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Running Windows 98 in 2020 and beyond...


Wunderbar98

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On 2/17/2020 at 4:07 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

Most kids using their parent's Windows 98 computer in 1998-2000 probably upgraded without much thought when they bought their first system, whatever was preloaded at the local box store or used in school. I'm not sure many of the new generation would have the patience to get most of this stuff installed and working. User expectations are now so much greater in regards to graphics, performance and ease of use. More modern software, such as DOSBox, has made running old DOS applications simpler, without having to load an old operating system or assemble ancient hardware. Too bad, so sad, they don't know what they're missing :)

Windows 98 remained the most popular home OS through about 2003 or so. And as such, I remember using my aunt's PC running 98 FE around that time, just before she upgraded to XP. My very first PC was running 98 in 2006, but I didn't have it for long.

I entered school not long after that, and through the computer experiences I had there and in other places, I determined that the common denominator for poor performance and instability was XP. Everything took minutes to be ready and loaded, unlike 98 or 2000. So when I finally had my own desktop, I changed out XP for 98 FE. That was very unstable (culprit was a S3 Savage4, which also has poor quality drivers; now using a GeForce FX5700 LE) so it was changed out for a 95/2000 dual-boot. That desktop is too old to make use of 98-only software, so it keeps 95 forever.

But I do have a ThinkPad T41 which is one of the most powerful laptops capable of running Windows 98. Only issue is that the latest ATi Mobility Radeon 7500 drivers are quite poor as several games that work in 2000/XP crash on start in 98. I'm going to look for an older version.

I found that if using USB 2.0, use the USB driver installer from the unofficial service pack, which installs the Windows 2000 SP4 USB stack. It's not installed by default, but the executable will be plopped in System32 folder after the main SP updates are installed. Intel or NUSB drivers on their own caused bursts of extreme system-wide non-responsiveness when doing copying operations.

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I used every Windows OS version right after the launch - My dad was the culprit for getting them quickly because he liked the OS. Basically, right when XP was released, we switched to XP - a move I still regret to this day, but not as much as I did for the move to Windows Vista.

But from 2010 onwards, we switched to OS X/MacOS thanks to me, we both got two 13-inch MBPs, and the rest of it is history. We're still on macOS so far. He has a Windows 2008 Server for our home cinema movies and I have a few classic Windows virtual machines for nostalgia only, the most used being the Windows 2000 Professional.

To this day, my favorite Windows versions are Windows 3.1, Windows 98 and Windows 2000.

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Thank-you sparty411 for the feedback and kind words, it's been fun. In the not too distant future my forum activity will slow. After the browser emulation project, maybe some YouTube related 9xweb tweaks, maybe a printer install attempt. Then time to move on and finally start playing retro games, most i've waited over 20 years to play, plus other non-Windows computing and coding projects.

Thanks for the input win32, based on your story and timelines it sounds like you may be younger than the proposed age 36-37 (no response necessary), maybe my estimate was incorrect. If you are in fact younger, it's nice to see your interest in this old OS. An old employer provided an IBM Thinkpad years ago, don't remember the model, it was rock solid. Have read many good reviews over the years. For a laptop, they seem quite serviceable.

USB with Windows 98 has always been a mystery. Will need to look at it when attempting to install a printer. Although older, the household Canon MX310 has Windows XP drivers, not Windows 98. On this forum there are complaints about running printers on Windows 98 from 2005 already, so not too optimistic. The printer is apparently from the Pixma series. May try to find the newest Pixma drivers released for Windows 98 and see if it runs. This current Windows 98 hardware is destined to become multi-boot and the Windows install will primarily be used for old graphic software and printing programs. Unfortunately, if the printer won't run on Windows 98 another OS will need to be installed.

Back to the USB mystery, Windows 98 claims to support USB. Almost seems like it should work out of the box but on my last two Windows 98 installs the USB Controllers in Control Panel -> System never installed and i can't seem to find USB drivers on the Windows 98 installation CD. Need to do more homework, there must be a simple vanilla method for installing a basic USB driver.

Thanks for the story Bruninho, neat to see where others are coming from. For an Apple user, interesting you spend time with these old Windows releases, ahhh the nostalgia. Reminds me of the old Mac vs PC commercials.

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Noticed a few extra downloads for the Modern Web Browser Emulation project recently. As mentioned, significantly reworked READMEs are pending. The new documentation will be more thorough, address breakage, include lots of Firefox and SeaMonkey information, plus file sharing between host and guest. Might play around a bit with youtube-dl, since the Tiny Core Linux release has the appropriate Python libraries. If youtube-dl works well an additional README will likely be added.

Interesting note, Ctrl-Alt-f keyboard shortcut toggles QEMU full-screen mode. If SeaMonkey is running when toggling full-screen, the browser loads https://www.fishcam[dot]com. This is crazy and at first thought is was some form of malware injection or browser hijack. Turns out it's an Easter Egg, still present in more recent versions of SeaMonkey. Unfortunately don't know of a way to disable this so QEMU can function correctly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishcam#Netscape

The emulation project still results in a very sluggish browser. Maybe someday someone will figure out how to unlock more hardware or find a more efficient emulator for vanilla Windows 98. As will be mentioned in the READMEs, stay away from GTK3 (Graphic Took Kit) browser releases if performance is an issue, slightly older GTK2 browser releases will work a little faster. Sweet spot browser releases will be mentioned in the READMEs. Every bit of tweaking to make the browser work more efficiently will also likely be needed, something most Windows 98 users probably like to do anyway.

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Unfortunately youtube-dl won't be happening as part of the emulation project, too much outdated software already from 2017. Thankfully the full-featured browsers are more self-contained, so SSL and certificate issues are not an issue for later releases.

Edited by Wunderbar98
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On 2/20/2020 at 8:53 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

Back to the USB mystery, Windows 98 claims to support USB. Almost seems like it should work out of the box but on my last two Windows 98 installs the USB Controllers in Control Panel -> System never installed and i can't seem to find USB drivers on the Windows 98 installation CD. Need to do more homework, there must be a simple vanilla method for installing a basic USB driver.

What kind of USB devices (or controllers?) did you mean?  

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Wunderbar98 said:
> Curious, due to poor page layout in RetroZilla, do you think some global (not site specific) CSS
> modifcations would make a difference or just a zero-sum game? Also, have you ever created
> your own RetroZilla View -> Use Style, would you just use userContent.css or an extension like Stylish?

That's a quite innocent question, and I don't ignore it purposely. The prob is instead that I could write NOVELS about those struggles! No clue of Firefox, MS or other browsers, sorry, but my old K-Meleon is chock full with all sorts of self-help macros and buttons and menus and styles and a few scripts, all one big chaos, written since over a decade, and the workarounds-heap still growing daily :-/ Would long since have been lost without it. Out-of-box there are too many modern websites almost unusable with such ancient browsers, although for most sites it helps to kill all styles, and some actually look much better that way. But as you noticed too, in the long run it gets tedious.

By the way, what hardly anyone knows, this pref is for toggling stylesheets (not inline styles):
permissions.default.stylesheet = 1,2,3 (allow,block, domain-only)
And this can block iframes: permissions.default.subdocument=1,2,3
And permissions.default.script handles external *.js files... and ...xmlhttprequest handles ajaxlike XHR...
And there are a lot more of that kind, in modern browsers also for "media" etc (block html5 video), for ping, object, geo etc.
For Firefox (and others) there are old addons guess called "content block" (?) or similar, for such global settings.
And addon ExExceptions for managing site exceptions for those element types (this has a catch, its description is wrong, 3rd-party does not refer to the urlbar-domain, only to the src-domain, bottom-up). Love ExEx, extremely tiny, just an editor for Mozilla's native permissions.sqlite, and this one was even ported to KM ages ago. Just wish it would work top-down, as would be natural, but this was Mozilla's decision.

Edited by siria
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Thank-you for the input Deomsh. Not 100% sure i've ever used USB with Windows 98. Always PS2 keyboard/mouse and parallel port printers. Years ago a Windows 98 system had a printer and separate scanner, presumably one used parallel and the other USB. This current printer is USB only.

Everything USB related in BIOS is enabled. In Windows 98 Device Manager, Universal Serial Bus Controllers are enabled. Under this are two 'Standard OpenHCI USB Host Controller' and two 'USB Root Hub' entries, all have associated drivers. Under Other devices is an exclamation yellow 'PCI Universal Serial Bus' with no driver.

I tried installing drivers for the exclamation yellow PCI Universal Serial Bus from the motherboard driver package and Windows 98 CD, no such driver.

The motherboard has four USB ports, two by the ethernet connector and two by the mouse/keyboard ports. When a generic 32 GB USB stick is plugged in during runtime, the system powers the USB stick and pops up a Mass Storage device driver wizard. Apparently the Windows 98 CD does not have such drivers.

The situation appears to be like the link below, the download is 'nusb36e-2694.exe' (969 KB). Has anyone got experience with this, it's just to get a 'mass storage' USB stick working correct? If i don't need mass storage, it appears the USB port is powered and functional to test a printer without the 'nusb36e-2694.exe' install?
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-install-usb-mass-storage-device-on-windows-98/

Just want to get this right to give the printer every chance of working. This Window 98 system does not need access to USB sticks for data storage.

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Thank-you for the feedback siria, don't think anyone else has put this much effort into the issue. My primary Windows 98 browser is RetroZilla. Unfortunately it does not appear to have similar about:config entries. Have been playing with about:config and various preferences, not much improvement.

Unfortunately in RetroZilla there does not even seem to be a way to make View -> Use Style -> None default. Every new tab opens with the 'Default style' view, frustrating and lots of toggling. When i get a chance will review old SeaMonkey extensions again and see if there's anything there that may help.

A trivial improvement is unchecking 'Allow documents to use other fonts'. This provides a more consistent font presentation and when visiting pages like Wikipedia, it stops the missing foreign language font popups i can't read anyway.

Deselecting 'Always use the colors and backgrounds specified by the web page' is beneficial for unintended overlapped text with a non-contrasted background. It does, however, take away from the intended appearance of the page, so personally i don't like using it.

Since roytam1 has updated many of these old browsers for connectivity, query whether future updates are possible for web page layout. My vote would be to improve non-JavaScript rendering. Since trying to count my blessings more in such a troubled world, prepending most problems with 'My first world problem is enter_trivial_problem_here' helps keep things in persepctive.

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About Firefox / Seamonkey / Mozilla browsers, content blocker:

Wunderbar98 said:
> My primary Windows 98 browser is RetroZilla. Unfortunately it does not appear to have similar
> about:config entries. Have been playing with about:config and various preferences, not much improvement.

No, it doesn't show them, except "permissions.default.image", but the sibling prefs DO WORK too!
And the good news is, certainly in your SM too, since I meanwhile remembered that KM is actually based on the SM engine, not really on Firefox engine. FF is just always mentioned for comparison since everyone knows it and SM much less, so I keep forgetting it
The secret trick is, those prefs are just HIDDEN by Mozilla to prevent discovery by users!!
Nonetheless they do work anyway. Just for showing up in aboutconfig, those prefs must first be created manually:
right-click / new / name / type is INT / default 1

And you can search all over the web, thanks to Mozilla successfully hiding them, hardly anyone is aware of those absolutely crucial prefs, it's very hard to realize they exist and work. They also successfully kept myself from finding and learning about them for far too many, many years, all the time wishing strongly such possibilities would exist. Nearly fell off the chair when some day realizing: such prefs exist, and they worked all along!
And even as far back as at least K-Meleon 1.5 (=FF2/gecko1.8.1/SMxx), probably even older. And those prefs also keep (kept?) working far into the future in modern engines. And are still HIDDEN from discovery, and very successfully so! One of my pet peeves, as you may have noticed by now, LOL! Not quite sure up to which modern engines they still work, just seeing how much Mozilla started hating user's toggling possibilities since some years, wouldn't be surprised if meanwhile they killed those prefs completely. But no idea. Can only confirm that at least up to FF38 (KM76 incl Goanna) they definitely still work too, and with a lot more types added over the years. Came across that endless list some day in some source repo (could dig it up somewhere in old notes, at any rate a good search key is for content blocking)

Once discovered, those prefs can be handled as all others too. And to get them to show up in about:config with their default value, one can simply add a new list *.js file in the /defaults/pref/ folder, syntax like e.g. the channel-prefs.js. Or take Mathwiz useragents list as syntax example.
I did request roytam1 to include those absolutely crucial blocking prefs visibly out-of-box in KM, by adding this little file, but as almost always, my probs are not his own personal probs, so declined.

Of course, the first thing I did after learning such fantastic possibilities do exist, was to start writing KM-macros for easier pref-toggling. And for extending my ever growing button collection :-) Macros priv3buttons and permdefs (stupid names, sigh)
Regarding ADDONS for other browsers (FF), there exist a few for toggling those types, like QuickJava, Content Block (by mdsy), PrefBar (tuxfamily.org), (more?) Just not quite sure what those do internally exactly, if using the same Mozilla prefs or some own ones. And am afraid, they didn't exist yet for your old SM/FF2?
But addons are another huge subject, stuff for another novel (sigh), and personally have far less experience, hardly any. Only did experiment 1-2 years ago with adding more toggles to QuickJava, after discovering roytam's FF2-retrozilla with TLS1.2. And after long struggles due to missing skills finally got it working with my main prefs, also as triple-toggles, loved it. Then afterwards discovered the newer versions do have more buttons outofbox already, oops... Just couldn't figure out anymore how to get the FF3.5 addon version to run in FF2 too, but for just own use my messy DIY draft is well enough.

But back to those global prefs, they can always be toggled on aboutconfig too of course.

This page gives most important info: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Hostperm.1
E.g. a little list which GLOBAL types existed at least back since 2008 (=last edit).
The global prefs are at the bottom, while the page itself explains domain EXCEPTIONS, also extremely helpful.
Actually this plaintext sheet (hostperm.1) for Firefox2/SM is just the predecessor of permissions.sqlite, what I recommended in previous post, just the file format is different, and forgot my fave addon (ExEx) starts working only in later FF versions (FF3.5?)

Important to know for "stylesheet", which you need most by far, in FF2 era:
this pref only blocks _externally_ loaded styles, that means loaded from a *.css file, not internal styles defined in the html page itself. So some stuff on some pages remains invisible.
Then additional css-snippets in userContent.css can help for those sites, if visited frequently.
Or kill the remaining styles by menu again if needed (much more rarely)
Or use bookmarklets/buttons/addons etc. for 1-click toggling of inner styles too (am using pure JS for this in KM macro)

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Wunderbar98 said:
> When i get a chance will review old SeaMonkey extensions again and
> see if there's anything there that may help.

Since you can run modern browsers too, would highly recommand for everyone who's able to use it, the addon "Classic Add-ons Archive" by JustOff, on github, for research. It gives access again to a mirror of old AMO, before all powerful xul-addons were deleted by Mozilla. Really, do yourself a favor and give it a try ;-) Yes the addon is huge, but can easily be toggled On/Off during session, works instantly. It's just a tool for reading its sqlite database, showing the content as html pages, with links for downloads.
Really wish anyone could make it run in FF24/KMG74 too, sigh. Last version for win98 with modern KernelEx, just very buggy yet. After tweaking version numbers in install.rdf the addon "caa:about" shows up, but only the header part, no clue how to access the stuff below?? :-(

For Seamonkey even the original AMO still works too, only the domain has changed:
https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/seamonkey/

The only prob is not all addons were always listed on AMO, incl. some of the best.
And yeah, especially addons for such extremely old versions from FF2 era seem hard to find, mostly outside too.

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12 hours ago, Wunderbar98 said:

Just want to get this right to give the printer every chance of working. This Window 98 system does not need access to USB sticks for data storage

If the printer needs USB 2.0 an Enhanced USB controller driver is needed anyway. Personally I prefer NUSB33. 

Showed Device Manager an Unknown USB Device?

About your USB-printer: a seperate driver should be needed.

Can't help you further, I have used a HP Laserjet 4 Plus (LPT; duplex; 1993!) during 13 years, until a few weeks ago. Repair seems to be impossible :no:  

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TIP for Win98 users, arriving too late for updating anything now:

Killer circle:
1) Still have an original Windows98 and would like to update it with KernelEx now, but cannot access KernelEx downloads at SourceForge anymore? Since SF downloads are cipher-blocked for old browsers since awhile.
2) Or wanting to run roytam1's great TLS1.2 forks, and downloads work fine, BUT then you can NOT UNZIP them, due to old 7-zip version?
3) Then trying to update 7-zip, since your old 7z v4.x cannot unzip roytam1-browsers, but again running into SourceForge cipher-block, no download possible?

Temporary SOLUTION for SourceForge downloads :-)
The official mirror links still work! The only prob is how to figure out their direct path. Here are examples:

Howto download 7-ZIP 9.20 (last version for untweaked Win98)
(cipher-blocked) https://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/files/7-Zip/9.20/7z920.exe/download
Official MIRRORS, example DE netcologne or Canada iWeb:
OK: http or https://netcologne.dl.sourceforge.net/project/sevenzip/7-Zip/9.20/7z920.exe
OK: http https://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/sevenzip/7-Zip/9.20/7z920.exe

Howto download KERNELEX 4.5.2: (stable classic version, 2011-11-14)
(cipher-blocked) https://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/files/KernelEx/4.5.2/KernelEx-4.5.2.exe/download
OK: http or https://netix.dl.sourceforge.net/project/kernelex/KernelEx/4.5.2/KernelEx-4.5.2.exe
README:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/files/KernelEx/4.5.2/README.txt/download
OK: http or https://iweb.dl.sourceforge.net/project/kernelex/KernelEx/4.5.2/README.txt

Edited by siria
Added: mirror-links even allow unencrypted HTTP!
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I don’t know about Windows 98, but for Windows 2000 I’ve made the choice to go with SeaMonkey 2.94.5 as my main browser. I ditched New Moon. SM is based on Firefox 52.9 ESR, the newest Firefox possible to run there with a better UI. Of all the browsers I tried, it did the most complete job. I am yet to try Firefox 52.9 ESR - but I have a feeling that it won’t let me use classic Netscape theme so hence why I went for SM.

Now, for Windows 98... if only KernelEx were upgraded enough to let us use latest SeaMonkey, then it would be a viable candidate. I have much respect for the great job Roytam1 has done with his browser builds, especially Retrozilla, but I’ve felt that they weren’t enough for me.

The reason why I went with SeaMonkey only:

https://www.howtogeek.com/335712/update-why-you-shouldnt-use-waterfox-pale-moon-or-basilisk/ (this post even has a link for why you shouldn’t use Chromium forks - although Edge now is a Chromium fork as well, it comes from MS, more trustworthy than smaller groups of unknown developers).

Still, I feel safer with Safari/new Edge on iOS and macOS, SM on older Windows and new Edge on Windows 10. On Win 3.x I’m stuck with IE5.

My suggestion would be to put more focus on Retrozilla development, since it is based on Firefox 2.0.0.20 (from 2008) and even works on Windows 95, although rendering is pretty bad for most sites it is already awesome with TLS1.2 support.

Just for the nostalgia, I have installed Netscape 9.0.0.6, which was my choice in 90s, and it rendered almost identical to Retrozilla except it didn’t have some ciphers that were needed and no Youtube.

To sum up, how I see it: before Win 2000 (Retrozilla), from Win 2000 to Vista (SeaMonkey), from Win 7 onwards (any choice you want, as long as it comes from trusted developers - Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera).

For Win 3.x, forget it. I have zero hopes of seeing something working there. There is even Firefox 3.6.x backported for NT 3.51, but I wouldn’t expect it to go further unless someone updates the Win32 api for it.

Edited by Bruninho
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