Question on What to Update W98 With

[ZaPbUzZ]

On 4/17/2020 at 4:24 AM, Wunderbar98 said:

Whether to use Windows 98 SE or ME regarding DOS games and applications, the Windows ME wikipedia page has a Real Mode DOS section indicated restricted support for real mode MS-DOS, modifying the registry, work-arounds. To me this is a layer of complication that could be avoided by using Windows 98 SE. Maybe a Windows ME user can comment on their experience setting up DOS games.

Windows millennium has always performed slightly lower than windows 98se in all aspects of system performance. The only way to unlock full performance from windows Me is to completely cripple its system restore and system protections. Most people cannot be bothered with it for that reason. Windows 98se has much larger user and driver base; millennium has much less.  Signed drivers designed for 98se are not always signed for millennium meaning for example signed drivers for AGP texture acceleration vs unsigned drivers texture acceleration disabled. From my experiences given the right conditions and attention to detail Millennium can out perform windows 98SE but then only marginally and potentially dangerously. sfc.exe from windows 98se can be installed into millennium after removing system protection and restore for manual file protections like 98se but that also includes setting up your own protection criteria from scratch. on the good side with millennium without restore or protection RP9 can be installed for the windows 7 superbar its a nice taskbar to see on 9x. even on windows 98se. R. Loews patches are good too. You can run millennium dos from a emergency boot disk for the real dos mode. Can have Me set to reboot to dos mode for games in a check box as i remember.

I don't recommend a virtal machine they really don't run well for win9x 

Edited May 11, 2020 by ZaPbUzZ
additional info

[Goodmaneuver]

The capacitors can be damaged from a badly designed or worn out PSU which has ripple on its output. I have bought a cheap new power supply which was useless. It would not even start several hard drives up and had terrible line filtering where the Mains hum came through to the output. The hard drives were SCSI ones and the power supply was just connected to them and it did not start them spinning up. A 250W cheap power supply should be able to start 5 drives at once and this one could not do it. The other reason that the caps can be damaged by excessive current is due to non toggling CMOS parts like bad add on cards not working fully. This is not uncommon. The newer style power supplies with the extra 4 main plug pins : they are detachable and can be used in the old boards. The Server power supplies can be designed better but can have different pin-outs for the main board especially old ones otherwise they are hot swap plug in types. One advantage of the P111 is less power needed for the CPU. The Tualatin has a copper plate glued on top of the CPU so there is less chance of damage caused by the heatsink. A heat pipe heat sink is one I would recommend as the air is pushed further away from the fans intake and will keep temperatures lower than a heatsink mounted flat above the CPU. These ones seem to heat up more due to the air recirculating back and that they are pushing air against a wall of the main board which creates the back feed of air. I had 0% of getting a 100% working board last time I bought some. It is best to buy from a seller which shows pictures of bench tests, not just the BIOS boot screen.

Edited September 29, 2020 by Goodmaneuver
Just spelling