Mobility Radeon 9200 on Win95c?

[dexter3d]

Hello,

I am currently using Sony Vaio VGN-A115M laptop (P M Dothan 1.5Ghz, Intel 855PM, 512 ram, MR9200 64 MB, 60gb).

I was recently considering buying more ram, but I thought what a hell - why not trying to optimize

it with good old Win9x. I always liked to make things more simple and faster (used to programming in Assembler:)

Well - Windows 98SE works like a charm. Got all the drivers except for wireless lan (Intel 2200BG).

CPU remains cool (Intel Speedstep applet 3.1), runs faster, boots/shuts down faster than XP, and I can do everything I need.

Now I thought trying Windows 95c (NoIE). I thought it could be even faster (i.e. booting). Is it worth doing it?

I tried using the same Catalyst 6.2 driver which I successfully used for 98SE, but it didn't work.

Same with ATI Omega drivers. Displayed error is something about User32.dll and ATI .exe files linking to it (after reboot).

The funny thing is that in the Device Manager, everything appears fine - Mobility Radeon 9200, devicx

working properly, but I can't step out of 640x480/16 colors. Drivers appear not to be loaded fully. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

dex

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

I believe Windows 95 did not have support for the WDM driver standard (which your drivers most likely use). May I suggest using 98lite to remove IE and the IE shell from Windows 98, so that you can continue using your drivers. Should speed up boot times significantly.

[pointertovoid]

I too looked (no too long) for W95b drivers for a Radeon 9600xt. Seems that Ati released Radeon drivers beginning with W98.

Which does make sense, as my r9600xt is a dX9.0 hardware, and W95 only runs dX8.0a maximum (check your games!).

-----

Faster than W98se: yes, W95b is much faster - but on small configurations. On a 4200/min 2,5" P1 120MHz 40MB, it makes a nice difference. But on a 7200/min 3,5" PIIIs 1400MHz 512MB, both a equally quick - I suppose hardware detection is the slowest task at bootup, not reading the disk nor making computations.

You should consider Win Me as a replacement of 98se. It boots a bit faster, has much better Usb support, has built-in drivers for more hardware. Even better, as it had no successor, it suffers less from applications wanting to "modernize" Windows' dll. Defrag is much faster, and it has the Pinball game! Win Me runs all applications that 95 and 98 can. It takes a bit more Ram, but with 128MB+ it's at full throttle. Xp users may enjoy the automatic backup. Few euros at eBay.

Also, W95 is more difficult to install than W98-Me. Not just for the disquette; W95 needs an awful lot of functional updates (forget security updates, it's pointless) which are difficult to find, are sometimes bugged, and must sometimes be installed in a precise order.

-----

512MB are more than enough for Xp alone. Xp runs at full speed with 256MB, according to my trials. Everything else are applications that take Ram space and boot time - beware of Open Office, Adobe Pdf Reader and some more: they all start together with Windows, slowing its bootup down and occupying the Ram permanently, just to be in the Ram when you call them.

-----

Rather then Ram, I'd buy a faster HDD. It's the slowest part on mearly every computer, and much more so on a laptop. You can find a 7200/min with >80MB/s contiguous read for about 60 euros, capacity being around 250 or 300GB then.

Flash disk is an option, but beware most of them are experimentally much slower than a mechanical disk. Look at 8kB read and write on Atto, not at random access time and contiguous read at Hd Tach.

[pointertovoid]

Just stumbled here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/158238/en

on a paragraph telling that W95b with Usb and W95c support Wdm drivers:

"For OSR 2.1 and OSR 2.5, only files that have been updated to provide support for the Win32 Driver Model (WDM) and Universal Serial Bus (USB)..."

To know if you have an Osr 2.1 cdrom, look after "With USB bus" printed on the Cd. It must also contain a (Drive letter):\95b\OTHER\USB folder. Its contents, USBSUPP.EXE, can also be downloaded equally well (it has to be installed separately in both cases), but I guess WDM is brought by other files.

Win95 licences don't specify which version they legitimate, and their keys are accepted by all W95 version - letting me suppose that Microsoft wanted it that way.

[BenoitRen]

Also, W95 is more difficult to install than W98-Me. Not just for the disquette; W95 needs an awful lot of functional updates (forget security updates, it's pointless) which are difficult to find, are sometimes bugged, and must sometimes be installed in a precise order.

"awful lot"? Only 10 if you don't include DirectX 8.0a but do include the couple security updates. They're easily found as well.

Edited May 24, 2009 by BenoitRen

[LoneCrusader]

I too looked (no too long) for W95b drivers for a Radeon 9600xt. Seems that Ati released Radeon drivers beginning with W98.

I know for a fact that there are Win95 Drivers for a 128MB Radeon 8500 - I have the disk and have installed them recently. As far as Radeons after that, I am almost certain there are vxd drivers for them, but I can't remember right at the moment.

[bearwindows]

Older 2001-2002 dated drivers was for Windows 95 also. for example these versions was really old before Catalyst "era": 4.13.01.90xx, where xx is from ~01 to ~55 (4.13.01.9056 was Catalyst 2.1)

wme-radeon-4-13-9021-efg.exe

wme-radeon-4-13-01-9031-efg.exe

drvhu_04-04_Radeon_Win98_ME_4.13.9023.zip

radeon_win98_me_4_13_9021.zip

9030_w9x.zip

drvhu_05-13_wme-radeon-4-13-01-9031-efg.exe

or any other...

I find them here - http://drivers.hu/drv/ati/vga/

You can check the Windows 95 support by several ways:

1) If driver is an exe-file and it says that "This software requires DirectX 8.1. ... Click YES to proceed!", this version is may be NOT for Windows 95, since this OS is not supporting any DirectX > 8.0a.

2) look for ATIDRIVE\atii9xag.cat (this is M$ WHQL certificate), if it is sized of 1 byte or empty, this driver is non-M$ certified since it is a beta-release, which CAN support Windows 95. Note that M$ ceased support of Windows 95 was ended at 31 December 2001, so no updates and no certificates exist dated 2002 year or later.

3) look for ATIDRIVE\atio9xxx.dl_ (this is ATI's OpenGL driver interface), expand it by command line

expand atio9xxx.dl_ atio9xxx.dll

and look into atio9xxx.dll using Dependancy Walker (by Steve P. Miller) make sure that Windows 98/ME ONLY API call USER32.EnumDisplayMonitors is NOT present so such driver CAN support Windows 95.

4) sample chiplist from driver dated 04/11/2002, 4.13.01.9030 ( 9030_w9x.zip )

[Mfg]
"Radeon Mobility 7500 GL" = M7_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4C58
"Radeon Mobility" = M6_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4C59
"Radeon 8500 / 8500LE" = R6_ENU_default, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_516C
"Radeon 7000 / Radeon VE" = RV100_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5159
"Radeon 7500" = RV200_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5157
"Radeon 8500" = R200_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_514c
"Radeon 7200 / Radeon" = R6_ENU_default, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5144
"Radeon 8500 DV Edition" = R200_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4242
"Radeon Mobility 7500" = M7_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4C57
"R8500" = R200_ENU, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_514C

Edited June 1, 2009 by bearwindows