i have done some minor changes in it. I am looking for new cpus, like 1.4 tualatins with 512kb cache btw what is the difference between TA1 and TB1 steppings? What kind of bios you mean? i use newest bios with some home made mods.

I was testing some things on my machine and now i am completely confused. Theory says that if the AGP speed is higher the graphical performance is better. In real world i can set speed of AGP slot from 4x, 2x, 1x or completely disable all acceleration to run the graphics on PCI bus speed. It doesnt matter what AGP speed i choose, system performance is affected only when i turn off AGP completely. Question: Am i running on agp 1x or agp 4x or the bus is not fully utilised? System configuration: Board: Abit VH6-T Pentium III 1,13 Tualatin Ati Radeon 9800 Xt 128 Mb I tried dos based app called VSpeed to measure real speed of AGP bus. I reached number 500mb/s which is speed close to agp 2x. On higher speeds the app failed to measrue because it showed numbers like -300 mb/s. Answer 1: System test shows that i am running at least at AGP2x, but real applications shows that the AGP utilisation can be much lower (133-266 mb/s which is speed of AGP1x) Queston2: Why is capacity of AGP slot not utilised? I tested same HW with windows 2k. no change in behaviour, so OS is not the reason, but i used same drivers as in win98. In w2k was vspeed unable to measure any activity around graphics data channels. I also measured that no HW component (except cpu or gpu) could affect agp utilisation. At this point i failed to find any reason why the theoretical bus speed is far from real data streams, even when the applications (prey, oblivion) are able to utilise it... Question3 (for the public here ) Did someone of win98 users encounter this? It is very strange behaviour and it makes no sense to me. There is possible that CPU or GPU are the limiting factors, but there is also possible that some part of system is affecting AGP functionality in negative way by lowering the real data stream.

i am sorry for repeating. few months ago i tried to install Net Framework for the first time. it was version 1.1. The system failed in few weeks, uninstallation of NET speeded up that process. But, when i installed NET 2.0 and THEN i installed/reinstalled DirectX the performance was much better If the Dx was kept as it was it didnt really help with nothing.

I installed also the newest version from august 2007. It was not installed on clear system, just because Windows 98SE already contains one version of DX, but i am not sure if it is DX 6 or DX 7.

so with the setting from top of this topic i experienced some errors especially after usage of 3d engine and after long hours of system online... I try to lower settings in system ini.

there are more useful upgrades for system. Try to search mdac_typ.exe which updates ODCB data sources. then if you were sucessful in installation of NET 2.0 you have to check "DirectX files" in DX diag. Then download and install latest DirectX 9.0c bimonthly update from august and checkt the dx file list again

Generally the more amount of Ram you have, the larger swapfile you have and the larger Vcache is defined this error occurs more and more times Technically Windows 98 SE with some patches can have up to 1gb of classical ram and another 4 gb of virtual ram (swapfile) and of course best performance of virtual ram can be gained with large ramdriver. the question is if is somebody so mad to build up a system with 5 gigs of ram To use 1gb of ram and 4gb of virtual ram located on harddisk is quite possible but the question is if it can improve or degrade the system performance. At all it is more memory that can be used with a single app. i tried to set Virtual memory to 4gigs... system was able to run but i experienced trouble. Sound driver was failing..

Dos is not so threated by viruses. It is very safe enviromnent nowadays. It seems so that people developing malware are trying to attact winXP systems and Vista systems. Win98 is no longer point of interest so why to make software smart? Yes. Windows 98 is not supporting viruses for newer systems, and therefore it is much safer even without av security installed

If we are talking about full feature support for system for both HW and SW lets start talk about processors. As long i know Win98 does not support hyperthreading, multiprocessor or multicore systems, and 64 bit cores. It means that all P3 processors are fully supported, some P4 are supported and 32 AMD cores are supported. This also limits amount of MB which can be used and it means that PCI-E graphic cards are automatically out of game... Rest depends on drivers. If we are taking about partial or unofficial support here is only one limit and it is compatibility of drivers. I really dont know how and why are some newer core features supported and how these functions work on supported/unsupported systems so the question is if it is possible to run win98 with these CPUs, and how it shall affect the system performance. I am running on P3 Tualatin which does not contain any of these features, and i have no possibility to try newer cpu with old OS, so i am really interested if the system is able to run with all CPU features and with all MB features.

to oscardog: i shall take a look at it. Few days ago i met strange behaviour of newer viruses. I clicked to infected link and my system was being attacked by some trojans. In attempt to run themselves the viruses fail to run (program performed illegal operation) Viruses just crashed has someone of you met this behaviour caused by lower compatibility with mainstream systems?

so here are my suggestions: i tried the DX bimonthly update from february. the newest file there was Wsock.dll from february 2007. most of systems were working correctly but the teletext did not. that was the only measurable error. so i retested the actual version from juny and it seems that there are no issues. i see some performance and quality improvement while playing videos and watching tv tuner.