98-Guy

I was originally asking if there was anything posted on Microsoft.com that would answer these questions. You would think that the precise legality of what is allowable would be spelled out somewhere. But I'm still not sure what the consensus is here. Given that someone (say, person A) wants to re-install win-98, and knows what their original product-key is, but they don't have a win-98 CD, then does it matter how they get their hands on a win-98 CD - even if they download it from a torrent? Or is the person who *provides* the CD (either physically or electronically) violating the EULA or copyright law, but *not* the recipient? A year or so ago I had a lengthy argument on usenet regarding this hypothetical situation: Say I'm walking down the street and I come across a PC that's been put at the roadside as garbage. The PC has win-98 installed on it (doesn't matter which version of windows, but sake of argument say it's win-98). Say I take the computer home (items placed at the curb for garbage pickup is usually deemed to be public domain in most places). If I examine the hard drive (or turn the system on) and discover the product key, do I now "own" the license to that particular product key and can use that computer without violating the EULA? Does it matter that the original owner did not "officially" transfer the license to me by way of either verbal permission or by knowingly giving me (or selling) the PC to me? And now that I know the product key, can I use it to install / re-install win-98 on another machine (assuming the product key is only used on one working PC at a time) ? I was basically arguing that once a license is sold by Microsoft (by way of revealing a product key) and if that key is used on only one working PC at a time, then no violation is taking place if an "abandoned" product key is discovered or found and then put back into use. Comments?

With regard to copyright law and the windows-98 EULA, I'm asking if there is a specific Microsoft white-paper or document that can answer the following question(s). Does the law (or Microsoft) deem it illegal to: a) copy a windows-98 CD and give it to someone else, or b) to actually _use_ a copied CD to install windows-98 (even if you are using a product-key that is yours or that you purchased at one point or another) I'm asking because it's come up in other forums where someone has a product-key (or knows what the product-key is on their current PC) but they don't have an actual win-98 CD, so they are asking questions like how they can get their hands on a CD so they can re-install win-98. Perhaps the main question is -> is the product key essentially the license, and a win-98 CD (an actual MS cd or a copy) is simply the delivery mechanism for the software, and that it's the actual usage of the software that is governed by law. So as long as I'm using a product key that I own, it doesn't matter from what CD I installed win-98, or how I came to have the CD, or who gave it to me, or even if it's a copy and who copied it. I'm simply looking for the "official" answer to this question so I can tell others what the answer is. I'm not looking for win-98 CD's and I'm not looking for product keys and I'm not asking anyone to tell me where to get them.

OK, so let me get this straight. Vista uses a proprietary file format for burning files to recordable optical media, and is not offering a driver for XP to be able to read them????? Is this common knowledge? Is it similar to Roxio's Direct-CD or Nero's IN-CD ??? Is there really no driver for XP?

Buddy of mine told me this today. A friend comes to his place over the weekend. He's got a fancy SLR camera and a Vista laptop. Buddy takes a bunch of pictures, then hands him a generic CD-R. Friend connects the camera to his laptop to transfer the pictures and then burns them on the CD-R. Buddy takes CD to his XP computer, but it comes up like it's a blank CD-R. Brings the CD back to the friend, put it back into the vista laptop, and images are there. Brings the CD into the office today, and none of our systems (all XP) can see any files on it. Drive Properties shows a reduced disk capacity, but that's the only hint that something is on the disk. One guy even boots a virtual instantance of Vista on his XP system, but still shows no files. So what's the deal? Does Vista use some weird file system for burning files to a data CD-R ???

The fact that it's a multi-OS system is irrelevant. The fact that win-98 is installed and used on it is relevant. The argument about AMD "price/performance" is bogus. You simply have something against Intel, so that's why you chose that motherboard, and you now have to deal with some win-98 incompatabilities because of it. So to summarize, under win-98, you can't get a SATA hard drive to work in anything other than compatibility mode, and you (probably) can't get the nic to work. I'd throw that board on the trash heap. Your experience is faulty: ------------------------ Subject: Update 4: Cluster size and exploring the limits of FAT-32 Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:49:46 -0500 From: 98 Guy <98@Guy.com> Newsgroups: microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion Fdisk (dated May 18, 2000 - not april 23, 1999) was used to create a single primary partition on a new 250 gb SATA Western Digital hard drive. The computer was started in DOS via a win-98 boot floppy (note: himem.sys was loaded as part of the boot). A single primary partition was created using all available space on the drive. I didn't check the details as to what fdisk reported as the total drive capacity (fdisk is known for not reporting correct on-screen numbers such as volume size or total drive size). Now format the partition: Formatting 41,86.65M Format complete. Writing out file allocation table Complete. Calculating free space (this may take several minutes)... Complete System tranferred Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)? 238,414.41 MB total disk space 360,448 bytes used by system 238,414.07 mb available on disk 32,768 bytes in each allocation unit. 7,629,249 allocation unites available on disk. Ok, looks good. Let's try chkdsk c: 244,136,352 kilobytes total disk space 244,135,968 kilobytes free 32,768 bytes in each allocation unit 7,629,261 total allocation units on disk 7,629,249 available allocation units on disk Ok, still looks good. Let's try Scandisk c: Scandisk ran just fine, performed all checks except surface scan. ------------------------- 2K/XP are perfectly capable of handling (and even to be installed on) Fat-32 drives of up to (at least) 250 gb, and probably larger. 2K and XP are prevented (by intentional design limitation by Microsoft) to allow the user to format a logical drive larger than 32 gb as fat-32.

Why did you choose that board, and not the Intel-based Asrock Dual or 4-core VSTA boards? Based on what you wrote further down, I'm not sure if you're saying that the Creative drivers don't support win-98 at all, or that they do but the ktproject drivers work better. Is your optical drive also SATA? That could be why win-98 wouldn't see it as you describe. I've used fdisk to partition 160, 250 and 500 gb SATA hard drives, so I don't know what you're talking about here. Again, this is wrong. A couple of years ago I installed XP-pro on a 250 gb hard drive formatted 100% as a single FAT-32 partition (with customized 4kb cluster size). This confusion about 2k or XP not being able to handle FAT-32 partitions larger than 32 gb comes from the fact that 2K/XP will not themselves create a fat-32 partition larger than 32gb. This functionality (or handicap) is by design, because Microsoft wants you to use NTFS and to abandon fat-32 (for one convoluted reason or another). So many people think it means that you can't attach a pre-formatted fat-32 volume larger than 32 gb to a 2k/xp system. But you can. I've suspected that nobody has win-98 drivers for any SATA-2 raid controllers, and you are confirming it in this case. If anyone else knows of a motherboard with a SATA-2 controller that has win-98 drivers, please say so. And by the way, compatibility mode is low-performance, and it means your SATA-to-IDE mapping at the bios level is not working, otherwise Win-98 would be using 32-bit access through the EDSI_506.PDR driver. Since you can't find a driver for the on-board SATA-2 or ethernet controllers, why did you choose that motherboard? Are you that fixated on AMD that you sacrificed some win-98 hardware compabitlity?

Well, for one thing, IDE = PATA. When you say "installing (win-98) on an IDE drive and setting up SATA afterwards", do you mean installing win-98 on an IDE (PATA) drive, and then *cloning* the image to a SATA drive? Because (otherwise) you can't wave a magic wand and turn an IDE/PATA drive into a SATA drive. And yes, I do mean installing win-98 directly onto a SATA drive. There is only ONE thing to watch: In the bios, RAID must be turned on. This prevents the SATA drive from appearing as an ordinary IDE drive to win-98 when it's installing itself. Windows will use compatibility mode (BIOS int 13) to access the drive, instead of ESDI_506.PDR. After windows has finished installing itself, and after you've installed the chipset driver specific to the motherboard in question, the SATA-RAID hardware will appear in device manager as a SCSI adapter. Note that in this case the drive is not really being used in RAID mode. It's just that it's being accessed through the motherboard's raid controller. You can't really run any sort of raid given only 1 physical hard drive anyways.

Please explain that statement. In my experience, getting SATA to work on a fresh win-98 install (on an Asrock motherboard) was easier than doing the same with XP. There was basically nothing special to be done. After installation, win-98 will be running in compatibility mode until you run the Via Arena driver install. The great thing about using SATA drives in NON-IDE compatibility mode is that you can use drives larger than 137 gb.

Honestly, I doubt a 6600GT is faster than a 8400GS. I have both a 6800Xt (AGP) and a 8600GT (PCIe), and the 8600 beats the 6800 like a train vs a toy car: I can run Overlord in 1440x900, high settings, with the 8600 with good constant fps, I can only run with my 6800 in 960x720, Medium settings and I have bad fps drops in intense scenes. Peak pixel fill rate: 6600 GT -> 2.0 giga-pixels/sec 8400 GS -> 3.6 giga-pixels/sec Peak texture fill rate: 6600 GT -> 4.0 texel/s 8400 GS -> 3.6 texel/s Bandwidth: 6600 GT -> 16.0 GB/s 8400 GS -> 6.4 GB/s Number of texturing units: 6600 GT -> 8 8400 GS -> 8 Memory bus width: 6600 GT -> 128 bits 8400 GS -> 64 bits Just a quick comparison between the 6600 GT and 8400 GS - I don't see any clear advantage to the 8400 GS, and in some cases it definately is inferior to the 6600 GT.

I guess the best info regarding how to decode the various Nvidia model numbers is by looking here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_9_Series Question: If I don't intend on playing any games, should I care how many pixel shader units or vertex pipelines my video card has? If I want on-screen video playback to be smooth, and for other aspects of desktop computing to be fast, are there benefits in getting, say, a 7600 GT or 7800 GTX vs a 6600 GT?

I don't particularly care if the drivers are official or not. I care that I get a board that has known-working win-98 drivers - and the drivers are not a pain to obtain. And I take it that there is still nothing definative as to whether or not an Nvidia PCIe board will work with win-98 given the most modded or hacked driver available at this time. Tiger direct is offering these AGP: GeForce 6600 GT - 256MB DDR3, AGP 8x, DVI, VGA, TV Out ($68) XFX GeForce 6200 - Ultrasilent Cooling, 512MB DDR2, AGP 8x, DVI, VGA, TV Out ($74) EVGA GeForce 7600 GT Superclocked / 512MB DDR2 / AGP 8x / DVI / VGA / HDTV ($135) And these PCIe: Sparkle GeForce 7200 GS 256MB DDR2, DVI, VGA, HDTV ($37) KFA2 GeForce 7300 LE 256MB DDR2 , Supporting 512MB with Turbocache, DVI, VGA, TV Out, OEM ($41) KFA2 GeForce 8400 GS 256MB DDR2, Supports 512MB, (Dual Link) DVI, VGA, HDTV ($41) Diablotek GeForce 6600 - 512MB DDR2, DVI, VGA, TV-Out ($49) (and a lot more) Basically, a lot more PCIe, and they're cheaper than the AGP versions.

I'm going to build several Asrock-based win-98 systems and was wondering what Nvidia-based video card should I be trying to obtain for them. I'm thinking nothing less than a 6200 with 128 or 256 mb of memory (likely DDR-2). Board must have dual monitor support (this is probably standard). The Asrock motherboards have both PCIe and AGP. My concern is that I'm not likely to find a 7xxx-based Nvidia card that's AGP, and PCIe is (in my experience) problematic for win-98. I'm also hazy on the LE/GS/GX/what-ever when it comes to nvidia. If someone could explain the differences between the various letter combinations, that would be useful, as well as if (or why) a 6200-xx board is (or is not) better than a 6600-yy board vs a 7xxx-zz board. So basically my question is: What is the best-performing Nvidia-based video card (AGP or PCIe) that I can buy today (for under $150 and preferrably under $80) that is known to work on win-98 with little or no issues (like driver availability or stability). ?

That list has already been posted to this forum. It's a sticky right near the top of the list. Don't you see it? http://www.msfn.org/board/Modern-motherboa...-wi-t97588.html

I'm thinking that the last functional definition file dated back to April or May, and would have been available via this link: http://download.lavasoft.com/public/defs.zip What was the last version of the Ad Aware (se) reference or definition file that functioned correctly on win-98 - and is this reference file available anywhere?

Cluster size and exploring the limits of FAT-32 http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.p...f15325586abfa68 or try this: http://tinyurl.com/4dxdcz ------------------ Windows 98 large file-count tests on large volume (500 gb hard drive) http://tinyurl.com/3p285h