Jump to content

Are you using Windows 9x or ME with modern hardware?


vipejc

Recommended Posts

My plan is to use 32-bit Windows XP Home with SP3 for life, and I was wondering which users still use Windows 9x or ME as their only OS and plan to do the same? If so, is buying compatible hardware a challenge for you?

The challenges are hardware support (motherboard chipset) and no anti-virus support. The older the OS gets, the harder it becomes to maintain.

The reasons XP is my last OS:

1. Microsoft makes so little improvements to each Windows OS, it doesn't pay to switch unless you need an improvement.

2. Windows is so bloated, poorly designed, maintained, and behind the times.

3. It takes years to learn an OS, and the time and desire just isn't there to ever do it again.

4. Legacy hardware is cheaper and much more stable.

5. I spent seven years learning software and hardware to get XP spic-and-span clean, and performance is through the roof. (I can go over two years without a reboot, and did just to see how stable XP really is. I would've kept going but didn't want to risk a hardware failure and shut down the system for maintenance.)

6. I know my system like second nature and using, managing, and repairing it is a snap.

I don't think I'll even dignify that troll mess with more than this message. You quite clearly are set in your ways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


:blink: No. AFAICS, you've got it all wrong, sorry! Apicdump.exe and Apicmsr.exe are diagnostic apps, intended to produce a text result each, to be posted here (zip and attach, please) or sent to RLoew by e-mail. You need to run each but once. They're intended to help him figure what's happening, so that he can hopefully fix it. They're *not* a magical solution to your issue, intended to be used on a permanent basis.

Hi dencorso :hello: , I already know this but I was a little confused because he (Mr. RLoew) mentioned that the application should run from DOS, also my English is not perfect so I can not always clearly say what i want but now it does not matter.

^RLoew sorry you waited this long but I had to first change the video card because modded nvdia drivers causes

Windows Protection Fault when I go to MS Dos Mode.

ADUMP.zip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

rloew said

<The Headset was just a cheap USB Headset. i am not a gamer, I just needed Audio.

Oh.

<I just installed a CMI8738 4 Channel Sound Card and had no problems.>

Great news. I'm currently using a CMI8738 based card. And they're easy to come by.

<Even unmodded Drivers can run a few PCI-E Video cards, only the INF file needs to be changed. Unfortunately Shutdown or stability problems occur with the ones I tested.>

O.K.

"Anyway...I've just about given up on the 4Core Dual SATA2 board. I am very intrigued by your Gigabyte boards."

<Which one?>

Which one of the Gigabyte boards? Anyone that works well.

Any special reason you choose these models? Why micro ATX instead of ATX? What does your Device Manager look like?

Obviously there are no Wn98 drivers for the chipsets. What does Windows default to when there are no specific drivers to use?

Doesn't all this cause some serious stability problems? Is your video card interface PCI?

<Check the Ethernet Controller. It is one device where support varies from Motherboard to Motherboard.>

Not sure what you mean by this. Thanks again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

rloew said

<The Headset was just a cheap USB Headset. i am not a gamer, I just needed Audio.

Oh.

<I just installed a CMI8738 4 Channel Sound Card and had no problems.>

Great news. I'm currently using a CMI8738 based card. And they're easy to come by.

<Even unmodded Drivers can run a few PCI-E Video cards, only the INF file needs to be changed. Unfortunately Shutdown or stability problems occur with the ones I tested.>

O.K.

"Anyway...I've just about given up on the 4Core Dual SATA2 board. I am very intrigued by your Gigabyte boards."

<Which one?>

Which one of the Gigabyte boards? Anyone that works well.

I was referring to which 4Core Dual SATA2 board you were interested in.

Any special reason you choose these models? Why micro ATX instead of ATX? What does your Device Manager look like?

No particular reason.

One PCI-PCI Bridge and the SM Bus Controller have no driver as well as an unknown PCI card (the HD Audio Controller).

Obviously there are no Wn98 drivers for the chipsets. What does Windows default to when there are no specific drivers to use?

Doesn't all this cause some serious stability problems? Is your video card interface PCI?

Depends upon the purpose of the Chipset Function. I am using a PCI Video Card.

<Check the Ethernet Controller. It is one device where support varies from Motherboard to Motherboard.>

Not sure what you mean by this. Thanks again.

Again I was referring to which 4Core Dual SATA2 board you were interested in.

The Realtek Ethernet Controllers often have Windows 98 Drivers. NVIDIA Controllers such as the MCP61 do not.

Edited by rloew
Link to comment
Share on other sites

:blink: No. AFAICS, you've got it all wrong, sorry! Apicdump.exe and Apicmsr.exe are diagnostic apps, intended to produce a text result each, to be posted here (zip and attach, please) or sent to RLoew by e-mail. You need to run each but once. They're intended to help him figure what's happening, so that he can hopefully fix it. They're *not* a magical solution to your issue, intended to be used on a permanent basis.

Hi dencorso :hello: , I already know this but I was a little confused because he (Mr. RLoew) mentioned that the application should run from DOS, also my English is not perfect so I can not always clearly say what i want but now it does not matter.

^RLoew sorry you waited this long but I had to first change the video card because modded nvdia drivers causes

Windows Protection Fault when I go to MS Dos Mode.

ADUMP.zip

All of my modern Computers use AMD Processors. Although very similar, Intel did not support a couple of APIC commands, including one I used to determine the number of Cores. I have attached a modified copy of my Demo. Replace the DEMOCORE.VXD file in your system with the new one. Reboot and run the DEMO.EXE Program in Windows. Also try running a second instance in another DOS Box, while the first one is running, to verify it is not miscounting the number of Cores.

Democore.zip

Edited by rloew
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is how is he doing now

post-291521-0-09993100-1300360600_thumb.

The Demo is working but it is not properly counting the Cores. I have attached another DEMOCORE.VXD and COUNT.EXE that will report the number of additional cores detected. Replace DEMOCORE.VXD and run COUNT.EXE. Let me know the result.

Demo1.zip

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@ RLoew

Sorry about the confusion. At first I thought you were refering to the 4Core Dual SATA2, then I thought you couldn't

have meant that. Here's the situation. I bought the ASRock 4Core Dual SATA2 in December of 2007, encouraged by posts on this board that Win98 could run on it. And it did, except for sound. I posted on this board and others the problem I was having, hoping someone could steer me in the right direction for a solution. No luck. Shortly after my sisters motherboard died on a XP machine I had built for her. So I gave her the board, processor and memory I had bought. I still have access to the machine and a few weeks ago I bought the USB sound card and installed Win98 and tested it. These boards are still available online and I was thinking of buying another. However they're not really a good upgrade path for a future non-98 computer.

Here's a link to a post from Oct. 2008 if you're interested.:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=97588&view=findpost&p=806271

The Ethernet controller was Via based 10/100. No problems with drivers. I'll be testing my C-media card this weekend and then think about which direction to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest wsxedcrfv

I posted on this board and others the problem I was having, hoping someone could steer me in the right direction for a solution.think about which direction to go.

I haven't spend much time trying to install a sound card on my Asrock 4coredual VSTA yet. I have an Audigy2, SoundBlaster Live!, SoundBlaster PCI 128, and a Diamond Multimedia board that has "1998" stamped on it. I just have to locate my original CD's. I have some early impression that success might depend on installing these cards in a particular PCI slot (that is, not all PCI slots are equal or equally functional under win-98).

Other than that, the Asrock board is completely functional. Perhaps I will try the PCIe slot one of these days, but the AGP slot works fine - and it seems they can both be used under XP (not that it's my intention to run XP any time soon).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

wsxedcrfv wrote:

I haven't spend much time trying to install a sound card on my Asrock 4coredual VSTA yet. I have an Audigy2, SoundBlaster Live!, SoundBlaster PCI 128, and a Diamond Multimedia board that has "1998" stamped on it. I just have to locate my original CD's. I have some early impression that success might depend on installing these cards in a particular PCI slot (that is, not all PCI slots are equal or equally functional under win-98).

Other than that, the Asrock board is completely functional. Perhaps I will try the PCIe slot one of these days, but the AGP slot works fine - and it seems they can both be used under XP (not that it's my intention to run XP any time soon).

------------------------------------------------

I finally got to test CMI 8768 in Win98 on a 4Core Dual SATA2 board. When I looked for an installation disk, I found I no longer had it. I'm not sure what

happened to it. After a lot of searching online, I found the driver I needed on the Syba website. The description only indicated Win2K or better, but I

decided to give it try anyway. I first tried it on my current machine, just to make sure it worked in win9X. It did. I still had the files I downloaded from

the Via site in 2007. The only one I installed was the Via Rhine Lan, so I could update Win98. I updated everything but WMP9. After disabling HD audio

in the BIOS, I installed the 8768 driver. Unsurprisingly(now) it worked perfectly. I have no idea what I did wrong back in 2007.

Thanks RLoew. Good luck wsxedcrfv.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest wsxedcrfv

I haven't spend much time trying to install a sound card on my Asrock 4coredual VSTA yet. I have an Audigy2, SoundBlaster Live!, SoundBlaster PCI 128, and a Diamond Multimedia board that has "1998" stamped on it. I just have to locate my original CD's. I have some early impression that success might depend on installing these cards in a particular PCI slot (that is, not all PCI slots are equal or equally functional under win-98).

Just to complete this issue, I have installed the Audigy2 PCI sound card (SB0240) into the last PCI slot on the Asrock 4coredual VSTA motherboard and using the original installation disk I did manage to install the drivers - although the installation process hung the computer at the 97% install point. Upon restarting, the device was showing up in device manager with no (!) problems. The driver versions were 5.12.01.282 / 284, but after applying some updates I found on the web the drivers are now 5.12.01.520 / 524. I don't know if these are the most recent drivers or not (I think they date to 2004). They seem to be win-2k drivers (or even XP drivers) judging by the names of the folders of the update packages. The game port and fire-wire controller also show up without errors in device manager.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I will say is this: I believe that win-98 got a bad rap early on in it's life because of the quality of the computers that were around in the late 90's.

Totally agree. The early releases from Microsoft were not that great but later Win98SE releases were stellar.

Disks may have caused more blue screens that Win98 did. IDE PIO gave status before the transfer occurred, so the validity of the last transfer was not known until the next transfer. Of course, if this transfer was corrupted, the OS blue screened before the next transfer happened. One of the host adapter companies (DTP?) used a caching driver which read n+1, and kept n. SCSI drives were an expensive alternative until IDE was enhanced to use DMA.

It is surprising how much the need exists to keep Win98 functional in many companies. VAR programs that were never updated to W2K are still integrated into operations. It was either impossible to find a substitute or conversion was not economically justifiable. Solutions like those from rloew are widely used (I bet the list of rloew users would raise eyebrows).

There is a broader universe of applications which were extremely popular on Win98 which can get by with part-measures like EMSMagic for EMM386. EMS Magic lets older commercial software like WordPerfect (ideal for lawyers) run under XP and Vista. Even some Win98 MBs have to use it if the vendor fragmented the space required for EMS pages with integrated devices.

I would consider any motherboard as compatible with windows 98 if there are win-98 drivers for the chipset (north and south bridge), USB drivers, IDE and/or SATA drivers, and AGP or PCIe bridge drivers. On-board sound and wifi are nice but not necessary, and possibly on-board ethernet is necessary. There are a few motherboard introduced as recently as late 2006 / early 2007 that meet that criteria - the Asrock 4coredual VSTA...

You had my attention here until I went to the download site:

4CoreDual-VSTA

Download - Please Select Your Operation System:

Drivers& Utilities Download - Windows Vista

Drivers& Utilities Download - Windows Vista 64bit

Drivers& Utilities Download - Windows XP

Drivers& Utilities Download - Windows XP 64bit

Drivers& Utilities Download - Windows 2000

What drivers are you using for Win98, old ones that came with earlier boards?

I am writing this on a GigaByte MA785GM-US2H, I just built using Windows 98 SE. The BIOS is dated 2010, so it is Modern enough.

You too have my attention, and I see you solved the driver problem with:

Windows 98SE Install CD.

My TBPLUS Package for IDE and SATA.

My RAM Limitation Patch for 16GB of RAM, with /M Option for Gigabyte Ethernet Memory Issue

Patched Windows ME USB Driver Files.

USB2.0 Driver Files from NUSB.

RTL8111 Windows 98 Driver

Added NVIDIA 6200 GS Video Card with 77.72 Drivers. Internal VIdeo Disabled.

Added USB Audio Device. No Driver for Internal Device.

* RFMaster's ASUS P5PE-VM is out of production.

* wsxedcrfv's Asrock 4coredual VSTA is out of production

* rloew's GigaByte MA785GM-US2H is on the trailing edge of availability

A database of MBs that can run Win98 would be invaluable to those of us stuck in the past by choice or necessity.

Has any thought been given to setting up a database of Win98-capable MBs that would have BIOS date and a list of drivers (and links to them)? In fact, there should not be any issues with providing copies of drivers in the public domain and providing links to those that are actively being sold.

The sticky is 'almost' useful but has died for lack of input since 11/8/2007.

This thread is way more progressive than anything else I've seen, it should be preserved and expanded.

If not at this site, then Rloew, it seems like a natural extension to what you are doing now.

I don't personally need TBPLUS but if it came with a zip file that had a database (MB models, BIOS date, drivers, add-on cards) plus copies of all the drivers themselves you would have me lined up with a credit card.

Rloew, what are the chances of ever seeing a TBPLUS Plus?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...