[Mijzelf]

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Which Win98 applications or combinations of applications benefit particularly by having 2GB rather than 1GB of RAM?

Applications using lots of memory. I don't think eMule is one of them. Video and photo editing and things like that.
AFAIK in most cases people want to use that amounts of memory because they have a dual boot system with a more demanding OS.

[rloew]

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First of all, congratulations to rloew that the patch has become more generic. The real test that it works with international versions of Windows 98 would be if it also works with Arabic Win98.

Arabic should not be a problem. DBCS versions such as Chinese were more of a challenge.

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Here a question to rloew: Which Win98 applications or combinations of applications benefit particularly by having 2GB rather than 1GB of RAM? What's the benefit of having 2GB of RAM available? How about some benchmarks? How does eMule on Win98 run under heavy load with 2GB vs 1GB?

Image and Video editing, some mathematical programs, etc. Combinations of programs only increase the need for memory. Where possible, I use 3GB of RAM or more to get additional benefit. I don't know of any Benchmarking program suitable to test this. I haven't used EMule, although I suspect it is more network intensive than memory intensive.

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Applications using lots of memory. I don't think eMule is one of them. Video and photo editing and things like that.
AFAIK in most cases people want to use that amounts of memory because they have a dual boot system with a more demanding OS.

Many are only interested in compatability so they often use the workarounds such as MaxPhysPage. Unfortunately these workarounds don't work in Safe Mode.

[Multibooter]

Mijzelf, on May 31 2008, 05:13 AM, said:

AFAIK in most cases people want to use that amounts of memory because they have a dual boot system with a more demanding OS.

Yes. In a multiboot-system it is essential that the older opsys can function with the newer hardware. Whether Win98 actually can use the additional memory is of secondary importance.

[Multibooter]

rloew, on May 31 2008, 08:24 AM, said:

Arabic should not be a problem

Microsoft had a lot of problems with the Arabic version. If I remember right, there are 3 families of Windows 98: Western, Arabic and Chinese.

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Image and Video editing, some mathematical programs, etc..

WinXP is superior to Win98 in these areas. Other areas where WinXP applications are preferrable include burning CDs/DVDs (better burn quality); defragmentation of FAT-cum-NTSF disks. Eventually most of my Win98 applications will migrate to WinXP, with one general exception: applications which access the Internet will stay with Win98.

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I haven't used EMule, although I suspect it is more network intensive than memory intensive.

Under Win98 a heavily loaded mule (e.g. 1200-1700 files in the download list, max 99 simultaneous connections, max 400 sources, max 5000 sharers in the queue) uses all system resources to the extreme. Running a second application will very often cause the mule under Win98 to crash within a couple of hours, otherwise it runs from 3 to 10 days before crashing. I remember increasing RAM from 256 to 512MB made the mule run days longer under Win98 before crashing (there is a memory leakage problem) and allowed substantial increases in the number of files in the download list and of the max.number of sources, effectively increasing the GBs/day.

The mule is running day and night, so using an old laptop which doesn't make any noise seems the best choice. Desktops are just too noisy and too energy-inefficient. This raises the next question: Does anybody have Win98 running on a LAPTOP with 2GB of RAM? Which make and model?

[rloew]

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Microsoft had a lot of problems with the Arabic version. If I remember right, there are 3 families of Windows 98: Western, Arabic and Chinese

I requested a copy of VMM.VXD in Arabic. It Patched without any problem.

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Under Win98 a heavily loaded mule (e.g. 1200-1700 files in the download list, max 99 simultaneous connections, max 400 sources, max 5000 sharers in the queue) uses all system resources to the extreme. Running a second application will very often cause the mule under Win98 to crash within a couple of hours, otherwise it runs from 3 to 10 days before crashing. I remember increasing RAM from 256 to 512MB made the mule run days longer under Win98 before crashing (there is a memory leakage problem) and allowed substantial increases in the number of files in the download list and of the max.number of sources, effectively increasing the GBs/day.

Then the extra RAM would probably help. You can test compatabilty with the Demo for 10 Minutes.

I am working on a RAMDISK that will utilize the 64-Bit RAM in AMD based Computers with 4GB of RAM or more.

[Drugwash]

It takes more than 10 minutes for eMule to get fully loaded with all sources and UL/DL connections.

I've always used FreeRAM XP Pro memory manager on my machines (and still do, as I only have 256MB RAM currently). Never had eMule crashing for lack of RAM but also never had it running for 3 days or more in a row - system gets slown down for as much as having Windows system clock running hours late.

[rloew]

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've always used FreeRAM XP Pro memory manager on my machines (and still do, as I only have 256MB RAM currently). Never had eMule crashing for lack of RAM but also never had it running for 3 days or more in a row - system gets slown down for as much as having Windows system clock running hours late.

I have seen the same clock problem with Azureus even with 3GB of RAM. I generally don't run it for more than a day at a time without rebooting.

[RetroOS]

I don't recall seeing the clock problem... But I find that if I run BitTorrent client for more than a day, Windows starts to become unstable and the longer I leave it, the more likely it will crash on me.
Rebooting once a day when using BitTorrent works fine.
I'll have to look out for the clock drift...

[dencorso]

RetroOS, on Jun 10 2008, 06:09 AM, said:

I don't recall seeing the clock problem... But I find that if I run BitTorrent client for more than a day, Windows starts to become unstable and the longer I leave it, the more likely it will crash on me.
Rebooting once a day when using BitTorrent works fine.
I'll have to look out for the clock drift...

Neither do I... I'll be paying attention to it also. I've let either eMule or uTorrent run for just under two days in a row many times. Sometimes Win 98SE freezes some time after the first day, but most often it will go on working OK and shut down beautifully at the end. However, every time it's already running for more than one day, if I subject it to heavy browser usage together with the running P2P it freezes quite fast. Rebooting once a day prevents these problems and is the sensible way of doing it, of course. I also have run eMule and uTorrent concomitantly many times, but never for more than about 8 h, without any perceptible problem, although two P2P clients working at the same time leave browsing somewhat irresponsive and, in particular, uploading files becomes terribly slow (but that's because I use ADSL, of course).

[Multibooter]

rloew, on Jun 9 2008, 01:36 AM, said:

Then the extra RAM would probably help. You can test compatabilty with the Demo for 10 Minutes.

I'll be in Europe until September. After that I'll run a test of the uptime of eMule under Win98 with 512MB, then with 1150MB of available RAM. If the increase in available memory from 512 to 1150MB indicates a significant increase in eMule uptime under Win98, I'll buy your patch. By the way, for getting a quick look at the uptime of a dedicated computer running only eMule, I am using a nice little piece of freeware by Donald Leavitt called Uptime http://home1.gte.net...ime/uptime.html

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I am working on a RAMDISK that will utilize the 64-Bit RAM in AMD based Computers with 4GB of RAM or more.

I am not sure a large RAMDISK would help eMule. The critical directory is that of the temporary files, which is huge. I have put the Temp files onto a separate 2nd internal 80 GB HDD. The size of this directory is currently around 60GB. eMule can get around the 127GB HDD limit, it lets you define multiple harddisks for temporary files http://www.emule-project.net/home/perl/hel...mp;topic_id=112 An old dedicated eMule laptop of mine (Inspiron 7500) can have up to 3 internal HDDs, so a max. of 240-360 GB of space for temporary files should be enough for the next couple of years.

[Multibooter]

Drugwash, on Jun 9 2008, 07:12 AM, said:

It takes more than 10 minutes for eMule to get fully loaded with all sources and UL/DL connections.

My experience has been a minimum of 30 minutes and about 2-3 hours to get the mule going, but with a large download list (about 1200 files).

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I've always used FreeRAM XP Pro memory manager on my machines (and still do, as I only have 256MB RAM currently). Never had eMule crashing for lack of RAM but also never had it running for 3 days or more in a row - system gets slown down for as much as having Windows system clock running hours late.

I just checked, uptime is currently 1 day 5hrs and the system clock is 24 minutes late.
Added: uptime is currently 2 days 8 hours, system clock is 26 minutes late, very little download activity, maybe 0.5GB in last 24hrs
Added: uptime is currently 4 days 1hr, system clock is 33 min late

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 16 June 2008 - 04:20 PM

[Multibooter]

dencorso, on Jun 10 2008, 01:02 PM, said:

I also have run eMule and uTorrent concomitantly many times, but never for more than about 8 h, without any perceptible problem, although two P2P clients working at the same time leave browsing somewhat irresponsive and, in particular, uploading files becomes terribly slow

The best solution is running eMule on a dedicated old computer. I gave up on Azureus & uTorrent because they don't provide additional downloads and conflict with eMule, under Win98 at least.

Uptime >3 days is helpful for downloading rare files, sources are not always online, and queues may be very long. eMulePlus had an option to save/load sources, but not eMule, as far as I know, but since Kademlia has become the major network, eMulePlus is out.

[rloew]

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I am not sure a large RAMDISK would help eMule.

The 64-Bit RAMDISK was not intended to hold EMule files.

It would be more useful as SWAP in a system with 4GB or more of RAM since the RAM above 3 to 3.5GB is not accessible to Windows9X.
Windows 9X can support 4GB of combined RAM and SWAP.

Some people also want to use RAMDISK to keep system temporaries that they don't want to keep after shutdown.

I have completed work on the 64-Bit RAMDISK as well as a 32-Bit RAMDISK that isn't limited to 700MB.

[Multibooter]

rloew, on Jun 13 2008, 08:52 PM, said:

Some people also want to use RAMDISK to keep system temporaries that they don't want to keep after shutdown.

I have completed work on the 64-Bit RAMDISK as well as a 32-Bit RAMDISK that isn't limited to 700MB.

A Win98 which would have the registry and the directories Windows, Program Files and My Documents in RAM (after copying a virgin installation to RAM) would be very interesting, no more traces left behind after you turn the computer off.

The difficulty would be to create the RAMDISK and to copy the files of these 3 directories (long filenames!) to RAM BEFORE Win98 is loaded. If you can get these files/directories into RAM, you could boot into a virtual Win98 on the RAM disk.

[rloew]

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A Win98 which would have the registry and the directories Windows, Program Files and My Documents in RAM (after copying a virgin installation to RAM) would be very interesting, no more traces left behind after you turn the computer off.

The difficulty would be to create the RAMDISK and to copy the files of these 3 directories (long filenames!) to RAM BEFORE Win98 is loaded. If you can get these files/directories into RAM, you could boot into a virtual Win98 on the RAM disk.

What you are suggesting requires copying most of the files to RAM. Copying Long File Names is a problem in DOS. It is much simpler and faster to mirror a
Partition from a Hard Disk or a CD directly to the RAMDISK.

Since my RAMDISKs are not limited in size, you can mirror the entire Windows Partition to RAMDISK and run entirely from RAM. I have already done this using a
CD and XMSDSK to install a small Windows system without using any Hard Drives. This was before I wrote my new RAMDISKs.

Owners of Computers with 4GB of RAM could put Windows in the fourth GB and still have the 3GB of working RAM.

[Multibooter]

rloew, on Jun 20 2008, 10:50 AM, said:

It is much simpler and faster to mirror a Partition from a Hard Disk or a CD directly to the RAMDISK.

Since my RAMDISKs are not limited in size, you can mirror the entire Windows Partition to RAMDISK and run entirely from RAM. I have already done this using a
CD and XMSDSK to install a small Windows system without using any Hard Drives. This was before I wrote my new RAMDISKs.

Owners of Computers with 4GB of RAM could put Windows in the fourth GB and still have the 3GB of working RAM.

Wow, I didn't think of mirroring a partition to RAMDISK. Eventually I will have to set up with my boot manager (System Commander) a separate "private" Win98 opsys selection which runs completely in RAM, besides the regular Win98 opsys selection which runs on HDD.

Over 10 years ago, before there were USB memory sticks, I set up Win95 to run on a laptop without a HDD, just from a boot floppy and an external (non-bootable) 1 GB Jaz drive connected via a SCSI PCMCIA card. Now the privacy aspect would be important, at that time it was a slick way to circumvent some mean copy-protection schemes which created hidden bad sectors (the Iomega Copy Machine sector copier even copied bad sectors).

Booting into a completely RAM-disk based Win98 would even delete at shutdown the info added to the "cloaked" (=not visible & access denied under Win98) Index.dat files created by the MS proto-root-kit in Win98 http://support.it-mate.co.uk/?mode=Product...=index.datsuite

This post has been edited by Multibooter: 20 June 2008 - 08:02 PM