LoneCrusader

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Don't be so quick to rule out a whole category of devices. Besides the known working PCI-E video cards I know of at least one example of a PCI-E network card and sound card working under 98. I assume USB2 PCI-E cards would work as well if such exist. Here's a PCI-E network card with 98 drivers. (V1 ONLY mind you; V2 (pictured; V1 looks different) does not work with V1's drivers. I have several.) TG-3468 And here's a PCI-E sound card that works with 98. (I have one.) CMI8738 Also, it may be worth trying the drivers for PCI devices with similar PCI-E devices. Nothing to lose in trying.

You don't see any differences between 95B and 95C on the surface. 95C includes the forced IE4 install and a handful of updated files. If you install 95B + IE4 + several HotFixes then you will have the same system. There used to be a MSKB article that detailed the differences between OSR2.1 and OSR2.5 but I'm sure it has "disappeared" by now. The most important differences are the inclusion of a HotFix that solves memory management issues on Pentium processors and a later version of the USBSUPP.EXE package included on the CD. Quick Launch will be enabled by default after the IE4 install. As rloew mentioned the SATA patch is for the controller interface, not for the size of the HDD. (There's another patch for that.) Both "IDE" and "SATA" are technically different versions of "IDE." Legacy IDE = PATA. Native IDE = SATA. Modern motherboards that have an "IDE" setting go into Native Mode when it is used, thus the SATA patch is necessary. See above. Currently no working USB3 drivers for Windows 9x. rloew and I have been trying to fix that, but no luck so far.

I've never seen any reason to artificially limit system performance for 9x. I've used 3+GHz P4 processors with it for years. Why hold yourself back? Games from the later 9x-era can certainly benefit from increased performance (WarCraft III comes to mind). What specific older games run better on a less-powerful system (besides true DOS games such as WarCraft/WarCraft 2... DOSBox could be a good solution for this)?

Here's a link to rloew's website. http://rloew1.no-ip.com/ You can use PayPal, just send it to the email on the site. The SATA patch is listed in the Prerelease section but it has long been established as working properly. I also recommend his RAM patch for your particular setup. I have an X79 chipset system running the RAM patch, SATA patch, and others with both 95C and 98SE that I set up for experiments. You won't be disappointed!

AFAIK it uses mostly Debian repositories for everything other than some Q4OS-specific components and for certain packages where a later version may be more preferable, such as the Trinity Desktop package. It's based on Debian stable. 8.0 "Jessie" I believe, I'm not up on Linux codenames.

I will repeat, this time with the full proper quote. "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France I am not interested in your appeal to authority or appeal to popularity. All I see in your argument is the biased opinion of a bunch of people who have been indoctrinated by Microsoft and who believe in the fallacy that newer is always better or that somehow because something is older makes it inferior. Just because a bunch of people may advocate for using a newer system does not make the older system "dangerous" and I would love to see any concrete proof that somehow running an older system can affect a different machine using a newer system. Such an argument defies all logic, and would certainly refute the idea that the newer system is somehow superior if it can in fact be damaged by an older system. Such an attitude is arrogant because it has absolutely no basis in fact and is entirely based on opinion. Show me concrete proof otherwise. And the "opinion" of some so-called expert is most definitely not proof. Any operating system has limits. Limits of the time period do not translate into "dangers." "Stable" is also a subjective term here. Hardly "facts" of any relevance to your "dangerous" argument. Anyone who comes here to read this thread is most likely to be looking for a solution, not looking for someone's biased opinions on why they should not use their computer in the manner they choose. Is the Internet "usable" on Windows 9x these days? This is subjective as well. Depends on how determined the user is to achieve this and how many annoyances they are willing to put up with. I see the purpose of this thread and this forum as being a place for 9x users to get support and solutions, not a place for people to tell them how "ignorant" they are for wishing to do so. I expect 98 users to be able to come here and discuss their system of choice and get meaningful solutions (insomuch as they can be found these days) without some form of "Microsoft toadie" constantly chiming in to tell them to "upgrade" because they're not safe or some other FUD. This forum is not a vehicle for the Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. You cite the "Terrorist Edition" remark as ridiculous, but you tell Dibya to come "out of his XP cave"? How are you any better? You said you were going to leave the issue to rest and have not done so. Enough of this. Get back on topic and respect the topic for what it intended to be (i.e. helpful information, not biased BS).

Just because someone else has stated that they do not use 98SE online anymore does not give credence to your arrogant theories about it "being a danger to others." And such talk, along with behaving in a "condescending" manner toward those who disagree with you, is most definitely trolling. MrMateczko can at least be counted as a member of the 9x "community" whereas you apparently just came in here to voice unfounded opinions about a system you don't even use.

Arrogant presumption at it's finest. If a million people believe a stupid idea, it is still a stupid idea. Might (or weight of numbers) does not make right. When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. All great and very applicable quotes here. Thank you for admitting that you wish to "belittle" Windows 9x. As far as I am concerned now, anything more you have to say on the subject could clearly be construed as trolling or flame baiting.

"WORLD'S BETTER" in your opinion. This along with the rest of your argument is entirely subjective. I'm not trying to be offensive to you Jody but I'll be perfectly honest - most of us 9x'ers don't care one iota about your (or anyone else's) opinion of 9x. If you don't even run it or care to use it, then why are you bothering to participate in this thread? You have nothing constructive to add here. All you are doing here is insinuating that someone who chooses to run Windows 9x is somehow "ignorant" or "unenlightened." We are not interested in hearing about Windows 8 or any other cause you are proselytizing for. We do not come to the Windows 8 forum and tell you how worthless, ugly, slow, and bloated it is and how much we hate it. So unless you can give us the same respect here, then yes, you can be quiet about it. If you have nothing constructive to say, then you can say it somewhere else. Again, I am not trying to be rude, but I am sick and tired of this type of attitude (perfectly exemplified by your arrogant assumption that an individual's choice of operating system is somehow a threat to others - this sounds like some kind of fascism...) that I see now everywhere around the internet, and I'll be d@mned if I'll see that type of stuff get started here.

Ridiculous. Windows 9x is no more a house of cards than any other version of Windows. Success or failure with the security of any operating system ultimately comes down to the end user and their level of knowledge. Security through obscurity? Well, maybe it isn't a "strategy" per se but in reality there is logic to it. As Nomen pointed out, what malware designed to target the popular operating systems of the day will even run under Windows 9x? Not much. Sure, there existed plenty of malware that could infect Windows 9x back when it was mainstream, but how likely is it to encounter such malware in the wild these days? Two factors at work here - 1) malware designed to target today's systems can't run under 9x, and 2) malware designed to attack Windows 9x is practically non existent in the wild because it has long been recognized as such and hunted to virtual extinction. So the reality of the situation still applies - whether one calls it a "strategy" or not, the two vectors at work inevitably lead to a safer situation on an obscure OS. And finally, if your Windows 9x was unstable, then you had some other issue at work as well. I'm very glad you're happy with Windows 8, but if you have any more 9x bashing to do, you can take it somewhere else.

Well, updating is not a "requirement" of course but one inevitably faces the same issues all of us have faced when trying to run older Microsoft OS'es. Sooner or later things stop "just working" as they should if you don't update. Now with Linux, you can in theory build your own packages from their source code (as PC mentioned in passing) and depending on your level of knowledge can probably keep things going for a long time. The main issue I see with Linux is the potential for a situation known as "dependency hell" - wherein a newer package, say "Firefox" for example, will require a newer version of some other package, say "libsomething1" and subsequently "libsomething1" will depend on a newer version of "libsomethingelse2" and so on ad infinitum. A blessing and a curse with Linux - every package is independently developed but interdependent on other subsequently independently developed packages. So in other words if you want to update "Firefox" on an "older" Linux installation you should be prepared for a potential cascade of dependency problems. Repositories of files and packages targeted for a given Linux distro version also have a tendency to disappear over time as newer versions are produced, and since packages are interdependent it can make it very difficult to find working packages for an older distro if you didn't archive them. All that being said I still believe Linux has promise, especially given the direction Microsoft is going. We may all end up there eventually, lol.

Since the subject of moving to Linux came up... Many of you know I always planned to do this myself when Windows 9x would could no longer perform everyday tasks. I made the attempt once only to find that the Linux world was even more crazy about the constant update/upgrade cycle than the Windows world and I could no longer download new packages for my distro version of choice after only 3 or 4 years. So I came back to Windows and decided to tolerate XP for a while. Even decided I maybe can stomach Vista at the utmost end of need... But, I've just recently discovered an extremely nice little Linux distro that is dedicated to providing a classic user interface experience and long-term release support (long-term for Linux at least). With a few clicks on this system and it's provided tools/wizards one can have a desktop and Start Menu that's almost a perfect mirror of the Windows Classic UI (or XP "Lego" UI if you prefer). It's been many years since I could say I was impressed by any operating system - but now I can finally say it again. Have a look at Q4OS.

Since it was mentioned here it's worth pointing out that IntelliPoint is an important piece of software for Windows 95. It enables the use of Wheel Mice - without it the mouse wheel does not work unless your mouse has a working Windows 95-specific driver that provides this functionality. The 3.2 version of IntelliPoint also provides this and does not include dependencies on IE5 or have "auto check for updates" functionality embedded in it. I've seen some issues with the WinRAR installer under 95 when using 3.8x/3.9x versions. The program itself works but the installer crashes or throws errors. I ran some experiments previously to determine where this starts but I can't remember exactly what I found out at the time. I'll have to check but I think 3.71 still installed without problems. If 3.92 works then 3.93 (last of the 3.x series; last to support 98/ME) should work as well.

You can try using this method that is confirmed to work for the high-end 900 series cards including the Titan X. Just find the correct INF entries for your 1000 series card in a Windows 7 driver package and follow the instructions on the page I linked. There have been some reports of 1000 series cards working so there may be some hope.

This is simply not true, at least in the case of OSR2.x. I've used 40GB and larger drives with 95 for years. This is an example (just one of many) of Microsoft spreading false information in order to promote a newer version of Windows. The 137GB/48-Bit LBA limit applies just as with 98/ME but there are no other random "limits." Can't say for sure about 95 RTM/95A (and since they use FAT16 it's mostly irrelevant) but I would not take Microsoft's word at face value for them either.

Yes. I see you've made it more descriptive since Trip posted but also there's no need to shout. I personally don't use any of the unofficial 98SE packs except NUSB. You definitely do not want to install a different language version of a package on an English version of the OS however (assuming you're running the English version, if not then disregard this).

You keep asking for a PCI-E motherboard "with 98 drivers"... what exactly do you hope to accomplish here? There are no "drivers" for motherboard chipsets other than a simple set of INF text files as I have already stated before. I have provided an unofficial set of these for later Intel chipset-based systems by taking the 2K/XP INF files and converting them to the expected 9x format using the 865/875 INF's as a guide. You will not find "drivers" for a motherboard other than this, and the system does not even NEED them anyway. Now, as for onboard devices, you can forget a SATA driver for any "modern" board unless you want to buy rloew's patch, but we've been through that before as well. You can also forget any driver for HD Audio (unless rloew and I have a breakthrough on this front which has not been promising so far - but if you won't buy the SATA patch then you probably won't buy a HD Audio driver package either if we ever get there so why mention it...). LAN is simple - look for a board using a Realtek LAN chip and then check it against the last Realtek driver package for 98SE. USB(2) is already covered by NUSB. USB(3) is out same as HD Audio, once again unless there is a breakthrough orchestrated by rloew. Now to go back to your main issue - I have yet to see any issues with using PCI-E graphics cards under 98SE other than the issue at 512MB that has been previously discussed. No doubt problems can occur in some hardware configurations but I would say the systems exhibiting "problems" are the exceptions not the rule.

I wouldn't be surprised. One of the patches for WarCraft III broke my Windows 9x installation of it several years ago. (I think it was 22b? I'd have to check.) Needless to say Blizzard support was useless on the issue at the time. I never got around to examining it further. I seem to never have time to spend playing my old games anymore. I've had a "new" 9x gaming system under construction for years now that never gets finished either. I planned to dig into the issue further when I set up all of the games again on the new system. Now I know I'll have to watch out for D2 patches (later than the 1.12 that's on my old systems) as well (I've never really liked D2, I LOVE D1, but a friend of mine likes to play D2.)

Ok fine then, so the 7950GT is the highest numbered model fully working under Windows 9x. I don't have a 7900GTX to compare. I do have a 7800GTX somewhere...

Best fully working graphics card is the 7950GT. PCI-E version works fine. 256MB version + NVidia 82.69 driver + rloew's NVidia Shutdown patch (free) should work without any other modifications. If you want to use a 512MB version of the card you will need rloew's NVidia size patch (not free) as well. The 7950GX2 works but only one card is initialized by the driver so it behaves like a 7950GT. Currently there is no working HD Audio driver of any kind for Windows 9x. We are working on trying to fix this but no success as of yet.

Unfortunately I've not tried to use GCDROM in the same hardware configuration as yours. It should still work provided that the card is initialized by the BIOS and so forth before your boot CD runs. Post the contents of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS and maybe others can help...

First you will need to find a program that can extract the Boot image of the CD that you want to model this on, I assume the standard Windows 98SE CDROM. Then you will need to modify that boot image by adding GCDROM.SYS in the same manner as OAKCDROM.SYS. You can use both of them together that way if OAKCDROM.SYS doesn't work on your target system then GCDROM.SYS will kick in. Then you use this modified Boot image on your new CD. There are many more in-depth ways of doing this including switching to other bootloaders and so forth but I believe the way I described is the simplest solution. Sorry for the lack of detail at the moment. It's been a while since I did this operation myself.

There is probably a way, but I don't know how unfortunately.

Not really, it's pretty much shooting in the dark to guess where it might be embedded... you could always try searching logical strings in the Registry Editor. For example "ie6" "internet explorer" etc. and see if you hit on any keys or values that contain data for IE6.