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Making Win98SE work


Janne

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I just joined this Forum.
I have an Acer Aspire 1700 and installed Win98SE. It was a bit tricky to get the past the out-of-memory problem, but that then seems to work.
Then I needed a VGA driver that Acer probably never had for that computer, or it is at least no more available.
I did, however, finally have success with VBE20 [universal] 140214, but then the out-of-memory problem started again.Obviously the driver occupies too much memory ...
My Config.sys has [386Enh] > MaxPhysPage=30000 and [vcache] >MaxFileCache=524288
Reverting the VGA driver to the basic one, the out-of-memory problem seemed no more to be there.
But the I tried to update with U98SESP3 and it could not expand the exe, obviously too little memory for that.
So I expanded the exe on a USB stick, but do not know how to install from the folder with the expanded exe.

Thankful for any advice!
 

Edited by LoneCrusader
fixed typo in title
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What's the GPU on that laptop? There are more than one GPU model it could be on this laptop, they made lots of variants. Depending on what it is, you can make it work under 98SE.

Can you run regedit and make a screenshot/write all folder names under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI? This will help with finding the right drivers, if any are available for 98SE.

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a quick google search shows the sis m650, nvidia geforce fx go5200, go5600, and geforce4 448go as listed for gpu options for the acer aspire 1700, i am not sure of 98SE driver support for all of them but there is definitely a sis m650 driver that works as well as chipset drivers for that laptop, fx go 5200 and 5600 may or may not work, but more than likely should work with or without modification ( inf editing and / or manual device selection through device manager ). the geforce4 448go may or may not work, though i wouldn't know on a order on which gpu is more likely to work, except for the sis m650 which there is an official driver for.

i won't go on the update installation steps / process / order, however for system.ini settings, i've always used minfilecache=0 and maxfilecache=0 and didn't experience any problems that needed attention, though i was told 1/25 of your ram should be the minimum for maxfilecache size and so i would recommend that to you. for example, if you have 1 GB of ram installed ( using 1024 MB as 1 GB ), a good maxfilecache size would be "maxphyspage=4300" or higher in the system.ini which is about 41 MB i think, i also use "maxphyspage=40000" in all my 98SE builds. 

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Xeno86's VCACHE patch is a sensible choice. But, considering it does honor the MaxFileCache setting, a bad setting remains detrimental. Best choice is to use Xeno86's VCACHE while not using any MaxFileCache and MinxFileCache (viz. no [vcache] section at all in system.ini), because then Xeno86's VCACHE alone takes care of it. I guess that's precisely what you do, though, but I felt I should spell it, just in case.

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Thanks a lot for all the advice.
I actually did quite some work on may own in the meantime and did almost all suggested here: http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41065#p384748,
copying files from FreeDOs and adopting corresponding settings in system.ini and config.sys.
It worked very well and then I could install a driver from the VBEMP 9x Project, and also even most of U98SESP3.
I also just copied Xeno's Vcache.vxd into Windows\system\vmm32. Is just copying it there enough? Or should I do something more with it?
It appears that Microsoft's Java did not install fully, but I plan to remove it and instead install j2sdk-1_4_2_16-windows-i586-p
Maybe you guys have some more advice to make it still better? I appreciate it all!
 

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1 hour ago, Janne said:

I also just copied Xeno's Vcache.vxd into Windows\system\vmm32. Is just copying it there enough?

Yes! Just copying it there is enough. That's one of the reasons Xeno86's VCache.VxD is great: it just works!

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On 2/2/2017 at 9:30 PM, rloew said:

I said the minimum MaxFileCache is 1/24th of the RAM, not 1/25th. For 1GiB of RAM that would be MaxPhysPage=43691. Neither 4300 nor 40000 would be enough.

sorry for the error on my behalf for the maxfilecache, though why would 40000 not be a proper setting for maxphyspage? 

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21 hours ago, dencorso said:

Because 1 GiB = 1073741824; 1073741824/24 ~= 44739243 and 44739243 ~= 46691 KiB, of course.

ok, i can understand the more specifics when calculating actual sizes, but setting 40000 for maxphyspage would still be ok, 43691 would just be the "Better" setting?

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MaxPhysPage=40000, as you know, means 1073741824 bytes = 1GiB of RAM visible to the OS. 43691 is the minimum valid value for MaxFileCache and 524288 is the maximum value that won't cause problems for sure (but still may be too much, depending on various factors...). As for the "better value", well: YMMV.

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Thanks for all advice.
I got it running quite well now, BUT:

1. The computer can read CD but not DVD. If I remember right, it could read DVD before I installed much of U98SESP3, then not... But it reads USB sticks.
I installed NUSB33e.exe. NUSB36e.exe did not run (maybe corrupt?). How about wtgenusb? But it would probably not help reading DVD...

2. The mouse wheel does not work

1 is important and I am grateful for help.
2 is less important.

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