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Why Use Win 98/SE/ME?


jimc52

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^ If you're a programmer and would like to have direct access to I/O ports (no need to write a driver or GUI app), check out IO.DLL or TVicPort.

Yes but this is much aditional work messing with drivers. Pure DOS is da best for this kind of playing. IO port access is quite easy to get but much harder is access to MSR registers or physical memory access under NT-based OS. I wrote my own kernel mode driver for MSR access in mingw32 so I know what I'm talking about. If you are not familiar with windows kernel programming (like me) it's not a piece of cake. And even if it now works through a driver the IOCTL calls adds heavy overhead to this simple operations making it much slower than in DOS/Win9x.

Edited by xrayer
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DeXter,

Everything you say about XP is correct but implementing all the examples given above, are far more complicated than on w98.

Practicaly, on XP you must run with two user logins: one for normal tasks and one for repair, program install, etc

Switching on and off services is fine theoricaly, but disabling anything that seemed useless to me prevented my internet connection whatever I tried to do. -> You need realy advanced knowledge to work with that. Finaly I made my way through with SafeXP. It remains that the notion of services is another layer of complication.

You mentioned power management. On one hand, true: XP has a more reliable power management: On w98, I have experienced dead computer screen after 2 hours idle. On the other hand, W98 beats XP the hell out at boot time. You said XP wakes up from hybernate in 30 sec? My w98 system reboots entirely in almost the same time.

I don't hesitate to reboot my machine when something goes slow: it's barely more annoying than, say, a slow internet forum server.

And for shutting down: I don't even have the time to get off my chair.

So yes, it's possible to zip/rar system files on XP but I seriousely doubt that some one without a professional education in Windows XP will reliably repair a system by simply uncompressing the files down into it.

You will say "you just to do this and this". Then it doesn't work because, in your case, you also need to turn off this and this, etc ad infinitum.

Now that Vista is out, I realize that XP was not so bad after all (Vista being the nail on the coffin for me - This and Internet 2.0). But I'm the kind of guy who doesn't like non-sens and uselessly complicated stuffs. XP is full of it. Vista even more.

I'm going to tell you what you can do on w98 and can't do with XP, as an example of why complication hurts: Typing quickely and without mistake the full path of a file located in "My Document". (I mean hand typing, not copy-paste, Heh.)

Good luck with this one.

That's the kind of stuff that's killing me. Now with Vista I'v read that they came with "virtual" folders (as if a folder was not virtual already), folders that don't exist but are links, well, that made me so sick that I even didn't try to understand.

In a nutshell: W98 is the "Do it yourself" OS while XP is the "Contact your network manager" OS.

(The "get your stinky fingers off the keyboard, your ignorant n00b and Contact your network manager" OS)

Edited by Fredledingue
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^ Well put, Fredledingue.

About this part: "Typing quickely and without mistake the full path of a file located in "My Document"

Firstly, I personally keep my "My Documents" in a seperate partition and its path is F:\Docs (And I believe keeping personal data on C: isn't such a good idea anyways. :) )

Second, almost all the places where one would need to type the path has autocomplete, so there's hardly any need to type out the complete path.

Third, there's always the %HOMEDIR% variable which redirects to C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\. If one has to type in %HOMEDIR% a lot, you could always shorten it, for eg, to %H%. Similarly, other variables like %APPDATA% too simplifies life in XP.

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A friend sent it in an e-mail joke some time ago. No idea where it originally came from. It doesn't look completely real to me, no places for limbs to attach, looks like a plastic novelty toy. I'd like to have a mouse that looked like that.

Those files are as close to 98 rootkits as I've seen. It seems to embed its code into another instance of explorer without changing its signature. Haven't finished working with them. Got sidetracked with other projects. Too much started, nothing getting finished. I do have some extended time off for the holidays. Hopefully, I'll get caught up and more organized.

Rick

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Why use Win 98/SE/ME

The right tool for the right job I guess.

I have a machine with 98SE and every patch and add on available on this site (I’ve had to reinstall a few times). :wacko: I do it because it’s my idea of fun and it’s one of the best ways to learn the ins and outs of Windows.

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:whistle: i agree, i,ved learn so much about tweaking modifying etc, thanks to the sure footed trusty 98se. and the amazin program bein built to keep this badboy up to par with 2008. its great fun and follys but more been done in this forum then anywhere on the net its a msfn thang .To all involved once again the 98 culture salutes u. :whistle:
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