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Windows 98 in '08


CooledComputer

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cool!

it hard to beleive that is gonna be 10 years old isn't it?

Indeed. Even Win95 would seem like a recent operating system to me if I weren't constantly reminded by the web (and other media) how ancient it is - if its existence is even acknowledged, that is - many sources seem unaware of anything older than XP.

As long as my MoBo and Graphic card stay alive, I'll keep w98se running on them.

The MoBo, the Graphic card and the case are the only pieces that remain from the computer I bought 5 years ago.

Only 5? The newer one of my two workstations is from 2000 or -01. The older one is from 1995 or -96, and was originally a 133 MHz Pentium (classic, not MMX), with a 1.2 GB IDE drive, 4x CD-ROM, Opti924 sound and S3 Trio64 video. I think the AT case (minitower) and power supply are the only parts that haven't been upgraded: the current specs include AMD K6-III CPU, 73 GB 10k RPM SCSI disk, SCSI CD-RW, AWE32 sound and Matrox Millennium II graphics, but I still count on further upgrades. Also a very significant upgrade was the replacement of the original Win95 keyboard with a proper one with full-size space bar, Ctrl and Alt keys in place of the irritational typo-introducing windoze keys. It came with Win95, but I went back to DOS 6+Win3.x for a while until I learnt about BootGUI=0. Win95 was then used until long after Win98 was released - until around the time that I found out about 98lite.

By the time that I got the newer workstation (this one that I'm using now), I had learnt some lessons and only minor upgrades have been necessary or even interesting (e.g. from 9GB to 73GB disk, 128 to 512 MB RAM, 400 MHz Celeron to 500 MHz P3). The stupid Nvidia graphics driver (Riva TNT) also forced me to switch to Matrox graphics (G400). Due to the existence of so much poorly written software that runs slowly even on a 500 MHz Pentium3, I may upgrade to a 1.x GHz CPU (in fact, I already have several, but I need a Socket3xx->Slot1 adapter). Of course, this machine also runs Win98 (SE with many fixes and modifications).

The servers run Unix/Linux systems, and are easily accessed over the network from the Win98 machines, which greatly reduces the need to switch the workstations to Unix.

I'm running 98se now. I prefer it to all the other os/s bar linux. I wont go live on the 'net with a windows product, but prefer to 'hide' behind a linux server/gateway package , e-smith/sme 7.x here as I find most hacking programs use win based written hacking tools which generally stop at the firewall, with some exceptions, of course.

I've had more security incidents (including break-ins resulting in full root compromise) with Linux servers than with Win98 machines. All of the machines included in the comparison have (or had) been permanently on-line for years with no firewalls and with public IP-addresses. Try that with an XP box!

I cut my teeth in dos 3.11 thru 6.22, (with windows 3.11), begrudgingly upgraded to win 95b, and then to 98se. I prefer to have total system control at the dos level. I only upgraded bcoz my netscape browser wouldnt connect ne more to the sites that i needed to access.

I upgraded because I found that Win9x with BootGUI=0 actually is more DOS-compatible than Win3.x, not to mention more stable and otherwise more capable in many ways. The DOS-compatibility is the main reason why I haven't traded Win9x for Unix/Linux.

well, i had a brief stint with windows me today, and it sucked.

im going to promptly re-install 98se

what do you guys use for a media player/organizer?

anything better than winamp?

It's not necessarily better than Winamp, but I play mp3s on a nearby Linux server and connect its line-out port to the line-in port of the SB-AWE64 card of my Win98 box. This allows me to hear the music as soon as autoexec.bat initialises the sound card, and before booting the GUI.

I use 98SE because is a fast. I think that this system need to remove some unused code, to add some a new gui or to make a some compatibility with a new app and will be great!

NEXT 10 YEARS TO ALL!

Yes, it would be great to scrap the old 16-bit GUI (Win16 - that is GDI.EXE, KRNL386.EXE, etc.) in favour of a new one based on the X Window System (as used on Unix/Linux). The VMM/VxD layer (mainly VMM32.VXD which contains most core VxDs) really only needs modest upgrades, but due to the lack of source code and documentation that's a more demanding task than it might seem at first.

The 4 GB file limit is because of FAT32, not Windows 98. But, because you cannot use NTFS with Windows 98, you're SOL.

There are better alternatives than NTFS - eg. the XFS or ReiserFS of Linux.

It's a W98 limit too. W9x uses a 32 bit filepointer to keep track of the read/write location in the file. This limits the filesize to 4GiB. Fat32 uses a 32 bit field to store the filesize, which gives the same limit.

Most operating systems used 32-bit file offsets until fairly recently (I think the switch from 16 to 32-bit occurred in the 16-bit Bell Labs Research Unix V.7 in approximately 1979), and large file support took time. The kernel and device drivers were the quick part, while it was a long time until applications were upgraded to support the new (usually 64-bit) APIs.

How the he** do you guys burn DVDs? :o

I don't. I don't own a single DVD, and only received a DVD-player yesterday...

My first post here. I still love 98SE, mostly because it's MY d*** computer, not Microsoft's as they would like to claim. I use XP only when I absolutely gotta. About 98% (no pun intended) of the time, I'm in 98SE, like right now. I'm fairly certain that it's not phoning Redmond right now to report on me; I can't say that about the more "modern" flavors of Windows.

Yes, indeed. I thought they had gone as far as they could possibly dare to with XP, but Vista proves that they believe users (and hardware manufacturers) will tolerate anything, which seems an accurate assumption so far, but I think Windows will start to decline in terms of market share, especially considering that competition is increasing.

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Hi, somewan

Yes my w98 computer is only/already 5 years old.

The fun is that this cmputer is XP capable, yet runs exclusively on w98. That makes all the pro-XP/w98-detractors angry! LOL :D

I use it as a telephone, a video recorder, a multimedia convertor, a cd-Audio duplicator, a DVD duplicator/re-author, and... HOO-Hah!... also as a computer (e-mail, internet, Word, OCR, translation, photo retouching etc.)

It just doesn't serve me cofee at break time but that's not a problem because I don't drink cofee. :)

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My computer age is mixed depending on a component. it stands on rather older PIII motherboard with quite new graphics card. i can still upgrade to board which i bought two months ago and win98 will be capable to install. In fact computer designed for win98 can be brand new except graphic cards...

Win98 still can provide me everything that i need, and Immolator project is reaching its end very slowly (if i found solution i test it for longer time period). Software and system upgrades are still being developed and that is what matters. Right now i havent found a sw solution (multimedia, work, or whatever) which cannot run on both 9x and 2k based systems.

Thats not matter of MS support. Thats matter of community now. Even when i am quite young to remember i was once using 8-bit computer and while there were people able to create new software on that platform it could be useful. There was no official support like with windows. there were just people with same computers - maybe 20 users in whole city - able to create and share software. Now we got the weapon of mass destruction. Internet :) with at least hundreds of users :)

Vista has one big advantage in multithreading and 64bit support over classical XP, but nobody is currently using this kind of potential or even developing applications of daily usage. Just ask why.

When my computer shall not be able to work as i need then i shall reconsider upgrade, but... right now i really dont know which new free software shall i add? there is too much of it... :)

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I dunno, Somewan. My site stats indicate almost as many 98 users as Vista. Linux is about even; there are more MacOS hits. This is over a year after launch, even with OEM's cutting off driver support for XP. Maybe Microsoft won't get away with it this time.

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I'm using 9x systems, because they are simple. And, simpler systems are much more easy to manage. The Flash Player compatibility forced me to move to Windows 98 on computers used for the Internet browsing purpose. All others with hard drives below 128GB are Windows 95, still.

According to my experience, the best hardware platform for a 9x computer with DOS applications being used is PIII. P4 processors tend to slow down when a DOS application is working. So, with a DOS window opened a PIII or PII CPU is much faster than twice as fast (in clock) P4.

A PIII computer with 256 or 512 MB of RAM and a Windows 98 running seems to be more than enough for a normal work station. Only heavy graphics, multimedia or gaming activity requires the CPU power the P4 class CPU can only deliver.

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I agree with Sfor,

Nowadays a PC is not slow because the processor is slow, but because the OS and/or the applications are slow.

Normaly you should never see a delay between the time you double-click an icon and the application opens (unless you artificialy slow it down by enblaing animation effects).

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  • 2 weeks later...

i am still using win 98 se

have 939 amd dual core 2.4 ghz cpu (already buyed AM2 mainboard will install some day)

palit Ati X850 VGA

& asus mainboard

still can play F1 simulation on "Live for Speed"

the OS have some bugs & the LFS on 98 too but must live with it.

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I dual boot 98SE/XP on my pc but generally boot into 98SE.

My system specs are:

Mobo: Asus A8V Deluxe Rev2.0 (VIA K8T800Pro)

CPU: AMD SD4000+ (single core - overclocked by 20%)

VGA: BGF 6800GT (AGP)

OCZ 1Gb Ram (dual channel)

The system boots very fast and once loaded it is really quick and very stable.

:thumbup

EDIT: SecondEditor, I take it 98SE cannot recognise both cores of your AMD x2 cpu....

Edited by risk_reversal
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