[SOLVED] Win98 short annoying freeze every 20-30 second, very bad for gaming, how to fix it?

[ruthan]

Hello,
im have know nice Unraid Win98 SE machine with

Geforce 7950GT passthrough and
1 core from Core i7 5960X
512 MB
very cheap USB sound card - could be source of issue but its
all paches instaled even official update 2007
CPU i its powerful enough, problem is that i have in every game which i have tested (Quake 3,Unreal Tournament 99 etc) short freeze every 20-30s, i had similar issue with Windows 98 physical machine.
Question is how to debug it, its this simply Windows 98 architecture issue or how to fix?

  In other Virtualized OS on same HW, i have such issue even in much more demanding games like Skyrim.

Edited July 18, 2017 by LoneCrusader

[ABCDEFG]

Enable DMA and install SP

[ruthan]

12 hours ago, ABCDEFG said:

Enable DMA and install SP

These relinks, what is lastest version? DMA for which device? I already have - some unofficial SP - Auto-Patcher_for_Win98se_June2007sp2_Full.exe - its ok, compatible, better or what?

[ruthan]

So i have updated to SP3 3.5.2 and its fixed, so it means that Windows 98 has from design broken not stable framerate? I dont remember that from old times, but i never had highend hardware.

  What is know biggest save ammount of Ram? Make sense install KernelEX too (from gaming stability point of view). 

Edited July 19, 2017 by ruthan

[ABCDEFG]

On 7/12/2017 at 8:59 PM, ruthan said:

so it means that Windows 98 has from design broken not stable framerate?

No!

For Win98SE DMA is disabled by default, but when you install drivers for motherboard usually it will offer an option to enable DMA automatically.

If DMA is not enabled it causes stuttering in games and other slowdowns.

In Win95 and Win98 First Edition there is no such problems.

[ruthan]

Why DMA was disabled for Win9x? It was advertised in Dos Age as big improvement and Dos expansion cards used it heavily. 

[rloew]

Apparently enough controllers did not work properly, so they turned DMA off by default.
When you turn it on, a warning is displayed saying that turning DMA on may cause problems.

[truemaster]

try to disable audio to your games and unplug the usb audio device just to eliminate the sound device issue. try with dma on and off. also see if multiple device are sharing the same irq. i had the same problem as you and the problem was diferent device share the same irq the so called interupt conflict a fix from @rloewwas needed and the issue ends.

[ABCDEFG]

1 hour ago, truemaster said:

i had the same problem as you and the problem was diferent device share the same irq the so called interupt conflict

Interrupt conflicts on Virtual Machine?

Games without sound?

Commercial Fixes?

Really?

Did you even read what the man who ask the question said? ->

On 7/12/2017 at 8:59 PM, ruthan said:

So i have updated to SP3 3.5.2 and its fixed...

Edited July 16, 2017 by ABCDEFG

[truemaster]

oops didnt see he try it on vm sorry

[Tommy]

I was getting the same sort of issue and it was annoying the heck out of me! I'd be using the computer and every so often the computer would soft-lock with the hard drive light illuminated. Even the mouse pointer wouldn't move. Then it would "catch up" and start working again. But it did this with two different computers so I figured it couldn't be the hardware. Low and behold, DMA was unchecked. I checked it and rebooted and now the problem seems to have gone away. Now it's not as much of a headache to use anymore!

[jumper]

Does anyone know if Auto-Patcher or USP3 enable DMA? If Auto-Patcher doesn't and USP3 does, enabling DMA might very well have been the actual solution.

In my experience, DMA in Windows often works best when DMA in BIOS is disabled.

Title should be prefixed with "[Solved] ".

[ruthan]

Quote

Does anyone know if Auto-Patcher or USP3 enable DMA? If Auto-Patcher doesn't and USP3 does, enabling DMA might very well have been the actual solution.

USP3 - check box, for installation or noisntallation of DMA IDE patch.

[jumper]

Was the checkbox enabled by default or did you have to check it?

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

45 minutes ago, jumper said:

Was the checkbox enabled by default or did you have to check it?
 

Nothing is checked by default. You get to choose what to install. Its 42 options and none are checked.

Edited July 18, 2017 by PROBLEMCHYLD