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Running Windows 98 in 2020 and beyond...


Wunderbar98

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I seem to remember a piece of software I found a while back that allowed you to just send a document to another computer on the network and have it automatically print from that machine. I wonder if it's possible to set up a printer on a Raspberry Pi or something and use that remotely.

 

I actually had a Canon i850 printer that was in regular use in my house from 2002-2015. It finally stopped working after 13 years, and the ink was getting a bit hard to find. Of course, it was compatible with Windows 98.

Edited by CamTron
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1 hour ago, CamTron said:

I seem to remember a piece of software I found a while back that allowed you to just send a document to another computer on the network and have it automatically print from that machine. I wonder if it's possible to set up a printer on a Raspberry Pi or something and use that remotely.

Sure, via CUPS, but that would be a "Print Server":

https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-print-server/

Not entirely unlike what you do with a TCP/IP or LPR port on Windows NT series OS's or with a hardware print server.

jaclaz

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  • 1 month later...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

@pionner never did get back to me, looks like my hoarded Win98 SE updates won't get hosted. If anyone needs these to run legacy hardware or software post to this thread, i only log in if i see activity here.

Thanks @sdfox7 for the printer information. For now my printing needs are minimal, mostly for my wife's graphic software, she still has a well running Windows XP.

Having spent some Windows XP time yesterday with retro gaming (SimCopter still rocks), must say my previous sessions with Windows 98 SE were preferred. As mentioned earlier in this thread, finding working drivers is still easy, for my hardware anyway.

Next Windows installs will likely be Windows 98. I do, however, have POSReady 2009, but can't remember noting how it worked with printers and gaming, definitely enjoyed that it was a more stripped-down version of XP.

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To Windows 98 diehards this will have little relevance, everyone has software favourites. After much digging, trial and error, this is what i consider essential (couple non-essential) for a decent Windows 98 machine in 2017/2018. May save someone a lot of research time and effort to set up a fresh system ASAP. To my knowledge, at or near last working versions. Yes, i've also hoarded all this great software.

Results in a functional and reasonably secure system, due to obsolesence and a firewall. Still an up to date OS should be used for sensitive work, preferably lean Linux or BSD, which will still run great on old Windows 98 era hardware.

7Zip_4.57.exe - AFAIK Windows 98 has no built-in archiver, 7Zip is great.

CCleaner_2.29.1111.exe - Used this for years, various versions, great stuff.

Cute_PDF_Writer_2.7.exe - Occasionally useful, especially if no printer installed.

Defrag.exe - Install Defrag.exe from Windows ME, keep the original just in case. The performance of ME's Defrag.exe over the Windows 98 version is remarkable, never saw a system defrag so quickly. Yes, the system ran great afterward.

dillo-win32-3.0p9.exe - My favourite no-JavaScript browser for Windows, lean and fast. With some creativity and searching, still possible to find many sites that work acceptably without JavaScript. On old hardware, nothing more crippling than JS consuming CPU cycles.

DirectX_9_dec2006.exe - If you're going to game, this would be essential.

EasyCleaner_2_0.exe - Used this for years, various versions, never a problem.

EusingFreeRegistryCleaner.exe - Used this for years too, not my favourite but works okay, don't know version.

Firefox_2.0.0.20.exe - Not a Firefox fan, but probably best chance at getting some modern JavaScript sites running, especially if you want to avoid installing KernelEx.

Foxit_Reader_2.0.1414.exe - Most systems need a PDF viewer.

FreeWindowRegistryRepair.exe - Generic name, not my favourite but okay. Not in Windows at the moment so can't confirm version, believe it's from regsofts.com.

Links-2.1-install.exe - If you want something even leaner than Dillo, for a text-based browser it's pretty user friendly.

OpenOffice_2_4_3.exe - Still miss OpenOffice <sigh>, would use it over LibreOffice anyday.

pinball_3D_Pinball_Space_Cadet.exe - Believe this was from Windows ME, maybe XP. Classic misson-based pinball, runs well in Windows 98.

RegClean.exe - This was Microsoft official, be wary of imposters using a similar product name. Think the version is RegClean 4.1a (build 7364.1, December 30, 1997). Some claim this isn't stable, i've never had a problem, plus it creates a restorable registry file in the regclean.exe directory. As with all registry cleaners, back up existing registry first, only use one registry cleaner per session until a fresh boot confirms existing sofware runs well.

Scandskw.exe - Install Scandskw.exe from Windows ME, keep the original just in case. Didn't notice a performance gain, like with Windows ME's Defrag.exe, but seemed to run okay.

seamonkey-1.1.19.en-US.win32.installer.exe - Personal favourite for full-featured browser. Since it will become harder to properly run many JavaScript sites in Windows 98, having several browsers installed can't hurt.

TCPOptimizer_v308.exe - This is a must have for Windows 98 installs running a modern high speed connection. As Windows 98 defaults for dial-up, using even the generic TCP Optimizer tweaks should result in a HUGE increase in available bandwidth utilization.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175553-list-of-working-web-browsers-on-windows-9x/?page=4&tab=comments#comment-1145082

Tiny_Personal_Firewall_2.0.15.exe - Extremely lean and useful firewall, easy to run and uses almost no system resources.

TweakUI.exe - Numerous Windows tweakables to play with, don't know the version off-hand, install notes:

Run TweakUI.exe, extract to \WINDOWS\TEMP\
- Right-click 'tweakui.inf' and select install
- Run TweakUI from Control Panel applet

VLC_0.8.6d.exe - This rocks as a general purpose audio/video player.

winrogue_0_1.zip - Every system needs at least one classic roguelike.

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The death of 98 is simple.  There is no up to date or should i say no browser that currently supports modern web standards that works on 98.  This effectively kills the operating system for everything except menial task and retro gaming.  The only thing you can do is use a vnc or RDP to another computer to surf the web now basically.

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8 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

RegClean.exe - This was Microsoft official, be wary of imposters using a similar product name. Think the version is RegClean 4.1a (build 7364.1, December 30, 1997). Some claim this isn't stable, i've never had a problem, plus it creates a restorable registry file in the regclean.exe directory. As with all registry cleaners, back up existing registry first, only use one registry cleaner per session until a fresh boot confirms existing sofware runs well.

I never had a problem with RegClean either, the reason I added it to the SP years ago. Its very lightweight and robust.

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4 hours ago, Destro said:

The death of 98 is simple.  There is no up to date or should i say no browser that currently supports modern web standards that works on 98.  This effectively kills the operating system for everything except menial task and retro gaming.  The only thing you can do is use a vnc or RDP to another computer to surf the web now basically.

Certainly a person with only 1 computer running Windows 98 and no other computer or "smart" device would be in quite the pickle.

I remember a time when the internet (or at least the web) was not a primary function of a computer and later became a luxury. It seems only in recent years did computers turn into on-all-the-time machines and probably 99% of people only use their computer to go on the web. That doesn't mean that there cannot exist computers that do not use web browsers as their dominant program. Heck I even have computers (Windows 7) that are segregated so that they cannot get to the internet.

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I can see two reasons to use Win'98 today: retro-gaming and utilize very special hardware that has 9x-specific driver only. There is no need in web browsing in both cases. For all other tasks that i can imagine, it is better to use another OS (DOS, a sort of Windows NT or *NIX).

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  • 10 months later...

I am able to access secure websites and log into MSFN on Windows 98SE using SeaMonkey 1.1.19. However, I get a message on some sites “SeaMonkey can’t connect securely to “x” because the site uses a security protocol that isn’t enabled”.

How do I “enable” it?

seam1119.jpg

 

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> It seems only in recent years did computers turn into on-all-the-time machines and probably 99% of people only use their computer to go on the web.

Depending on your definition of "recent", i very-much agree. Microsoft and IBM built their PC empires on business software/hardware long before the current/modern internet was even a gleam in it's mommy's and daddy's eyes!

> That doesn't mean that there cannot exist computers that do not use web browsers as their dominant program. Heck I even have computers (Windows 7) that are segregated so that they cannot get to the internet.

Me too! I have a computer (XP) with a dedicated multi-track music-recording setup that i won't let anywhere *near* the internet. And i have another system (98SE+DOS) that, although it does have an internet connection, could live very happily and busily doing home work and work work all by itself.

- Doug B.

Edited by DougB
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  • 3 weeks later...

Just wanted to put these out here for TBS (Throwback Saturday)

Recently, I’ve been using my 19 year old IBM ThinkPad 600E a little more often to see what it can still do. It’s amazing how well this thing still runs. It was manufactured in September 1999. It is a testament to the quality of manufacturing back in the day. Even Flash Player 7 (http://sdfox7.com/win95/flashplayer7r73_winax.exe) still works! Secure web browsing is a little trickier, IE 5 is too old and Mozilla Firefox works better, even with persistent security certificate errors.

600w98wp.jpg

600w98ie.jpg

600flash.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

I know there is an IE5 SP4 available, a security rollup for 2K 2015 I think. It was next to an update that had a Gabest mpeg2 decoder filter update.

The Google server stopped IE6 not long after the "poodle" attack on eBay, Sept 2014. I had to manually turn off SSL when trying to brows eBay after the "poodle" attack for a while. Google has not stopped IE5 as other members have proclaimed. I wonder if 5.5 SP2 works? (I would make an external 1:1 drive copy before experimenting though as it may be difficult to get these settings back?). IE5.5 would have limited use unless the OS encryption could be updated to 256bit. Having said that, YouTube was using 128bit security last time I checked. It would not be sensible though to mis out on functionality in other areas because Google blocked IE6.
 

Edited by Goodmaneuver
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  • 10 months later...

Some good comments here. Agreed Windows 98 has been relegated to special duty, either due to hardware limitations or for specific old software. As an online system, not overly useful.Freshly installed Windows 98 on different 2000 era hardware recently. For off-line use only to run MS-DOS and early Windows applications, primarily retro games.

The thread title should be renamed 'Running Windows 98 in 2019...'.

Surprisingly all required hardware drivers can still readily be found on the interweb, even for DOS. There is still lots of useful documentation online for DOS and Windows 98. So many years later i am finally properly learning to configure and utilize DOS, fun experience.

The current setup is very functional, dual boot into Devuan GNU/Linux to retrieve online data, boot offline into Windows 98 with network card disabled for gaming. Best of both worlds. This old hardware does not have the horsepower for emulators like DOSBox.

Edited by Wunderbar98
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Didn't last, couldn't resist the nostalgia and thrill of getting such an old OS online. Running Windows 98 SE, official updates, no kernel extensions.

Tiny Personal Firewall v2.0.14 and Dillo v3.0. Tweaked ethernet speed with TCPOptimizer v308. No JavaScript, fast and reasonably secure.

Dillo was able to log in to this site to post this message.

Last working versions Firefox v2.0.0.20 and SeaMonkey v1.1.19 now have even more issues with outdated certs and difficulties establishing secure connections, making them almost non-functional. Links v2.1 works pretty well, for a text browser pretty user friendly.

To me Windows 98 would still be a viable OS today if it wasn't for the lack of a secure, up-to-date, full featured web browser. It has a rich history with lots of good old software, such a shame.

Having fun hacking and tuning the system. Playing with some hardware and configurations resulted in a persistent blue screen 'vxd' boot error. No problem with DOS fallback. Running SCANREG /RESTORE fixed the issue without much drama or wasted time. Lots of respect for DOS based systems.

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