Question on What to Update W98 With

[Goodmaneuver]

>>I know this AMD CPU is pricey, but do you have any experience of the Super Socket 7?

Yes had experience - what CPU is pricey? There is sometimes an advantage with this board technology but the AMD CPUs have to remain cool as they will error if allow to warm up too much. System will stop. They had various designs and it really depends on what motherboard you are interested in. I would not step back to DOS7.1 with WinME despite what others may think, read the previous post in Is ME really that bad? the one above and below mine. DOS 8 is designed to be faster and is designed for WinME. Why not try your current Pentium 4 system even with XP and see what runs and what does not run. Your CPU you have installed may not need any up dating. Device manager should say what speed it is operating at.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[theulticobia]

I have heard AMD CPUs can perform better than Intel CPUs in some cases. I am not against using my Pentium 4. I just want to research the best CPUs W98/Me can perform with. For now, I am researching whether I should use Windows 98 SE or ME.

How is MS-DOS 8.0 faster than 7.1? I know 8.0 was stripped down (I know it can be restored) to make ME faster and Microsoft at the time thought many people would not use the real-time DOS for games and such. I have also been researching and some people have reported that some sound cards do not work in pure-dos mode in 8.0.

[Wunderbar98]

Hi again theulticobia. Unless i misunderstood you already have some hardware. Just install Windows 98 and test, you may be making it too complicated. As you've spent time on the forum, it's evident going too high-end with hardware may be more hassle than it's worth. Personally, i would recommend just finding some decent enough middle of the road hardware. DOS game setup vs high-end Windows 98 gaming have different hardware needs and configuration. So if you can find and afford the hardware, a dedicated (older) DOS system and a dedicated higher-end Windows system for 3D games is ideal but not required.

Pentium 4 and Soundblaster = good. If primarily for gaming then a vanilla Windows 98 install, the best graphic and sound drivers you can find, DirectX 9 and you are good to go. Having run both ways, more than 512 MB RAM is not critical. Windows 98 doesn't require it and most games from the era won't need it either. I don't have direct Windows ME experience, but my impression is it's better than the flak it got. For me, i own Windows 98 SE and it's classic.

It may be useful to share a list of the games you intend to play. Quick search indicates Outrun 2006 Coast-2-Coast is a Windows XP/2000 game. If you have these OS', set up a dual boot. Use the memory patch if you want a dual/multi-boot system with >512 MB physical RAM.

To answer your previous question, playing DOS only games requires extra configuration to get things running. There is lots of information on the internet and this forum. For pure DOS games, depending on your needs you will require a DOS mouse driver, DOS CD-ROM setup and likely a DOS sound driver and mixer. Soundblaster is the best for sound. If your CPU is too fast, slowdown software. You'll be spending some time learning about AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS configuration. If you have the time and energy, it's worth the effort, IMHO old DOS games play best on real hardware.

[theulticobia]

I am looking into whether I should stay with my CPU and/or motherboard or go with a completely new build. First, I need to decide what OS I want: 98SE or ME. Outrun 2006 Coast to Coast (2006) is really more of an outlier just like the original Outrun (1989). Both do not represent the scale of games I want to run. The bulk of my games start from 1994 and end at 2003, with the exception of the outliers. My list begins as such - 

1994: Panzer General & Raiden I

1995: 3D Pinball, Jumpstart 1st Grade, and Transport Tycoon Deluxe

1996: Disney's Animated Storybook: Toy Story, DX-Ball, JS 2nd & 3rd Grade, JS Kindergarten Reading, JS Pre-K, JS Toddlers, RATS, and Toy Story Activity Center

1997: Virtual-On, Daytona USA Deluxe, Demonstar, JS Typing, Nebula Fighter, Panzer Dragoon, and Raiden II

1998: DX-Ball 2, Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver, and Lego Logo

1999: Arkanoid for Win 32 and Star Miner

2000: Backyard Baseball 2001, Colors of Wars, HW Crash, HW Micro Racers, HW ST Driver 2, and Mickey Mouse Preschool

2001: Disney's Extremely Goofy Skateboarding, D's Magic Artist Deluxe, Galaxy of Games Gold Deluxe, HW Jetz, Monopoly Tycoon, Planet HW, Rival Ball, Speedy Eggbert 2, and Zoo Tycoon

2002: DS Secret Missions 1 and HW Velocity X

2003: DS SM 2 and HW World Race

 

My list is incomplete at the moment, but it will expand. This is what I have at the moment. I also want to test other games I have in the future; games that are more "modern," like To the Moon and some other GOG games. Right now I have made a list of titles which I have played in my childhood, titles which are very obscure, or games which in I am interested in, but have played little of. The hardware I have (my Pentium 4) will serve to test out if I can get everything working on the PC. I am just researching all options. You are right though, I do want go to the trouble-free route when possible as I am setting up.

Edited April 11, 2020 by theulticobia

[ZaPbUzZ]

Well now.

Time for my dollars worth of windows 9x advice.

All 90's windows use the original MMX multimedia extensions so a pentium 4 isn't necessary a pentium 3 system will do nicely as an enhanced MMX system (they go up to 1ghz).

AMD well they were all crap in comparison under windows 9x so only if have to! the entire win 9x system is in fact Intel optimized and for pentium MMX. Pentium 4's MMX is slower than pentium 3 as pentium 4 is MMX II; MMX backwards compatible. (windows 9x can only use 1 cpu or cpu core at all times)

A PCI AGP only motherboard without ISA will be more snappy and newer in mileage a great way to target a longer living system.

If possible a SATA II PCI controller card and a sata II or III disk will work nicely (under 128gb capacity unless system is patched)  to rid the old rattly PATA IDE disks if you get a controller with win9x drivers.

Any pc with 2gb ram and appropriate patch can say bye bye to memory swapping on windows 9x.

If you can get a pentium 3 system cheaper it will be less hassle getting hardware support, data is better optimized,  and there is plenty of community to get directions but pentium 4 has limitations especially on board graphics (chrome 9 argh! foxconns nuts days)

forget voodoo graphics get something 64 or 128mb graphics.

Always try to have double system ram in comparison to GPU RAM minimum to satisfy GPU Arpeture requirements it stops gaming lag.

So if its a 128mb GPU then a minimum 256mb system ram but 512mb is great for multimedia.

Dual booting with windows 2000 makes sense that 2000 iis MMX only like windows 9x and works where windows 9x does with most success.

Windows Millennium is the system milestone from 9x and 2000 to the later XP. It has video editing and other cool multimedia stuff but driver support is limited to what is reliable today to use. My gpu has drivers signed for 98se but under millennium it has not and nobody has said which ones do.

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ

[Goodmaneuver]

I do not not agree with a lot of what you said ZaPbUzZ. P4 has my vote over P3, we are only talking P4 socket 478 I believe. Nothing wrong with AMD but like everything undamaged hardware is not easy to find. Just because some manufacturers included a ISA slot, it did not interfere with PCI bus speed, the ISA if not divided properly from the PCI will be twice as fast as it should be though, and therefore very hard to get compatibility. If there is a wider spacing between the two types of slots then it is usually done correctly.The board I mentioned was quality with the BIOS update, it got a nVidia AGP card working better after a while. Early PCIEX boards with analogue sound AC97 are usually not a problem with drivers.
 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Goodmaneuver]

>>if I can get everything working on the PC

What is not working? I like a standard ATX sized board over that of a mini as if the heatsink is upsized on the gaphics then it does not cover all of the PCI slots.
 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[theulticobia]

I just went back over everyones' posts so to get a better feeling of what my next post is.

@Goodmaneuver

My Pentium 4 is my Test PC. I have the Windows 98 OS and drivers ready to go when I decide to reinstall the system. The original hardware from the system is still in the PC. The system was originally meant for XP. I just want to see what errors or problems I run into with the system in order to increase my experience and knowledge with the OS and PC. In this way, when I have a better hardware for this computer or a completely new one built from the ground up, I have better idea of what to do and not to do. Yes, I know the hardware and drivers will be different, but I can't argue that I won't be more prepared.

@ ZaPbUzZ

Yes, a have a game or two which used the MMX technology. I managed to get one working on my Ryzen 2700 PC the other day. Now it won't work. Ha! I have researched that the instruction set in not as complicated in the P3 CPUs than they are in their P4 counterparts. Why do you say what you did about AMD CPUs? Does this apply up to CPUs like the Athlon XP or 64? I know these are more suited to WXP, but have wondered if they can work with W98.

Edited April 12, 2020 by theulticobia

[Goodmaneuver]

The Pentium 3 has 8 cycles per instruct where as the Pentium 4 has 21. This meant that the P3 could out bench the P4 at the same clock frequency in certain instructions. The P3 is 32 bit where the P4 is 64 bit. The P3 went to 1.4GHz where the P4 started at 1.3GHz and went to 3.8GHz but if we stick to socket 478 of which we should for the comparison went to 3.4GHz or so but needed a board to run at 1000Mhz FSB for better compatibility. (Not as many around but if getting a new socket 478 board try and get at least 800MHz FSB.)
 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Goodmaneuver]

There is also more pins on the P4 which meant better grounding and more options with the design. The Pentium 4 had more success with the AGP and video cards but P4 needs much more cooling as it uses more power. I did not mean to post this separately.


 

Edited April 12, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[Wunderbar98]

Hi theulticobia. Most memorable processors for personal Windows 98 systems over the last 20+ years have been AMD: 450 MHz K6-2, 800 MHz Athlon, 1.8 GHz Athlon. Just worked out that most were AMD, not intentional except for the AMD K6-2 450 MHz, purchased new in 1999. Probably used some Intel in the past too, can't remember. Probably just purchased the AMD K6-2 'underdog' in 1999 because it was cheaper than Intel. As Intel was more mainstream in the Windows 98 era, their processors likely received more development and testing support though, can't confirm.

Of these systems, my present 800 MHz AMD system with Nvidia GeForce 2 (32 MB graphics) and 384 MB RAM is a favourite. Not too slow or fast, everything works well from DOS to more intensive 3D games. Used to use 16 MB Voodoo Banshee (died) graphics years ago plus others, never anything high end. Whatever hardware you throw together today will likely exceed what people were using back in the day. My 1999 K6-2 450 MHz build started out with only 64 MB RAM, a time period where RAM was quite expensive.

Games i recall currenty or previously playing in Windows 98 include: US Navy Fighers, Road Rash, Dawn Patrol, Red Baron, Flying Corps Gold, Mechwarrior 2, Need for Speed 2 and 3, Total Annihilation, SimCopter, Tiger Woods 99, Sports Car GT, Dungeon Siege (original), Microsoft Train Simulator, Theme Hopsital, Madden 2000, Nascar Revolution SE, WinRogue, Dune 2000, Red Alert, think Railroad Tycoon II Gold and Space Cadet Pinball.

The only games i own that have not been played on Windows 98 was Neverwinter Nights, used Windows XP although Windows 98 is supported but requires a DVD drive. System requirements are Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Pentium III 800 MHz (Pentium 4 1.3 GHz recommended), 256-512 MB RAM. The other was Half-Life Anthology, 2005 release, requires Steam, used Windows XP.

Unrelated, if anyone is interested there is an archived Steam release at archive[dot]org that is the last version of Steam that ran in Windows XP before they dropped XP support. Can't remember exactly, think it prevented auto-update so you could finish your old games without having to upgrade. Worked well and allowed me to finally finish my whopping $10 Half-Life Anthology purchase, including Half-Life original, Opposing Force and Blue Shift. Never bothered with Team Fortress Classic.

Not familiar with most games on your list, other than Space Cadet Pinball works well. Would imagine all the games up until at least 2002 should work well in Windows 98. Don't know anything about the newer 2002 - 2003 DS Secret Missions, HW Velocity X, DS SM 2 and HW World Race. For the most part, most other games on your list do not appear overly hardware intensive, i may be mistaken.

[Wunderbar98]

Just quick play tested 1994 Panzer General and Raiden I games from your list, because they're DOS, oldest and was curious. Worked fine in Windows 98 rebooting into DOS mode, although i did not configure sound. Raiden I appears incredibly difficult BTW, you must have young fast hands. Never enough time for this fun stuff. DOS rocks! Have fun with your build(s).

[ZaPbUzZ]

wow! who to quote first. well instead i shall explain a few things. Pentium 4 may have a more complex MMX instruction set but thats for more modern code to talk to cpu microcode and even if w98 got a cpu driver update neither it or 2000 would have anything to take advantage of it also backwards compatibility and there are plenty of pentium 3's 2's and 1's. AMD athlons XP and older are harder to find than intel because special attention was needed and no one cared and overclockers started fires (no slowdown when heat sink fan fails so AMD literally burned to death). No, ISA doesn't slow down system bus it just says the motherboard is so so old and god knows how many people owned it the electricity flowing through its parts will break its weakest point at any time. But hey for the price of THAT vintage why not buy something cheaper that'll last longer, connect with later usb 1 hubs that don't ride the plug and pray bug BUGGY have a whopper memory bank and no stupid PCIE ports on pentium 4 that are useless for that W98 OS.

There is a comparison benchmark out there between pentium III and the 1st generation pentium 4. pentium III out did it on a few corners. I own several brand new pentium III 1ghz processors and 866 mhz processors they are cheap. A w98 machine built for w98 to w2000 is better suited for efficient running than a machine for W98 but designed for anything newer than XP. I fit my pentium 3's with SATA II cards, USB 2 hubs, even fortunate to find full 5.1 surround audio cards too. all the PCI goodness and most ISA cards cost the earth as collectibles so i recommend ditching the idea of ISA for more PCI expansion. Some pentium III motherboards are now collectible one is my favourite it can run both non ecc and ecc memory. when non ecc ram runs out i can grab server ram.

Oh another thing about a pentium 3 with PC133 ram, my preferred pentium III board, low density ram is the fastest. They look like one side has chips the other side doesn't.

I own coppermine codename cpu's but theres tullatin and they go faster than coppermine so theres an even better pentium 3 than the 1st pentium 4. get a dual cpu board run windows 2000 to the moon! or even xp but this is just for W98 only right?

please don't mod a coppermine BIOS to run tullatin it'll kill the motherboard within 12 months. 

A pci / AGP motherboard from year 2000 - 2002 with a pentium 3 or 2 x p3 for the dual boot with w2000 will have all pci slots and ample memory the AGP 4x is comparible to pentium 4 8X its literally only marginal and many 8x cards have a built in chip to convert PCIE architecture to AGP that have more than 138mb ram what games need more under W98 anyhow. I'dd prolly got up to 256mb ram but only 512mb if there weren't anything else!

Add some Rudolf L. goodness get SATA II to run an SATA III SSD, if its over 128gb patch that too! with trimming, put his windows 98 memory patch cabinet archive to install it as your windows 98 install disk so you can run it with 2 gigs of ram, hell 1gb is said to be optimal even for windows XP!!! i want to advise the best chances of backwards compatibility to what we use today and bridge the gap to yesterday. An interesting thing for me my USB3 SAMSUNG 32gb flash drive runs faster and cooler on USB2! so the most modern hype isn't always the best as its all marginal and uses more electricity as well as drivers. Autopatcher 07 is in my opinion the only unofficial service pack I could stake my reputation on it has everything ever useful for W98 core even for laptops.

I got pentium 4 machines they have issues and bugs running w98 especially with built in stuff that pentium III doesn't have so if anyone has pentium 4 that has no issues CONGRATULATIONS I AM HAPPY FOR YOU but if its the best for windows 98 and want to build a machin for it; i have spoken.

 

hey! windows 98 says: Intel is coca cola but AMD Pepsi will do! -lol

Edited April 16, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ

[Goodmaneuver]

ZaPbUzZ:

Everyone will have differing experiences and you had different experience than me. DDR on P3 is not common but there are some, Iwill made it happen. ECS Elitegroup P6S5AT has both SDRAM & DDR but with the same controller there is virtually no difference between performance. I think one type or the other had to be chosen. MSI 6378 was modern compared to the OS. Boards were made with the ISA slot as an added option so no PCI slots were lost and it would only be useful if owning some ISA cards. I thought I was buying new as well but the Chinese supplier lied or was said to be like new. They were inferior to new for sure. The registered memory SDRAM 184 pin or 72 pin was usable even in P11 but sometimes it was not up to scratch to run especially 184 pin in my experience. I had better luck with P4 machines with this. Not all boards run single sided RAM it depends on how the RAM stick is wired that is chips on one side but wired to both would be considered double sided RAM. If the RAM chips are missing, not soldered on one side of the stick then this is single sided. You must have a moderner board than the average P3, is it a dual processor board? 5.1 surround audio card will you share this model that has 98/ME drivers? 

I found this an information boost https://www.oempcworld.com/support/singlevsdualram.html 

Edited April 15, 2020 by Goodmaneuver

[theulticobia]

A big thank you to everyone for their knowledge and feedback!

So my goal should be to build a PC that is efficient as possible rather than focusing on building a mega all powerful one eh? Makes sense. I was talking a co-worker at work who used to be the field making CPUs. He helped out both Intel and AMD CPUs. He mentioned that I go with AMD (can't remember his reason for why at the moment), until I countered (learned from this thread) with those CPUs often running very hot. He said yesterday if you put an AMD CPU in a closed case with no ventilation (yes, with fan), it can run up to a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit. He did warn the fan can burn out, too.

This next inspiration comes from my Meshify C case for my Windows 10 PC. Here is a question I posed for him: What about a more "modern" case that has proper air flow? Air flowing out from the front/top out the back/bottom through the PSU. Would that make any difference? I found it is hard to find a case where I can have a CD/DVD-ROM Drive, 3.5" Floppy disk drive (with or without a proper bay enclosure to match the dimensions of a CD/DVD-ROM drive), and a hard drive bay I can cold swap. 

If we are still talking efficiency, would AMD CPUs still be in the picture at all (not assuming how costly they are depending on the AMD CPU)? Because from all the information I am getting from everyone, it makes me learn toward Pentium 3/4 CPUs. P3 may be more efficient than P4 is, but I also know the high end P3s are also more costly from the way people have been buying them in the last several years. From my research, if i got an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4, they will be fast yes, but I understand that W98/WME will not use all the features of the CPU because the OS is unable to. There also may more errors in hardware from what I understand too yes?

 

From the perspective of the motherboard, it matters not to me if I have an ISA slot or not.

Edited April 15, 2020 by theulticobia