Jump to content

Roll Call 2021


jumper

Recommended Posts

If you still use any non-NT version of Windows, post once here about it. One post per member so number of replies is also the head count. 

New members welcome!

Edit your post throughout the year with updates. Topic will be locked at next New Year!

Link to comment
Share on other sites


WinME use it for all I can use it for, viewed on large screen. Fast to boot, responsive, reliable. Usage examples, media center, email, web browsing, games. Motherboard ECS K8T890-A has SCSI hot swap bay, Quadro FX5500 GPU and is used for testing KernelEx and upgrading. Some software running on startup includes RP9 and Ieplore6 with http://www.bing.com/?scope=web&FORM=Z9LH as active desktop image.

I have built 3 more AMD machines, a GigaByte GA-MA78LM-S2, an ASUS M5A78L LE and a VIA P4M900 P5VD2-VM. All Intel machines I tested would not get past the BIOS boot screen when a 2TB USB external drive was plugged into a USB port. Some BIOS's do not have configurable SATA access timings in which case reliable long term SATA drive usage can be a problem or used boards have SATA chip damage in which case I have used a SCSI card. The internal gigabit network controllers will work if WinME service pack 2 is installed from the installer to which a limit of how much RAM can be accessed is applied. The installer adds System.ini MaxPhyPage=40000. I could up this value a bit higher but even when changing the size of the C: drive up in size meant the MaxPhyPage size had to be lowered. I found this unfavorable and used an add on PCI network 100Mb card instead. MaxPhyPage does not work with WinME native - it does not make any difference. It only worked after SP2 was installed via the installer. EDIT: I have a faulty GB add in card and even Win10 could not use it with a resource allocation problem. I also now have a good but different same model GB controller which works with ME after changing some capacitors. MaxPhyPage with good controller does not need to be restricted and I have no MaxPhyPage setting in System.ini. For the GigaByte and ASUS board's USB hardware, of which the South Bridge chip is ATI SB750, I found that a forced install of AMD 756 PCI to USB Open Host Controller WinMe original driver was a better match than the Standard OpenHCI USB Host Controller of which will want to install. It has no green ? marks against the driver and has a bit better throughput but USB 1.1 throughput is only working on this board. The USB 2 driver was from OrangeWare OWC OUSB2 2004 drivers PCI Class USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller and will install naturally. The legacy USB support is good in safe mode having access to USB devices but if left enabled in BIOS there will be 2 drives letters installed for the 1 drive if the USB drive is plugged in at boot time. To resolve this NTFSfor98 can be installed and the drive formatted to NTFS remembering not to try and use files over 4.1GB unless split with FILE64. The K8T890 with 2.5 inch USB HDDs USB works at their speed limit of over 20MB/s for non externally powered HDDs. Network and USB speed has improved after exercising. The GA-MA78LM-S2 needed to go trough the add new hardware control panel to get the video card installed. Most do not need to be done this way, see next paragraph. One of my Intel processor boards now can boot up with a 2GB USB external storage HDD attached. It is an nForce 790i and as such not Intel. It has been exercising with Vista.

The ASUS M5A78L LE board is available from AliExpress and the are about 3000 available. It came with BIOS 1601 which meant the FX processors can be used. It has an IDE port if needed. It has very good BIOS configuration adjustments where the SATA ports access timings can be adjusted. I am running 2 SATA drives. The CPU's for this board are a little harder to get but available. I am using an FX4170. 5GHz processors are selling for very high prices and I do not want to pay that amount for them. The Turbo CORE technology can be used if cores 3 & 4 are turned off in BIOS. I have short term overclocked the FX4170 to 4.5GHz just to try and had no problems. The board installed hardware easily and resource sharing conflicts can be removed so that there are exclusive resource sharing without any motherboard resources as a device by removing all system devices while in Windows and installing the PCI buss device first manually next boot. The ACPI devices do not return but ACPI could still be controlled through BIOS or can be disabled in BIOS. The ACPI BIOS device or PCI buss has to be removed last. Under the legacy support enabled is the USB2 speed setting Full Speed 12MB/s and Hi Speed 480MB/s. I am using a USB audio device for sound and once set to Hi Speed I have turned USB legacy support off.

Edited by Goodmaneuver
Link to comment
Share on other sites

ME for daily use, web browsing, testing (KernelEx), writing, eMail, listen to music, edit photos, ... . Motherboards are MSI G41M4-F MS7592, Asus P5KPL1600, Asus P4V800D-X, MSI MS7058 and others (Intel and Via chipsets). Mostly with dual boot ME/XP. I often tried Linux - OpenSuse and others, but the GPU fan always annoyed me with highest speed of 100%. So I kept coming back to ME.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Reporting for duty. Vanilla Windows 98 SE is currently installed on two early 2000 era towers, nothing special, real hardware only thanks. The primary install is 800 MHz with 384 MB RAM, 32 MB graphics, 19" CRT monitor and PS2 mouse/keyboard that multi-boots with modern GNU/Linux. Boot into Windows 98 or it's DOS 7.10 almost daily for light internet (education, news, forums), YouTube, streaming music, games and nostalgia. Have enough old hardware to run Windows 98 indefinitely, hope to always have at least one install available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why does this topic exist? You can edit it in the first post! Do you want to estimate Windows 98 current market share?

My Windows 98 machine from the year 2000 dropped to third place as the most used PCs in my flat. I use it for layouting and writing in Word 97, amiga music files and some little browsing, but  Windows XP makes more out of the hardware I have. Another Windows 98 machine is in stock (picked up on the street this year), but I don't need it now. Maybe it will be used for some kind of Windows 98 LAN party, but I'd rather give it away to someone who really wants to learn about Windows 98. As a third option here, an old mainboard of 1999 is built into a wooden case, running Windows 95 and being occasionally used for true MS-DOS things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Windows 98SE and Windows ME. If I can figure out as to why the newer Firefox browsers aren’t working for me as per Schwups’ instructions I’ll probably choose these over Win 2k :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got Windows 3.11 (it is non nt too) on Digital Venturis 466 with 486DX2-66, s3 trio64vlb 1mb, 2gb cf card and 68mb of ram and sound blaster 16. That machine is hooked to network using serial modem emulator (fake dialling) running at 115200bps. That modem is hosted on my raspberry PI since I had no ISA nic.

 

Then I got Windows 95B running on gigabyte ga-686lx4 mainboard, celeron 266mhz, 256mb ram, nvidia tnt2 m64 32mb, 20gb seagate ide hdd, fm801 soundcard. That machine got usb driver downloaded from this forum and can support flash drives. That machine is connected to network using realtek pci 10/100 nic.

 

Then I got Windows 98SE running on gigabyte ga-60mm7 mainboard, Pentium 3 EB 800mhz, 512mb ram, radeon 9800 pro 128mb AGP, ESI audio maya44 sound card and 128gb ssd hooked with sata>pata adapter. That machine is connected network too and is my main win98 gaming pc now

 

Then I got my quadboot pc having windows ME. It specs are Pentium 4 2.80ghz (ht disabled), Asus p4p800 mainboard, 2x512mb ram (soon 4x1gb), 160gb sata hdd on native mode, gainward 6800gt 256mb golden sample AGP. This pc is work progress but once I get all done I want try all cool tweaks from this forum to win9x since performance is no longer issue

 

All of those systems are hooked to kvm having logitec ps/2 laser mouse, Microsoft internet keyboard, and L1919S lcd (soon will get crt hopefully)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...