kingofthespill

I got a cheap Chinese Security camera with night vision and a "PCI Hauppauge WinTv 64405 Rev C1 ImpactVCB Board LP" and it works under 98SE at 30fps. Hands free mouse in the dark! Note: the PCI card is miniature and required removal of bezel first. =(

Yes, I always install NUSB, so I guess it is a video driver problem. I found an inexpensive PCI video capture card called Impact VCB that is backwards compatible, so I think am going to go that route. I hope someone else might get some use out of this great little program.

For awhile I have been using a webcam at work to control my mouse under Windows 7. Last weekend I picked up a used Veo Stingray webcam to see if I could get my home 98SE machine to work with the program. It did work but was unusably slow. I thought I would post this in case anyone had some ideas or wanted to play around with it. My guess is I would need old video capture card of some kind. My ASRock ConRoe865PE/gv motherboards supports USB 2.0 properly for XP but obviously not fully for 98SE. Link: http://nipg.inf.elte.hu/headmouse/headmouse.html The program' s title bar says "Adaptive_mouse" but the website is titled "Head Mouse v 1.5 alpha". I believe the name "Headmouse" is used by another similar type of program.

Are there 98se chipset and HD drivers for the AM2NF3-VSTA? It looks like the ASRock site only has win2k up, although there may be something out there like at this XP driver site:http://sites.google.com/site/nf2stuff/.

I bet several 1.5V cards might work (not on that list ) under XP , though not 98. My Leadtek WinFast A400TDH (6800) actually had some artifacts in 98, so I am settling for 6200 which is fine.

I had never heard of an "AGI" slot before. Some Googling resulted in these pages: AGI slot? What is AGI? ASRock A.G.I.8X From what I read there, it seems that AGI began as some kind of proprietary slot to "tack on" a graphics card slot to motherboards with integrated graphics. The only advice I can give is to be absolutely certain you have disabled everything related to the integrated graphics chip in the BIOS... My guess is that while Windows 2K/XP may not "see" any difference between AGP and AGI, DOS/WIN9X does "see" a difference. Does the motherboard have Windows 98 drivers for all of its components? Right, I am aware that it is a kind of partially-compatible AGP slot effectively. I did use the ASRock INF files, and verified 98SE works with a Geforce2 card (3D dx9 that is to say). I guess I will chalk this up to incompatibility, as the ATI card is not specifically supported by ASRock. I just got another card tonight which would not even boot in that system, a ATI Radeon 9600 pro. Afterwards I tested it in a Dell 8200, 98SE system with 4xAGP slot. It had no problems with the drivers and worked fine as a 2d card, but had the same problem with 3D dx9 tests. That system works with the same Geforce2 card in a 3D dx9 test, even though it lacks manufacturer INF files (no 98 support back then). I probably will stick to Nvidia 6xxx from now on as they are easy to find.

I recently got a OEM ATI Radeon 9500 card on eBay, and it works fine as a 2D card. I was gambling that the card was compatible with my ASRock Conroe865GV motherboard which uses a AGI slot. I am having no luck getting DirectX 3D going in 98SE, but it works just fine in XP. If I use AquaMark3 or DXdiag in 3D test mode the applications quickly exit after the screen briefly goes black and returns to the desktop. I did a clean 98se installation on a blank hard drive, so no other cards were ever present. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and tried both the dx9.0c runtime and sdk versions. Any suggestions, like driver changes? I am using the catalyst 6.2 drivers for 98SE from amd. (6-2_wme_dd_cp_30314.exe)

I recently bought 3 of these motherboards on ebay, intending to build up a very quiet, relatively low-power 98SE/XP system with backup parts to last a long time. I call it a redundant array of inexpensive motherboards. They were listed as refurbished and came with a 6 month warranty. They seem to be ok after fiddling with various things which are listed below. The #1 problem is that the BIOS chip has a version number on the label that does not match the actual BIOS version number. In order to run CPUs like my Celeron 450 the system must first be brought up using an older P4/Celeron (which are listed on their website), and then have a BIOS update via floppy. The board uses a limited AGP variant called AGI (8x/4x 1.5v). I recommend setting the BIOSs' initial graphics option for AGI, PCI, or internal graphics accordingly before getting started on an OS. The integrated graphics work fine, and so does a GeForce2 MX 400 64MB which is only a little bit faster than internal graphics. Two different DDR400 sticks came up as DDR333, but it was easily set to the correct value. I am using 2.5-3-3-8 RAM and BIOS has it as Auto-4-4-8 by default, so more things to correct. I do not have any experience with the 775 socket, but I have read that the pins can easily be bent. Under a bright light it was evident that the socket had some slightly irregular pins, but I was careful installing the CPU + HS in testing all the motherboards. The slot has a little bit of play after the CPU is put in, but it did not seem to matter. The parallel port on two of them had some rust spots, like it was sitting outside for awhile before being soldered on the motherboard. The #2 problem was microphone recording using the integrated sound card. I always use Dragon Dictate to replace keyboard and mouse input, and 98SE is the last supported Windows version. Unfortunately 1 out of 4 times Dragon Dictate is run it crashes, although delaying running it using (r2 Studios\Startup Delayer) mates it much more reliable. The output of integrated sound card is good but occasionally has gaps, like when inserting a USB memory stick. NUSB got the USB ports working, after the Asrock version failed that is. Although there is no obvious USB-boot support, if you leave a bootable memory stick in and reboot it can change the drive enumeration order, putting the memory stick as D:. I could not find a serial number, normally on label on parallel port or the box that the motherboard came in. The serial number is a required input field for ASRock support web page. If something was seriously wrong in the first 6 months the seller (eBay "ClaimThis") will swap it for another though.

I have been thinking to save my money for one of these, which is about the best my non-AGP 3.0 motherboard can handle. Nvidia Geforce 6600. For now a 4x, 64MB Geforce 2 MX400 works for me.

I just read that SSDs may wear out quickly on 98, although I imagine that it could be worked around. link

I bought a ConRoe865GV and will slowly build up a quiet killer 98 system on a reasonable budget =). I will need to find a fanless video card that is compatible, (the motherboard manual does say it is not compatible with all 8xAGP cards). For now it will get a 4x. That Vertex looks promising if it can work with a SATA I interface in 98 compatibility mode. I'm seriously considering that now. I wonder if it needs a adapter to hold it in a 3.5" slot. I did some research and found that the power dissipation went down to 65W going from Pentium 4(s) to Core 2 Duo, but the old K7 Athon 1800 XP+ I have been using for years was 50-60W range. Clearly I have had noisy fans. Anyway, I am going eventually to get a Core2duo E4x00 which is as fast as the motherboard can handle. NOTE: apparently only a single core can be used :-(.

Thanks for the suggestion. I never have tried ME Edition drivers, just have stayed away because of the historic instability of that version.

I made a mistake about the Dell, and after looking it up it turned was a Dell Dimension 8200 Pentium 4 1.7GHz, the kind with RDRAM. It was a donation, so I am not complaining, but Dell's website has no drivers for the motherboard earlier than Windows 2000. I can use its onboard USB, but not any PCI slots (which was surprising). I use Dragon Dictate which works great, and the output of the integrated sound card works as a SB compatible, but overall it's not that stable after an hour of use, especially simple browsing. Even something like Notepad has complained on exit. (This is the improved version *after* applying the 98SE patches). If I could get an essentially new Optiplex GX260, I would be very happy. Short of that I am content to slowly build something around a genuinely 98SE compatible, new motherboard. I ought to add that I have low-use old 80GB Western Digital Caviar drive ( PATA 100, still being sold new online) in that machine, which is nice and quiet. It's slow compared to today's drives, but not too bad. I took a look at the Zalman power supply and fans, and they look interesting. I actually thought those custom components were somewhat more expensive. Another tidbit: I am aware that AMD has a "Cool'n'Quiet" feature on their newer processors, but it might only work on later OS'es than Windows 9x.

Networking Belkin F5D5050 Networking USB to Ethernet Adaptor: tested and it works under Windows 98SE

I am wondering if anyone has opinions on building a quieter system at a reasonable cost. After years of reliable AMD socket A (socket 462) processors I am wondering would a Pentium 4 processor and fan be a wiser choice, thinking of something like a ASRock P4I65G motherboard. My current take on noise contributors: Power-supply CPU fan drives case I am guessing that a processor aimed at laptops would create less heat and noise. Background: I have used Emachine computers running 98 for 10 years and my main complaint is noise, and I am sick of it. I did replace a power supply which cut the noise down significantly, and used the best of three fans on my AMD 1800+ processor which cut the noise down a bit. The number 3 noise contributor in that system is a cheap Maxtor EIDE 7200 hard drive, but it is minor. In spite of the hardware changes, that system can't hold a candle to a 2001 Dell Dimension 8200 (not Optiplex as I thought earlier) I am playing around with. That system crashes a bit and has no native drivers for 9x. It probably has a much better sound-dampening case, but it is not that noisy running with the case open. Any opinions?