Glad to hear it. IME they're more downgrades than upgrades.
I dont know - but have been surprised to find how much new hardward
still supports 98. Even some kit that says nt only I run on 98.
ugh - you get the 2k style UI, which is much worse than 98. DOS
support becomes a pain, and I dont think it has any advantages once 98
is suitably patched.
not many of us about
Considering that modern software may not even install on
Win98se
I get told this all the time. All modern apps run on 98, though the
latest versions of the most popular brands of them often wont. Which
tbh is a good thing if you want performance, as much of todays
software is so very bloated. Use an earlier version or another app
that does the same job, and I dont know anything you cant do. Yes I
do... one app with no 98 equivalent... I forget but its a secondary
defence security app. Note also that a few apps that say winnt only
actually do usually run on 98, skype being a well known example.
Single core only support is the big limit with 98. Fastest I've seen
was just over 5G, using some extremely aggressive clocking. However 98
vs xp gives quite different performance in real world apps, so that 5G
is equivalent performance wise to a much faster single core cpu under
xp.
If an onboard feature like sound isn't supported, you'd
simply have to buy a legacy sound card that is supported.
Those can be rather inexpensive, about $5-15 for some of
them at surplus computer 'sites.
yeah, it an easy solution when this happens.
IIRC, both WinME and Win98se allow up to 1GB of memory so
long as you do the system.ini edit necessary to limit the
vcache.
98se handles upto 512M RAM with no modification, so use that much or
less during install. (And a complete install only takes minutes on a
new machine.) The simplest workaround is to limit how much RAM win
uses with system.ini. A better option that enables 98se to access a
few gigabytes is... well its a 3rd party patch created by someone
still wanting to run 98. There are several patches you'll need:
* nusb3.1 for decent usb support - works with most chipsets but not
all
* replace defrag, chkdsk and scandisk, and scandskw with versions from
win ME, as 98's originals corrupt >128G internal discs. (check your
eulas as its not freeware)
* for >137G internal hdd support theres another 3rd party patch
* RAM support patch - There's a thread on some ms forum called
"Unofficial Win98 SE Service Pack" that should get you there.
I'll not try to talk you into a newer OS, but keep in mind
that this system will last a few years if all goes well and
that is going to make it harder and harder to support all
the various modern software and hardware out there.
Its slightly bit harder than it was, but I've not found it any
challenge. Most new hardware runs fine on 98.
A
simple thing like plugging in a scanner or MP3 player could
be a showstopper when there's no driver for win9x.
No mp3 player needs any driver on 98 once you've put nusb3.1 on. In
fact I've so far had marginally better usb support under 98 than xp.
Re scanners, there are lots of used scanners about with 98 drivers
freely available online, its not really an issue. Its not as if any
useful new features have come out since then.
It's
also more of a pain to deal with hard drives larger than
120GB
a patch takes support to - and I might be wrong about the figure but I
think 2.2TB
and you don't have support for more secure browsers
like IE7 or Firefox 3.
Plenty of good 3rd party browsers run on 98, including Opera and
various others.
98 will never be as secure as xp, and it has real stability issues,
but in so many other respects it wins.
One important point with 98: when it crashes it often takes out a few
bites of data from C:. This is one reason why 98 needs a reinstall
after a year or 2. The key thing then is not to put your user data on
C:, or it will get quietly corrupted over time. D: and up dont seem to
suffer any problems from crashes. And of course 2x HDDs gives
marginally better performance.
Obviously 15,000rpm large cache sata drives will maximise performance
of the main bottleneck, if you can justify the cost. Add raid for more
speed...
In fact if you wanted a serious performance boost, you could use a 4G
flash based HDD as C:. File access times would be tiny compared to a
mechanical hdd. Life expectancy of flash is limited, but 4G's cheap
now, and it would go like a rocket. Stick with a reliable mechanical
hdd for user data.
98 leaves xp for dust performance-wise, even with a standard 7,200
hdd.
A few more basic necessities with 98, apps rather than patches:
* Wintop, so you can spot runaway processes instantly
* Taskill for instant death to any misbehaving process
* Prior - this gives you a process priority system as found in winNT.
Its not perfect, but its a big improvement.
* and of course a decent multipane explorer / file manager - plenty to
choose from
NT
