Jump to content

95/98/Me - A few questions to get started.


arktvrvs

Recommended Posts

What are the differences between them? I know 98 introduced WDM, and Me couldn't boot into DOS, but what else changed? Was anything of value lost from 95 to Me? Was usability affected, or just implementation changes?

Also reposting my questions from the vbox thread, it seems I can't delete the post and it feels more appropriate here now:

What should a person do after installing? Say I've done a full install of OEM 98se.  I've seen different autopatcher versions, different service packs, wupg, 98se2me, usb drivers, stuff about cpu and ram limits, sdks, ddks, KernelEX, and I own a copy of 98 lite. Specialized applications aside (like browsers, music players, etc,) which  things should a person install to get the "system" up to its fullest most complete potential? And in which order, does it matter?  I want to have some devtools and related whatsuch, what is recommended? VS?

Link to comment
Share on other sites


I am not certain if this post answers any of your questions, and if not please disregard it, but have you viewed A Guide to Reviewing and Evaluating Windows 98 from Microsoft? It discusses many of the new features in Windows 98 when compared with Windows 95. I should note that this document is legitimate is it originates from a self-extracting archive on Microsoft's website that was archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, arktvrvs said:

What are the differences between them? I know 98 introduced WDM, and Me couldn't boot into DOS, but what else changed? Was anything of value lost from 95 to Me? Was usability affected, or just implementation changes?

Also reposting my questions from the vbox thread, it seems I can't delete the post and it feels more appropriate here now:

What should a person do after installing? Say I've done a full install of OEM 98se.  I've seen different autopatcher versions, different service packs, wupg, 98se2me, usb drivers, stuff about cpu and ram limits, sdks, ddks, KernelEX, and I own a copy of 98 lite. Specialized applications aside (like browsers, music players, etc,) which  things should a person install to get the "system" up to its fullest most complete potential? And in which order, does it matter?  I want to have some devtools and related whatsuch, what is recommended? VS?

Really what you're asking comes down to personal preference. Out of the 9x systems Windows 98SE provides the best mix of compatibility, stability, and features (and has also received the greatest degree of interest and projects created out of the three). Windows 95 OSR2 is slightly faster than 98, but as you mentioned WDM is very limited (technically 95 OSR2.1 introduces WDM, but it's a very primitive implementation). Windows ME is slightly newer than 98SE, however the lack of access to real-mode DOS is an annoyance for some situations. There are other quirks involved in choosing a specific 9x version for a specific purpose, but most users will probably never need to worry about this.

After installing 98SE we're back to personal preferences again. Out of the various update packs I only use NUSB 3.5, but some people are very happy using the Unofficial Service Pack or Autopatcher or whatever else. Just keep in mind it's not a good idea to mix up the unofficial packs. You'll have to choose one that suits you best. Each of them have their respective threads and it would be a good idea to read up on them and see what the pros and cons of each are. Your hardware choices will have some bearing on what you need, but since you first posted in the VBox thread I assume you are using virtualization, which will simplify this somewhat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, arktvrvs said:

What should a person do after installing? Say I've done a full install of OEM 98se.  I've seen different autopatcher versions, different service packs, wupg, 98se2me, usb drivers, stuff about cpu and ram limits, sdks, ddks, KernelEX,

KernelEx is great, it allows you to use newer applications which normally wouldn't run on Win98.

But it really depends on what your goal is because if all you want to do is to run applications, games, etc. of the era, then you're good to go and won't need any of these unofficial upgrades.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Werewolf said:

I am not certain if this post answers any of your questions, and if not please disregard it, but have you viewed A Guide to Reviewing and Evaluating Windows 98 from Microsoft? It discusses many of the new features in Windows 98 when compared with Windows 95. I should note that this document is legitimate is it originates from a self-extracting archive on Microsoft's website that was archived by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

This is a good document, thank you!

(btw: If it is "yours", would you mind transforming it from .doc into a format that makes my security-nerves less tingling? :) )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_me

That will tell you a lot about how ME differs from 98se.  Seems that a lot of emphasis was put on minimizing boot time.  Some of the more relavent items:

________

The registry is loaded only once; for efficient loading, the registry is split into three files instead of two (SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT), with the new file CLASSES.DAT containing the contents of the hive HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT required for boot loaded initially.

Windows ME is the only operating system in the Windows 9x series that includes generic drivers for USB mass storage devices and USB printers.

The waveOut, DirectSound, and DirectShow APIs support non-PCM formats such as AC-3 or WMA over S/PDIF

Net Crawler: Windows ME introduced a net crawling feature which automatically searches out and creates shortcuts to network shares and printers in My Network Places.

New TCP/IP Stack: Windows ME includes the Windows 2000 networking stack and architecture which was known to be more reliable, full-featured, stable and offered better performance.

System Configuration Utility allows users to manually extract and restore individual system files from the Windows ME setup files. It has also been updated with three new tabs called "Static VxDs", "Environment" and "International". The Static VxDs tab allows users to enable or disable static virtual device drivers to be loaded at startup, the Environment tab allows users to enable or disable environment variables, and the International tab allows users to set international language keyboard layout settings that were formerly set via the real mode MS-DOS configuration files. A Cleanup button on the Startup tab allows cleaning up invalid or deleted startup entries.

Windows ME restricted support for real mode MS-DOS. As a result, IO.SYS in Windows ME disregards CONFIG.SYS, COMMAND.COM and WIN.COM and directly executes VMM32.VXD. In its default configuration the system would neither boot into an MS-DOS command prompt nor exit to DOS from Windows; real mode drivers such as ANSI.SYS could not be loaded and older applications that require real mode could not be run. Microsoft argued that the change improved the speed and reliability of the boot process.
________________

What could have really significant relavence is if ME has increased User and GDI resources compared to 98se, or has increased the amount of accessible / usable system RAM, or could better deal with registry files that over time get really large.   While the fact that ME's TCP/IP stack is taken from Win2k (which I assume is a moderate advantage), and I believe that NUSB gives 98 equivalence with ME in terms of using generic USB mass storage, (and note the downside for ME to be able to boot into DOS is the user so chooses, except probably by way of a boot floppy), -> ME would be killer compared to 98se if it increased User / GDI resources and raised the bar on installable ram.  It would be super-killer if it supported multi-core (or at least 2-core) CPU's.

I guess it's also noteworthy that ME, neither out-of-the-box or by way of MS updates (as was done with XP-SP0), was ever given a fix for the 137 gb drive-size limitation.

So the ME vs 98se question has no clear-cut answer, unless I'm wrong about some of the items above.

Side question:  Was anything ever done to see if ME's TCP/IP stack could be transplanted into 98se?


 


 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, ragnargd said:

This is a good document, thank you!

(btw: If it is "yours", would you mind transforming it from .doc into a format that makes my security-nerves less tingling? :) )

Thank you for being interested in it!

Would you like me to edit my original post? I converted it from .DOC to .DOCX in Microsoft Office; the .DOCX version is available here. It seems that there are minor formatting issues as a result of this change, but at least the document is now in a safer format.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Windows ME did increase usable RAM from 1.152GiB. to approximately 1.9GiB.

My Patches support 4GiB of RAM, 2TiB Hard Drives, and unlimited Registry sizes for both 98 and ME.

NUSB grafts Windows ME and Windows 2000 File into Windows 98.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are not talking about your patches.  We are talking about differences "under the hood" between 98 and ME.  User GDI resources / heaps - how does ME differ vs 98?  Yes, I recall ME's usable RAM was almost 2 gb- that should be included in the Wiki ME page.   That is a useful advantage ME has over 98.  Also would like to know if ME is better able to handle (defrag, fix, compress or optimize) large registry files compared to 98.

And my tangent question still stands - was anything done to see if ME's TCP/IP stack could be transplanted into 98?

(drive-size limitation is moot.  Give either a 9x or ME system a PCI SI-based SATA card and use SI drivers and you're fine with large drives.  Macro$haft should have fixed ESDI_506.pdr for 9x/me since they were both under mainline support in 2001/2002 when XP's 137 gb drive limitation was fixed, but we know why MS never did that don't we?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Wiki lists the maximum usable RAM without any settings or Patches. This is 512MB for both 98 and ME. The next step, 768MiB is marginal. The 1152MiB and 1.9GiB limits assume that the File Cache settings are modified.

The PCI Card solution is more costly and ties up a PCI slot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Nomen said:

We are not talking about your patches.

rloew has just as much right to respond to any thread here as anyone else, and has every right to discuss his work. Not only that, but he probably knows more about 9x "under the hood" than anyone else here. So there's no need to have an attitude.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do wish there was a small guide or similar that would say "these modifications are compatible" or "X supersedes Y".   For example, say I install USP3, KernelEx, and 98se2me, as described on the techtalk USP3 page.  What more can I add, and what can I not?  I am concerned just as much about vanilla "under the hood" as about any upgrades I could do.  I used 98 for around 8 years and guess I got used to the concept of install-update-done.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i like windows 95 more, simply because of it feels more nostalgic while still being able to do some modern things with it, but it's harder to get to work with certain things, for example, on 440bx chipsets, at least from my experience, usb drives simply do not want to work on most laptops, on desktops, the problem is less of a problem and usually they will detect fine but for most laptops with 440bx chipsets, everytime i plug in any usb mass storage device ( with the xuspsupp update ), they all just show as unknown devices with no driver to install and have them properly work. also i have not been able to get youtube to work in the 240p settings that you use to be able to get it working in, i've tried many methods, i tested most recently the "&nohtml5=1" setting in each video on opera 10.63 ( unofficial ) and it wouldn't work in either opera turbo enabled or disabled, neither would it work if i tested it with the flash 7 spoof file in the program plug ins folder or if it wasn't in there. i also tested with the gstreamer folder deleted with or without the flash 7 spoof and with or without opera turbo enabled and still wouldn't work :(. 

windows 98SE in general offers more usability, performance and stability but i feel though it is not as nostalgic as windows 95. as far as installation order goes for updating the system, i can only say for 98SE, this is what i use, set option in folder options to "Show all files" and smooth edges of screen fonts , edit the system.ini settings to have the proper maxphyspage and minfilecache and maxfilecache settings, install winrar, internet explorer 6 sp1, unofficial service pack, directx 9.0c, inf update, unofficial usb update, mdac 2.8 sp1, gpu driver or other drivers, but don't install wifi driver yet until the end, fidenu31 ( intel processor frequency id utility 7.1 ), adobe reader 6.0, java 1.5 update 22, office 2000 and it's updates, .net framework 2.0, kernelex and it's latest updates, adobe flash player 11+, optional stuff such as vlc player and make sure to select full setup for vlc player, other updates from the unofficial service pack can be installed if not done so already, although i had a problem with the ntfs driver messing up the system so unless you really need this or know what you're doing, don't install this or other stuff like performance tweaks, etc. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3.7.2017 at 5:38 PM, arktvrvs said:

I do wish there was a small guide or similar that would say "these modifications are compatible" or "X supersedes Y".   For example, say I install USP3, KernelEx, and 98se2me, as described on the techtalk USP3 page.  What more can I add, and what can I not?  I am concerned just as much about vanilla "under the hood" as about any upgrades I could do.  I used 98 for around 8 years and guess I got used to the concept of install-update-done.  

Then leave it as it is and only install the stuff you definitely need in order to get something to work that wouldn't work without the updates.

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...