Drugwash

Apparently no good deed remains unpunished...

There's something we all missed: the three buttons being grayed out. I presume it's about 'Add...', 'Remove and 'Properties' under the Devices tab. How about the second tab Logging settings, or is it not present there? There should be at least one choice in the dropdown list below 'Logging module', saying 'STICLI'. If that's missing or the tab itself is nonexistent, that may be indicate a missing or unmatched dependency. Direct dependencies for original STICPL.CPL (on my 98SE system) would be: STI.DLL 4.10.1998 (which is an ActiveX object) Kernel32.dll 4.10.2226 Advapi32.dll 4.90.3000 User32.dll 4.10.2233 Gdi32.dll 4.90.3003 Comctl32.dll 5.81 Shell32.dll 4.72.3612.1700 Ole32.dll 4.71.3328 STI.DLL has the following dependencies: Kernel32.dll Advapi32.dll User32.dll Setupapi.dll 5.00.1671.1 Cfgmgr32.dll 4.10.1998 RPCRT4.dll 4.71.3336 Again, those version numbers are present on my system, where the 'Scanners and Cameras' control panel has those three buttons active. Never ever used that applet though. Your versions may be different. I'm thinking of a bad OLE installation. I remember there used to be a tool that checked the validity of all OLE elements installed, but forgot its name.

There's also the possibility that the device is defective - be it the power source, the data communication channel or whatever. I still have a friend's scanner, an old LPT-port Mustek that's been powered with reverse polarity voltage for a few seconds and now doesn't do much other than power on. To rule out hardware issues you may have to install and test it on a newer (Win2000+) system using the corresponding drivers.

Yep, that's more like it. I've been reading that topic you linked to - wolves be there. But the bug itself is difficult to catch and squish. After all the test results, I'd say certain video cards - and especially the X850 XT PE - may require certain additional (or different) commands when switching resolutions (assumingly to/from very low ones) but either the main game exe or the DOS driver (DOS4/GW or DOS32a) don't do it (properly) while running under Windows, possibly due to an intermediary layer that may try a more direct approach. But that's just shooting in the dark. Speaking of dark, I'll go hit the sack - it's past 1AM here.

'Retro' and 'too much' in the same context seem to clash with each-other. Although my old 486 used to sport a whopping 32MB of RAM and I always thought: "man, that's just too much!"

Thanks! MemPanelW is the Unicode version, more appropriate for Win2000+ (although the code is exactly the same, just the underlying interpretor is different). Couldn't test it on any machine with more than 2GiB of RAM but unless there's a bug it should correctly display the whole amount on Win2000+. Did you just test it on a 9x machine with 4GB of RAM? Isn't that a tad too much? The extended version of the API works with unsigned large integers (64bit), while the basic version - found in 9x - only works with 32bit unsigned integers, hence the limitation (probably ranging from 2^0 to 2^31).

Let us all, please, have a little bit of patience until jumper comes in with the answers. No need for hostility.

In which order are these applied and to which sources? A promise is not enough. One can promise to release the source code of a future version, but a version that is out now has no source code of which I am requesting. It is not a matter of promising, it is a requirement to release the sources to comply with the GNU GPLv2 for every build that is released. Also, it would be best to not have a "diff" and instead release full sources as it reduces the liability of violations. It also makes it easier for others who want to contribute to more easily contribute without jumping through hoops of figuring out what gets extracted onto what in a specific order. Say if suddenly the locations of other sources such as SourceForge for 4.5.2 disappear and that the only source code available is in this topic. Although highly unlikely this event will occur it may still happen (other unlikely events have occurred but I will not go into that), those "diff"s are not enough. Full sources are also much simpler to create as you can just archive up your cleaned working copy, or if version control is used they can export archives straight from the repository. Both R3 and R5 are full sources. I have added jumper's new/edited files to the original 4.5.2 and operated a few minor adjustments to the project files in order to compile the whole batch at once. However I'm not very familiar with C/C++ and there may or may not be problems with that setup. Jumper has taken on this task fairly recently and as far as I understand his setup is (or was) not yet completely functional. Releasing garbled sources would not help anyone so he said he would release only after cleaning them up and reaching a stable stage. I do agree that a full source package would be preferrable instead of a diff, but either way it should at least be a working version so personally I see no reason to force a source release. But then again I'm not an expert in legal matters.

Have you tried installing WIA 1.1 from here? Anyway, I had never looked into Scanners and Cameras. Did it just now and it only lists 'General Video Camera Device' which I have no idea what it is. I do have a Lexmark X-1150 combo installed and running fine under my 98SE and in fact I have just scanned a few documents a couple days ago, using the official software. However, I have FastStone Image Viewer 5.3 installed and looked into the File menu under 'Acquire Images From Scanner'. The new window it opens lists in the right-hand dropbox all the cameras and scanners ever installed on my system, with the Lexmark X1100 series as default (as it should be). Therefore, before messing around with the system, you may wanna try FastStone Image Viewer (freeware) and see if you can get your scanner (and other capturing devices) to work with it.

Maybe it uses GlobalMemoryStatus() instead of GlobalMemoryStatusEx(). The former can only acknowledge 2GiB of RAM, while the latter can go all the way up. Same goes for the page file, it's retrieved by the same APIs. Try MemPanel from my repository, it should use the correct API depending on operating system type (Win9x don't have GlobalMemoryStatusEx() implemented). It does detect the whole amount of installed RAM (when less that 2GB as per above) even when it's limited in SYSTEM.INI on 9x systems. I'm not sure if it works under WIn95, couldn't test it.

Jumper already promised some time ago a full diff package for the upcoming Release 10, while the original 4.5.2 sources can be found online. In the mean time, a couple of older intermediary versions (R3 and R5) with a few minor project fixes can be found at my repository here.

By all means do! At least theoretically they should match the hardware as good as possible (for the release time). Also make sure DirectX is correctly installed. Drivers should work with 9.0c. Better check any Readme/FAQ/etc available on CD in regard to requirements and any possible known incompatibilities/bugs. For best results you may wanna completely eradicate the old video driver first using Driver Cleaner Pro v1.5 (the old non .NET version).

You may be the unlucky owner of a not-so-compatible videocard. On my 98SE machine I have a GeForce4 Ti4200 with AGP8x card manufactured by MSI. Luckily I have the original driver CD (and also got the same download from MSI back in the day). Any - and I mean ANY - generic driver version issued by nVidia would immediately disable AGP texture in my card. DirectX diagnostics shows the respective button grayed out and the feature disabled. Never tried the card under any other operating system. Therefore I would assume such similar issue could happen to you or anybody else with certain videocards tweaked by manufacturer and only usable with certain driver version(s) usually available only from them. (fixed small typo)

Have a look at the five new pictures just uploaded. It's an 1986 model originally with no LEDs. Also manufactured in the UK as yours. Two of the active ones have no original label at all at the bottom, but one has an additional smaller label where I signed myself with the purchase date: Sept 21, 1999 (see pics). That is my very first keyboard ever, still in use today! Third active one has a manufacturing date on the label of Sept 27, 1993. And I had another one that I took with me at work about 8-9 years ago (been a couple months with a printing house) and never got it back. It was fully operational and freshly cleaned, I still regret it. Here we go again hijacking another topic...

I've taken a few quick pictures of my keyboards, they can be found here. You can see the internal metal plate in one picture. I've dismantled each of them at some point, for clean-up but as far as I can remember none of them has the sliding mechanism you mentioned. I wish they did!

Maybe you should try filling up the extended partition with dummy files to check if the BIOS won't wrap around the 8.4GB limit, destroying the Windows files and anything at the beginning of the drive CHS-wise. To avoid reinstalls you may create partition/drive image(s) beforehand, easily restorable.

Yes, that'd be the right term, thank you very much!

Actually I do have such silver conductive paint (quite expensive IMHO) and I did try to fix some tracks using it but the operation failed. Maybe it's too thick (what could I use to dillute it?) or maybe I don't have the proper tools. It is indeed difficult to repair because the plastic panel that holds the keys is bolted riveted (the actual term slips my mind thank you jaclaz for the heads up!) to the metal plate in a lot of places and once they're cut they'd need to be tightened back using very small screws or something else that could hold the plastic panel tight. The key caps can be replaced, there used to be (and maybe still is) a company that manufactured such Model M keyboards and also offered key caps for sale. Shouldn't be a problem for standard English alphabet but what should other people do, when their (preferred/native) keyboad layout contains special characters (such as Romanian, for example, where we have ŞŢÂĂÎ) and such keys are not available? I've always used a (not so) permanent marker for those special keys but the narrow vision of manufactures around the world, now in 21st century, astonishes me.

Unfortunately Wim's BIOS doesn't list Epox EP-BX3's among the patched BIOS versions they offer. But you could at least try to place a request in the forum, maybe someone could take a look at it and get it fixed... if the gurus are still around and the issue is in the BIOS.

My bad, missed that part. If it weren't Win95B as you said, could it have reformatted the partition at install time to FAT16? But that wouldn't yield a 4GB partition but a 2GB one. I'd go with the Setup having pulled a strange/bad/old FAT copy that changed the partition size. Could've been the partitioning tool's fault. Try with another tool and/or on another system, as Nomen said.

Please read this: MS KB118335

Current business model is "my way or the highway". They know people are [insert your preferred bad word(s)] enough to accept any compromise since they've already been "convinced" through aggresive (and subliminal) advertising that they want and need the latest, the newest, the best-est-est-est... Too much to discuss on this subject. Nice movie scene there, bizzybody! However I wouldn't purposely destroy such a gem as the Model M keyboard. It hurts enough that I have another two of them defective that I can't fix - one has had a certain amount of vinegar from a pickle jar spilled inside and many of the the tracks are destroyed, the other one just got old and pieces of tracks got faded out. A few of those steel plates inside could make a decent body armor though. One'd feel like... Iron Man!

Ah, finally I get the recognition I deserve! Oh and I've also been given recently a used creamy-white Dell keyboard model AT102 (internal board says 'Silitek') with keys that resemble the 'Cherry' ones in first picture here. Unfortunately some of the keys are defective, most likely oxidated. I've managed to fix one of them, the Escape key, but it's darn hard to open them and clean the contacts, especially with my bad eyes.

Yep, Total Hardware 99 it is! I have just found one of my old bookmarks from the early 9x systems and - expectedly - the original site doesn't exist anymore, but there's traces of it at Web Archive here. Apparently it's a mirror which also lists the original here where there's a longer list of mirrors. These company guys don't think of a simple fact: people need choices! They want to ponder themselves whether to use an old thing or a new thing, based on their own needs, personal preferences and other factors. But choice seems to have been deemed dangerous by "someone" up there. I still have a couple of 286 motherboards and related hardware (IDE controllers, video cards etc.) and at some point I may just want to play with them, just for fun, for old times' sake or whatever crosses my mind. Is that a crime? They sure think so, because information regarding that hardware is long gone (or would've been if it wasn't for the Wayback Machine, but still we don't know how much exactly of the original content is cached in there). I also still have four IBM Model M keyboards, massive, heavy and clunky, but they never miss a keypress. All built around 1989-1991. Luckily they don't need some weird fancy drivers because definitely they would've pulled those loooong time ago, tu push the use of "modern" keyboards that break within a few months and are way too unreliable. What I call my main machine is a 667MHz Soyo SY-6VBA 133 board with Win98SE that's been running 24/7 (!!!) since 2006. It's doing all I need it to except for browsing, because they purposely changed standards and everything to push the 9x systems out of the Internet. But I use that machine because it does what I want it to do, not what IT wants to do behind my back, as the new systems do. Well now, a month or so ago I bought a second-hand LCD monitor (Hanns-G Hi221) to replace the heavy 21" CRT I had. Thought it was a bargain. But there you go trying to get the native resolution on the digital input - wouldn't budge. Went to the manufacturer's site, or at least I tried - it wouldn't open for me, probably because they didn't like my region. I managed to open it through a proxy and took me a while to find my particular model. Of course, it was in the 'legacy' (read 'forget about it') section. But funny enough, while a very similar model had a driver and manual to download, this one had nothing available (or at least wouldn't display it for me)! So besides shipping it with a bad EDID EEPROM they wouldn't even offer something helpful for the !d!ots like me that already bought it! I had to waste two days, tinkering with different driver versions and custom resolutions just to get that darn thing to reach its native 1680x1050 resolution. So it's like you said, that manufactures simply hide under the carpet any bad/old products, ceasing to provide minimal required help or completely denying having manufactured those products. And I'm not including here forgeries. However, on a few, very few occasions, I managed to find drivers, manuals or other related information on very old products on their respective manufacturers' sites. "Here you are, no guarantee or warranty, don't come crying if your box explodes, blah-blah", all fine by me and I got what I wanted, thank you. I respect those guys. Gives you a feeling of trust. Just as you said. Sadly the world forgot what trust means... (fixed a minor typo...)

Oh yeah, I remember those days... Original manuals were hard to impossible to find out here and we were looking at those jumpers wondering what they do and how to set them properly if anything failed. There used to be a site, mirrored in a few other places, that listed many old ISA cards of various types with their jumper settings - that was gold, at the time! I forgot the links long time ago and I doubt they'd still be online. I used to have an ISA ESS1869 sound card back in the day, on my 486. It did have the IDE controller which saved me big time. Considering the BIOS limited the native hard drives to 528MiB, there wasn't much space left for data when Win95 was installed. With that controller enabled, I could use a 1,2GB Quantum hard drive for data storage while the system was booting off the smaller, native drive. I still have that 486, it's still working, but that sound card got fried long ago. How I wish I had another one like that! It used to work with most (if not all) DOS games at the time and no issues with it in Win95 either. Your particular issue may well come from the fact that the card is an OEM. They like to tinker with the settings in such a way that the device most likely wouldn't work (properly or at all) on other systems but their own. Won't work with other drivers but their own too, many times. I had such issue with a Creative Labs sound card manufactured for Dell, which - for the life of me - I couldn't find a driver for. Anyway, for old OS versions such as Win95, the setting 'Plug'n'Play OS installed' (or similar) in BIOS should be disabled and resources be manually assigned. But it greatly depends on how well the BIOS implements resource management. It may take a long time to tinker with all settings in order to get the system to work properly, but hard work gives great satisfactions. And it may also depend on certain OS updates being installed (or not). I know there is an update for Win98 that fixes such hang on shutdown so maybe there is one for Win95 too. It's a common hardware and software effort. But it's fun... or at least used to be, back in the day. Well, whatever you choose to do, I wish you good luck.