*** Recommendation needed *** Which desktop or motherboard supports fast CPU and Windows 98

[SeeNoEvil]

Please tell which desktop computer models of selected brands, or ASUS
motherboards support

INTEL CPU with Windows 98 drivers.

My favorite desktop brands are: Dell, HP, Lenovo.
The INTEL CPU should be 3 GHz or faster, or dual core at 2 GHz or faster.
It should supports at least 2 GB of RAM memory.
Small format factor, small footprint is definitively a big plus.

It MUST be QUIET.

Due to the need to run a special audio PCI card having only Windows 98,
laptop computers may be out of consideration!

I did use the special audio PCI with a Toshiba laptop attached to a Toshiba
PCI extension box, but the Toshiba's LCD is at the end of its life!!!!
Very tempted to buy a used Dell laptop with PCI Dock, but afraid of soon
getting the same LCD problem.
If you know a Dell laptop model having PCI dock as fast as stated above,
please let me know (in desperate case).

Your help is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!!

 

[Paul]

Please tell which desktop computer models of selected brands, or ASUS
motherboards support

INTEL CPU with Windows 98 drivers.

My favorite desktop brands are: Dell, HP, Lenovo.
The INTEL CPU should be 3 GHz or faster, or dual core at 2 GHz or faster.
It should supports at least 2 GB of RAM memory.
Small format factor, small footprint is definitively a big plus.

It MUST be QUIET.

Due to the need to run a special audio PCI card having only Windows 98,
laptop computers may be out of consideration!

I did use the special audio PCI with a Toshiba laptop attached to a Toshiba
PCI extension box, but the Toshiba's LCD is at the end of its life!!!!
Very tempted to buy a used Dell laptop with PCI Dock, but afraid of soon
getting the same LCD problem.
If you know a Dell laptop model having PCI dock as fast as stated above,
please let me know (in desperate case).

Your help is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!!

The last motherboard I ran Win98 on, was an Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0.
I used an E4700 Core2 processor (dual core) with FSB800. That motherboard
used a VIA chipset, which is why it had drivers for Win98. VIA had
better support for the older OSes, than the competition. There
are a couple revisions of that board, and the R2.0 I got, has
a VT8237S Southbridge which supports SATA II properly. (I can't vouch
for the other revision.)

The problem now, is there are very few chipset choices. Intel controls
the market. I doubt anybody else, has a license to design chips to
work with the Intel processor. VIA still makes chips, just not for
desktop motherboards. My 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2.0 is no longer for sale
(and even if you could buy one, that motherboard has a few
significant irritations, which would take a whole post to address
- I use a hacked BIOS from Germany for example, to make it worthwhile).

Note that, when I ran my E4700 under Windows 98, only one
of the two cores of the processor was used. The second
core is ignored by that OS. Windows 98 doesn't have any MP type
support. At least, it wasn't apparent while I was using it.
The system felt very fast, even with one core. Win2K has multiple
core support.

I don't think VIA made any chipsets, that could run FSB1333 processors.
So processors like the E8400 or E8500 are out of the question. If
you use one of those, in a VIA board, it'll have to run at a reduced
FSB speed (FSB800, or FSB1066 when overclocking). So you won't get
to 3GHz that way.

The E7600 processor, became available after I bought my E4700. But
it has FSB1066, and my motherboard just wasn't as stable at that
speed. It was rock solid at FSB800. (Even more stable than my
previous DDR memory based motherboards.)

*******

In my example above, Device Manager was "clean". All entries in
Device Manager worked, no yellow marks that I can remember.

There is another approach. Your Device Manager won't be "clean".
But, the system may work anyway. It uses the following observations.

1) Intel chipsets are designed to certain standards. The
pci.sys file the OS has, likely runs on even modern pieces
of hardware. So certain things that would normally
be show-stoppers, work anyway. It's because of standards,
and a bit of backward compatibility here and there.

2) Intel Southbridges have a "Compatible" mode. You check the user
manual for the motherboard, to make sure that option is still
available. Windows 98 has a driver, that works with "Compatible" mode.

Now, modern motherboards could have AGP or PCI Express slots.
Windows 98 probably doesn't know anything about PCI Express
(even though, from a software perspective, aspects of
PCI Express look like PCI). If we go for AGP, then we'd need
to check that there's drivers for it.

If I had to do what you're doing, I would try for:

1) Motherboard with lots of PCI slots.
2) Video card with PCI interface. The video card would be slow
for gaming, but good enough for Microsoft Office or the like.
When I tested my FX5200 PCI, if I moved a QuickTime movie
window around the screen, the window would "stutter". This is
a bandwidth restriction.
3) If the onboard NIC doesn't work, install a PCI NIC card.
Usually, NIC coverage is pretty good with respect to OSes.
4) If the onboard storage interfaces don't work, install
a PCI storage card with VIA chip on it.

If you cobble together enough PCI alternatives, and make
sure the items have a modicum of drivers, you may be able
to build a system for Win98 in spite of no support being
evident on the motherboard manufacturer's web page.

For example, for a video card. I can see the 6200 mentioned in here:

http://http.download.nvidia.com/Windows/81.98/81.98_ForceWare_Release_Notes.pdf

Look for "6-series" driver, for Win98, and you should see 81.98.

http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/11

There are about half a dozen 6200 PCI cards on Newegg. This
one has a pretty low amount of video memory, if you want to
reduce the addressing needs of the video card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814139022

On the storage front, if the motherboard storage didn't work
for some reason, I'd use one of these. This has a VIA VT6421
chip. Don't try to use the SATA ports with SATA III drives.
If using SATA, try to find a Seagate SATA II drive with the
Force150 jumper block on the back. SATA III drives probably
cannot be set slow enough, to run properly with this card.
(Note - VIA may have fixed this, but we can't be sure what
revision of chip is on the Startech card.) IDE shouldn't
be a problem. (You can still get some IDE ribbon cable drives.)

http://ca.startech.com/Cards-Adapte...A-and-1-Port-ATA-133-IDE-PCI-Card~PCISAT2IDE1

"OS Compatibility Windows 98SE/ ME/ NT 4.0/ 2000/ XP (32/64-bit)/
Vista (32/64-bit)/ 7 (32/64-bit)/ 8 (32/64-bit)
Linux"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158092

For the motherboard, we need something with lots of PCI slots.
Here's an LGA1155 with six PCI slots (note - this is just the
first one I laid eyes on - spend some time reviewing available info!).
OK, so what could go wrong there ? It has support for the GPU inside
the Intel processor. There won't be a Win98 driver for that. We'd be
relying on the motherboard to switch to the PCI video card, our 6200,
in order to be able to later install the 81.98 driver and get a decent
screen size (bigger than 800x600). If the "Compatible" storage
didn't work out, we'd pop in the storage card with the VIA chip
and BIOS chip with Extended INT 0x13 support, so we could boot.
And if the NIC didn't work (it should), we'd pop in a PCI NIC
that has Win98 drivers (NICs are pretty good that way). Some
motherboard NIC chips would be on the PCI Express bus, and we
can't be sure Win98 will do everything properly there to get
to the NIC.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186225

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/ProductDetail.aspx?T=Motherboard&U=en-us0000579#

(Page 33, compatible mode. Initial Graphics Adapter page 30, not
enough detail.)

http://www.foxconnchannel.com/drive...AP/Manual/H61AP_Series_Manual-En-V1.0.pdf.zip

This approach is a huge gamble (could you tell ). You'll waste
time and money, trying to achieve this objective, because
nobody on the selling end, wants to help you do this (run
Win98). There are no "easy selectors" that say "must run Win98".
But you knew that already.

When installing Win98, there's a trick. My Asrock board had 2GB of
RAM installed. Win98 only "likes" 512MB. You start the Win98
install. When the installer does the first reboot, you flip in a
Linux LiveCD and edit the system.ini file. Limit the VCACHE, and
set the MAX_PHYS_PAGE thing. The MAX_PHYS_PAGE thing makes Windows 98
ignore the "excess" RAM. Then, when you shut down Linux, and reboot and
allow the Win98 installation to continue, Win98 doesn't freak out when
it sees gobs of RAM. The parameter in system.ini makes Win98
feel all warm and fuzzy. That's how I got around the "RAM problem"
on my system.

system.ini ...

[vcache]
MaxFileCache=524288 (or a lesser number if you want, number is decimal)

[386enh]
MaxPhysPage=20000 (limits physical RAM reported to Win98 to 512MB)

I installed Win98 on that system as a joke. Just to see if it could be
done. I even used the original 4GB hard drive, the same one the PC
used that had the copy of Win98 originally I was surprised when
it turned out I could find drivers for everything. I have several
crusty FX5200 video cards, and that's how I got a working video solution.
The 6200 is one notch better than my cards, and still has driver
support from Nvidia.

As long as you have a ton of money to waste, eventually
you'll get it working.

Just a guess,
Paul

 

[philo]

Please tell which desktop computer models of selected brands, or ASUS
motherboards support

INTEL CPU with Windows 98 drivers.

My favorite desktop brands are: Dell, HP, Lenovo.
The INTEL CPU should be 3 GHz or faster, or dual core at 2 GHz or faster.
It should supports at least 2 GB of RAM memory.
Small format factor, small footprint is definitively a big plus.

It MUST be QUIET.

Due to the need to run a special audio PCI card having only Windows 98,
laptop computers may be out of consideration!

I did use the special audio PCI with a Toshiba laptop attached to a Toshiba
PCI extension box, but the Toshiba's LCD is at the end of its life!!!!
Very tempted to buy a used Dell laptop with PCI Dock, but afraid of soon
getting the same LCD problem.
If you know a Dell laptop model having PCI dock as fast as stated above,
please let me know (in desperate case).

Your help is MUCH APPRECIATED!!!!

I saw this mentioned on a win98 group


http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775i65G R3.0&cat=Specifications

 

[Paul]

I saw this mentioned on a win98 group


http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=775i65G R3.0&cat=Specifications

But that might not be for world-wide distribution.

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/157701-new-mbo/

It's listed here, but with no product picture, or suggestion of
an availability date. This is all I could find.

http://translate.google.ca/translat....alex.it/product_info.php?products_id=1013481

What's even more interesting, is the picture of it. The
power section has been redesigned. So they're not even recycling
the R2.0 design. They've changed from big toroids in the
power section, to smaller "can" style inductors. And a
different set of capacitors for the power as well. So for
whatever reason they're doing it, they spent extra money
on the launch (wasted engineering time on a new PCB). That
means they must have a pretty good stock of 865G/ICH5 chipsets
(to pay off on the engineering). If they'd wanted, they could
have just scribbled R3.0 on the old PCBs and used those.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/photo/775i65G R3.0(m).jpg

Paul

 

[philo]

But that might not be for world-wide distribution.

<snip>

I have absolutely no idea . I was simply passing along info I saw on
another group. If you want more info subscribe to
microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion

It's a fairly recent thread.

BTW: microsoft no longer maintains the group but some news-servers still
carry it

 

[Paul]

<snip>

I have absolutely no idea . I was simply passing along info I saw on
another group. If you want more info subscribe to
microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion

It's a fairly recent thread.

BTW: microsoft no longer maintains the group but some news-servers still
carry it

I'm just going by what the search engine tells me.

Some boards, you see them in North America.

Some are distributed only in Europe. (And still visible in my search engine.)

And some, stay in China, and those are the ones you're not
likely to get in a search engine.

Paul

 

[98 Guy]

Please tell which desktop computer models...

jesus christ.

How many other newsgroups did you multi-post to?

Do you know that multi-posting is a dumb-ass thing to do?

Why didn't you cross-post this?

 

[98 Guy]

BTW: microsoft no longer maintains the group but some news-servers
still carry it

philo, we've covered this before, years ago with meb.

Microsoft never did maintain the microsoft.public.* set of newsgroups.
They were carried by the "world-wide" usenet for years. Microsoft was a
peer among many servers that carried those groups.

 

[98 Guy]

The last motherboard I ran Win98 on, was an Asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2
R2.0.

Interesting. Do you (or did you) ever hang out in any of the win-98
newsgroups?

I myself bought 6 of the Asrock 4core DUAL-VSTA motherboards back in
2007. That board has both an AGP and PCIe slot, and sockets for both
DDR and DDR2 ram (2 sticks of each, but not both simultaneously).

I'm running various Celeron-D processors on a few of them - the fastest
being the 3.46 ghz version. Back during that time I tried to get my
hands on the fastest chip at the time - a 3.6 ghz Celeron D (365) but
couldn't find anyone actually selling them (they listed them, but never
had any).

There are a couple revisions of that board, and the R2.0 I got,
has a VT8237S Southbridge which supports SATA II properly. (I
can't vouch for the other revision.)

That would make it the first that I've ever heard where win-98 had
proper (functioning) drivers for a sata II controller.

The problem now, is there are very few chipset choices.

I posted a response to this guy in the win-98 newsgroup, telling him
that basically his choices for a win-98 compatible machine were with the
8xx series chipsets, and the via PT880.

Basically, any socket 478 motherboard with an AGP slot will have drivers
for win-98.

When installing Win98, there's a trick. My Asrock board had 2GB of
RAM installed. Win98 only "likes" 512MB. You start the Win98
install. When the installer does the first reboot, you flip in a
Linux LiveCD and edit the system.ini file.

I find it simpler to just install with 512 mb, and then bring it up to 1
gb later.

I've had 2 gb installed, and have had to use himemX to limit the amount
of ram that win-98 can actually "see" to 1.25 gb. You don't have to do
that if the actual amount of physical ram is 1.5 gb or less.

I have win-98 reporting 1,157 mb of available RAM - which is the max.
Funny thing that Win-ME can go up to almost 2 gb.

I installed Win98 on that system as a joke. Just to see if it
could be done.

Ok, that explains why I've never seen you around the win-98 news groups.

Have you ever heard of KernelEx? It's an API extender that allows
win-98 to run some previously NT-only software. Gives win-98 some real
compatibility with modern software.

 

[philo]

philo, we've covered this before, years ago with meb.

Microsoft never did maintain the microsoft.public.* set of newsgroups.
They were carried by the "world-wide" usenet for years. Microsoft was a
peer among many servers that carried those groups.

OK thanks I forgot all the details.

I don't really use win98 any more but still fool with older computers

 

[SeeNoEvil]

Many thanks for this extensive research note.
Unfortunately my audio card is a PCI, not PCIe!

 

[SeeNoEvil]

Today very few people bother with old Windows 98 hardware and software.
I seek knowledges from people who may have such experiences.

Nowaday, in Windows worlds, most people use Windows 2000, ME(!), Vista (!),
XP, 7.
In term of queries and responses, most people use Google, Yahoo or other
search engines.

I hope to find civilized techies in the news groups.

I cannot assume people who still use or have knowledge about these obsole
hardware and software access, browse just ONE particulat news group.

Sorry for cross posting. I am not trying to spam anyone, sale any product.

Please keep your insults away from this good group!

 

[98 Guy]

Today very few people bother with old Windows 98 hardware and
software. I seek knowledges from people who may have such
experiences.

You should focus your post to these groups then:

microsoft.public.win98.gen_discussion
alt.windows98
alt.comp.os.windows-98

But primarily the first group.

I am probably your best source for win-98 information, since I run
win-98 on my office computer and home computer for the past 12 years.

Anyone else reading this might run win-98 as part of a dual-boot setup,
or run win-98 in a VM.

I hope to find civilized techies in the news groups.

When it comes to win-98, I am your best resource on usenet in terms of
knowing how to best configure a win-98 system for day-to-day use.

Sorry for cross posting.

Cross-posting is correct and proper for usenet.

But now you know that you won't find much help in alt.comp.hardware.

The single best advice I can give you regarding running windows 98 today
is to look at KernelEx:

http://kernelex.sourceforge.net/

 

[Tim Slattery]

Yes, but...

MS originated the microsoft.public.* groups on its own servers. This
being Usenet, other servers started carrying them and they acquired a
life of their own. After MS shut down its Usenet server, the groups
continue to exist on many (most?) Usenet hosts.

 

[philo]

Yes, but...

MS originated the microsoft.public.* groups on its own servers. This
being Usenet, other servers started carrying them and they acquired a
life of their own. After MS shut down its Usenet server, the groups
continue to exist on many (most?) Usenet hosts.

Now that I really think about it you are right as I recall Microsoft
maintained a news-server

 

[98 Guy]

Yes, but...

MS originated the microsoft.public.* groups on its own servers.
This being Usenet, other servers started carrying them and they
acquired a life of their own.

I agree that MS did create the groups in the first place, but to what
extent (for how long) they existed ONLY on MS's servers - I don't know.

But once MS peered their servers with others (which was happening at
least as far back as 1993 I think) then the concept newsgroup
"maintenance" or administration no longer applies.

After MS shut down its Usenet server, the groups continue
to exist on many (most?) Usenet hosts.

Yes, we know that.

Because there is nothing "magical" about the string "microsoft.public."
in terms of what that string implies for the ownership, existance, or
control of usenet newsgroups that have that string in their group-name.

There were some Micro$oft haters (such as Julien Élie back in Dec 2009)
that wanted to remove the microsoft hierarchy from some "official" list
of newsgroups (or he wanted to issue group-cancel messages for those
groups). In the end, he did issue group-cancels for a few hundred MS
groups (based on little or no traffic or usage) - and some (or most)
usenet admins honored those cancels.

The motivation for this was MS's disconnection from usenet and their
internal corporate abandonment of usenet as a means of information
exchange and discussion. With MS pulling the plug on their usenet
server, there was no technical reason why the rest of the "world-wide"
usenet needed to do anything about the microsoft hierarchy other than
continue to carry them as-is. Those that wanted to do something (like
delete the groups, such as Elie) did so based on philosophical or
"house-keeping" reasons - even though many of those MS groups were very
active and had no equivalent in the alt or comp hierarchies.

 

[Paul]

Yes, but...

MS originated the microsoft.public.* groups on its own servers. This
being Usenet, other servers started carrying them and they acquired a
life of their own. After MS shut down its Usenet server, the groups
continue to exist on many (most?) Usenet hosts.

There is a reason the microsoft.* groups did not disappear from
the rest of USENET.

Microsoft never generated the appropriate control messages for
the groups.

The administrator of my server, was perfectly willing to pull
the plug on microsoft.* and on the day after Microsoft did it.
*If* they generated signed control messages.

Microsoft never did that.

There was an individual (Julien Elie???), who used to
create control information, to help administrators manage
microsoft.*. For example, before Microsoft bailed on those
groups, there was a "cleanup" maybe a year or two before,
where some number of groups disappeared. Julien created the
appropriate control message content for that cleanup, and
administrators wishing to remove the unused/obsolete groups,
could do them in one shot.

Now, when it came time to blow away the remaining microsoft.*
the unofficial nature of the "fake" control messages was
considered as a factor. If Microsoft had properly run their
stuff, issued signed control messages, I expect the two servers I use
would have honored real, official looking control messages,
and again, in one command invocation, the thousand or fifteen
hundred of them or whatever, would have been removed. In just
the same way that many admins would have done for the
previous "cleanup" cycle.

The administrators were willing to trim the groups previously,
because in the "cleanup" cycle, no one was using the groups
in question. But for the final step, where Microsoft blows
away groups that still have a trickle of content, the
administrators tend to support groups carrying conversations,
and then it was more or less decided that the criteria would
be real live signed control messages. Which of course,
were never issued, because Microsoft never bothered with
that in the first place.

Paul

 

[98 Guy]

There is a reason the microsoft.* groups did not disappear from
the rest of USENET.

Microsoft never generated the appropriate control messages for
the groups.

Why would it have been "a good idea" (tm) to remove the microsoft
hierarchy from the world-wide usenet?

Given that many people were using those groups to communicate
information and have discussions about various MS-related topics, I
question the logic behind the idea that those groups "should have" been
removed from the public usenet just because their long-ago corporate
creator was abandoning them.

Can you (Paul) explain that logic?

The administrator of my server, was perfectly willing to pull
the plug on microsoft.* and on the day after Microsoft did it.
*If* they generated signed control messages.

Again, I ask why?

Why would active and useful venues for public discussion be so easily
waved out of existance - for such a trivial reason. ?

Now, when it came time to blow away the remaining microsoft.*
the unofficial nature of the "fake" control messages was
considered as a factor.

No.

Elie did generate some control messages that were honored and those
groups were blown away, so I don't see why any other control messages
for the remaining groups would have been seen as fake.

The real reason was that there was some opposition to the out-right
removal of otherwise useful and productive newsgroups, and that having
"microsoft" in the name of a newsgroup should not itself be a death
sentence for a group.

Which of course, were never issued, because Microsoft never
bothered with that in the first place.

Microsoft stopped playing any role in those groups long ago, and this
was well known, so I don't know why anyone would have expected them to
all-of-a-sudden get involved with those groups beyond what they do on
their own servers.

Perhaps Microsoft did not intend (or were ambivalent) that those groups
be removed from the wider, global usenet, and hence did not issue
control messages for that reason.

In the end, I think there was tension between the Microsoft-haters and
the more rational people that value what usenet represents and hence the
microsoft hierarchy still exists on usenet.

 

[moansalot]

The topic seems to have been hijacked

Is it not a valid suggestion to query why the OP can not use a newer Audio
Card thereby avoiding the WIN 98 issues- admittidly the choice is less
extensive but surely those currently available must be able to carry out
whatever specialised functions he is relying upon.



"Moansalot