[Offler]

so i have some things to report this early morning

1. GTA III
I was playing the game and in the middle of one mission DVDrom lost the track, or better say it was losing it slowly. The game freezed but system was able to fully recover by CTRL+ALT+DEL and later closing the GTA 3. it took several minutes but i would prefer other behaviour with cdroms... Maybe hw and sw related...

2. IFS for EXT2
Linux filesystem is available for NT based system throught IFS

http://www.fs-driver.org/

seems interesting to me, but this bring us closer to linux at all. i tried the driver with win98 but i was not sucessful. also the inf files are in windows NT signature and i am unable to translate them into chicago...

3. Crashes history...
The system stability is still improving. even serious app crashes can be recovered safely. their occurence is smaller. when i look at crash history on first page i see that major trouble (especially unexpected errors) are quite few.

right now i am running my system for approximately nine hours without reboot. yesterday i tried some critical apps such as oblivion, but the stability was not affected.

4. kernel EX, xp compatibility , wll and other projects
I hope that wll upgrade will be soon here classical wll is really littlebit mystery for me. i cant predict its behaviour. minor things as bios settings or config sys are indirectly affecting its behaviour, and i dont want to use english io.sys and command.com

also i hope that in some time there will be possibility to improve compatibility even for apps which are generating error messages when executed. these are really big problem to me.

[Drugwash]

Offler said:

I hope that wll upgrade will be soon here classical wll is really littlebit mystery for me. i cant predict its behaviour. minor things as bios settings or config sys are indirectly affecting its behaviour, and i dont want to use english io.sys and command.com.

I haven't seen your system specific's IO.SYS and COMMAND.COM attached in the 'WLL fixes...' thread. I intend to create a universal patcher but I need all possible samples so I can find a pattern.

At the moment I have a working WLL, however protection is still not perfect and badly chosen coordinates can lead to a corrupt screen and animation.

Tonight I have also finished first version of a LOGO.SYS patcher - no need to hexedit your bitmap, the tool will do it for you, as elegantly as possible. I'd be happy if you could test them both and offer some much needed feedback.

[Marius '95]

I have lots of problems with resources and network connections. Win98 freezes when I close eMule or any other program that opens a large number of network connections and I encounter more and more programs that do not free resources when no longer needed.
For me, system stability is getting worse every day.

[Offler]

i dont use emule. i think that latest versions were not win98 compliant anymore. i use u*******. No problem at all.

[dencorso]

Offler, on Mar 10 2008, 05:40 AM, said:

i dont use emule. i think that latest versions were not win98 compliant anymore. i use u*******. No problem at all.

That's not true. I use eMule v. 0.48a without any problems. Have had it on for over 40h, then closed it and used the system some more, then got a perfect shutdown, twice (usually I don't use the system for much longer than 12h without shutting it down). Now, before I removed ACPI and APM (link), eMule used to cause random crashes in my system. So, if eMule doesn't run well, removing ACPI and APM is a good bet. This is my own experience. Lots of others say its nonsense (read the posts following the one I gave the link to, and you'll see it), but the fact is it solved many obscure problems of stability for me along the years. Sometimes, however, disabling "use IRQ Steering" gets you into trouble, so test if that is necessary in your system (if all goes well with that on, let it be). And, yes, it is common to have this kind of problem with VIA chipsets, but that's not a VIA exclusive problem. Some other chipsets show it too.

[Offler]

i have via chipset... it works perfectly

in this case try to follow win upgrades as i have installed them - look at first page... take care on drivers...

[Drugwash]

Marius'95, on Mar 10 2008, 08:24 AM, said:

I have lots of problems with resources and network connections. Win98 freezes when I close eMule or any other program that opens a large number of network connections [...]

This happens to me too, especially after I 'optimized' the network connection with TZ Connection Booster and TCP Optimizer. And yes, I do have a VIA chipset myself on this mobo.

But I found a not-so-elegant solution to work this around: I disconnect eMule, start SysInternals' TCPView, quickly select all connections and shut them down forcibly. There will be some new connections in the mean time, but the system can manage them gracefully. And so I avoid the BSOD.

Otherwise eMule works just fine in Win98, just needs MSLU.

IIRC, I also posted in the eMule board about this issue. Ornis sent a newsletter to translators around X-Mas or so (I'm maintaining Romanian translation in official eMule), saying there will be a new version soon, but nothing showed up since.

This post has been edited by Drugwash: 10 March 2008 - 03:39 AM

[Marius '95]

Drugwash, on Mar 10 2008, 11:37 AM, said:

But I found a not-so-elegant solution to work this around: I disconnect eMule, start SysInternals' TCPView, quickly select all connections and shut them down forcibly. There will be some new connections in the mean time, but the system can manage them gracefully. And so I avoid the BSOD.

That's exactly how I close eMule.

But there's the other problem, with resources. eMule consumes a lot of resources and if some other program has a leak, the system will quickly crash.
Some time ago I encountered a resource problem in OUT_KS.DLL (a kernel streaming plugin for Winamp). I wrote a message to author and he found the bug: an object was deleted but the resources were not released.
It seems that WinXP automatically released those resources when the object was deleted, but Win9x did not. I'm not a programmer and I may be wrong.

About helping the system be more stable:
I like Win9x because CTRL+ALT+DEL really stops every running program. (In WinNT, programs continue to run.) Is it possible to modify this behavior and allow ONE program to run? That program could be an antivirus or some advanced task manager.

[Offler]

i dont like tcp or other internet optimizers. i never measured any better performance when these apps were used. instead of that i bought intel lan card . its driver and bundled software is much better as other products i met.

[Drugwash]

I've seen Intel LAN drivers. They indeed have a lot of settings available, more than the average Joe would ever be able to handle. However, I believe them as being about the same settings that these optimizers are tweaking, for NICs that do not have a GUI for user-customizable options.

At first run after a vanilla Windows setup, TZ Connection Booster will show all options as 'have not been set', which means the drivers go for some default values or they're not even initialized. The program offers the default values, which can be manually altered by knowledgeable users.

What this program doesn't do is set TTL to a user-defined value and that is why I use TCP Optimizer after it. It will set TTL to 64 and also other settings that I never bothered to check for, as long as everything went just fine after the tweaks. In fact, my connection might just be too slow for the values I've chosen.

Marius said:

But there's the other problem, with resources. eMule consumes a lot of resources and if some other program has a leak, the system will quickly crash.

As a matter of fact, eMule is the most stable application I've used. Compared to my browser that eats 35-40% of the resources and a fully customized Miranda IM that eats about the same, eMule is a mere child. Apart from the exit issue, I haven't seen it crash since a few versions ago.



Apologies, we're going off-topic already.

[Offler]

np. i welcome any discussion about win9x software, when related to stability and performance of system.

[Offler]

i started again my search for FAT32 alternatives. read this:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//lofiversion/i...php?t13056.html

there are a lot of possible solutions...

hmmm: http://www.tucows.com/preview/247503

This post has been edited by Offler: 11 March 2008 - 03:33 PM

[Offler]

ok. right now i have passed almost all tests i have required with my own system. few apps which can be ommitted have been removed from project so i am able to push the project to second phase.

i shall ask some my friends if they wish to install windows 98SE with patches (on first page) and see what the system does and how it looks. in this case i shall ask some friends which are not IT skilled. their references shall be used in further development i hope so...

also some suggestions

current "evolved" windows 98SE miss some things:
- support for hyperthreading (p4 with HT)
- support for multithreading (dual core and higher)
- large ram (partially fixed by commercial product)
- hi cpu speeds (what about test with low speed dualcore? has anybody tried this and measured core performance?)
- driver support (limited by manufacturers, but quite good when searching for all wdm standard drivers)
- files larger than 4gb (NTFS can be applied but window stil cannot write more than 4gb)

this is just very mad question... but... can be these things solved for future?

This post has been edited by Offler: 27 March 2008 - 01:35 PM

[Offler]

back again

DVB-T television support in Windows 98SE Possible:
after few months i was able to run digital TV, using ATI Radeon X850xt and Pinnacle 300i. the mpeg decoder is using GPU to decode. the app is working correctl mostly, but i am using older version and no newer versions are good. development of newer version stopped.

ICQ: Miranda
not bad but not good will test in future. some minor bugs still here.

VSfilter.dll
for better subtitles the version 2,23 is better than other newer...

[Offler]

codecs support:
look for them at www.free-codecs.com

FFDshow - classically the SSE version was developed for NT5 or higher windows kernel (2k, XP and higher). The MMX was developed even for Win9x when it has MMX support - right now i use the previous version of it. The current version was not supported by my system. The unsigned version is as always available for all systems.


first of all you need strong hardware, but i measured that even if you use multicore processor you will hardly gain better performance as with Pentium III. For example q6600 has better performance only due its frequency.

Xvid - Koepi's Build
Decoder and encoder works perfectly even in windows 9x. it has only small trouble in Start panel while the lnk files are linking to rundll32 which is located in system32 directory - default for 2k and Xp systems. also i dont recomend the Nic's build (if i remember correctly it has not been updated since 2004). full deblock, full dering + vsfilter 2.23 is quite CPU consuming but if you have Intel Pentium III-S "Tualatin" or something with similar performance (over 400mflops) you will be able to play movies with this strong realtime postprocessing.

x264 or h264 Mpeg4
i found codec called x264Vfw. not available at freecodecs site, but available at sourceforge. i used rather old version from year 2006 but recently i found newer version from december 2008. very good for decoding, but encoding - allows multithreading, but not usable at all at Win9x systems. any encoding is very time consuming.

Indeo Codec
on freecodecs is available version 5.11 which is newer as version available with win98SE.

Mpeg2
The best codec i found for this format is clsvsd.ax which is part of PowerDVD 6.0. if you use version 7 the player will crash when playback ends or if you close the player. If you own any product where was bundled PowerDVD6 (eg. graphic card as ati x800, or some DVD writers) you may be able to use legally, since powerDVD is not freeware.

the same codec i use for Mpeg2 demux from DVB-T card and for playing DVDs. this codec can use hardware acceleration of your graphics to decode... this works with some ATi cards if i remember correctly. also i read some articles about ATI decoder - obviously the same codec, but in newer version. if you have the correct installation CD you will be able to download it from ATI/AMD page.

Audio:
MP3 codec didnt changed since 1999.

AC3
in some cases it is provided by Creative as a part of its Soundblasters. the question is if that codec work HW or SW based. i dont use it since acessibility to it is terrible.

AC3 Filter
for me the best choice which allows me to set voice level for each speaker separately. still compatible with Win9x


Player: Media Player Classic
I was able to use all renderers including Haali and VMR9. NEVER check "VMR mixer mode". player will freeze in most cases.

[Drugwash]

Codecs installed on my system:
- AC3 filter 1.51
- Bink and Smacker
- DivX 5.2.1
- DScaler 5 MPEG decoders
- Intel A/V Codecs v2.0
- oggcodecs 0.71.0946
- RadLight APE DirectShow filter
- RadLight MPC DirectShow filter
- Valex AC3-DTS codec
- Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 VCM
- Monkey's Audio
- MP3 Parser DirectShow filter
- QuickTime Alternative 1.56
- x264VFW
- Xvid MPEG-4 Video Codec 1.2.1

[sp193]

32bit icon support - Do you mean the icons on the desktop or in the taskbar?

If it is the icons in the taskbar then try -> http://www.dr-hoiby....Color/index.php
I know that it is only 256 colors, but most tray icons are only 256 colors at most right? Even XP seems to only have 256 color support (To me at least)

[Offler]

to drugwash:
dont use Xvid and DivX together. there are two reasons. Xvid can decode any DivX movie, and DivX is more cpu consuming for encoding than other codecs. the stupid divix logo in the corner is also annoying me.

as always try to use so few codecs as possible. you use bit much of them, but if they dont make trouble it is OK. jus be sure that it doesnt happent that two codecs will compete in for the place in decoding stream...

I personally use one single codec for encoding, and other for decoding. if you need only decoder, without codec specific post processing the FFDShow should be the best choice.

Why Xvid... i use two versions of xvid. one of them is extremely old installed in xvid directory. this codec i use for encoding while it has low CPU requirements. then i use the newest koepis, installed in Xvid2 directory for decoding which is the best choice, since it can make video extremely clear - without any sign of quantization.

quite weird installation but it works

to sp193: i mean desktop icons.

[Drugwash]

The reason I've piled up all those codecs is simple: whenever some video wouldn't play, I either let GOMplayer search for the correct codec or I manually googled the web for one.

DivX would've never been present if it could decode older Div3 video files. But GOM complained it couldn't play those, neither with Xvid nor with the built-in codec, so I had to install DivX.

The others have been installed for the very same reason. For example, .bik videos (from older games) can't be played with anything else (to my knowledge) than Bink & Smacker's own player.

I also got lots of troubles with certain very old videos, also from games, which needed a specific Intel Indeo codec, older than the one built into Win98SE. Had a hard time finding the right one, since there were two of them at large and the wrong one was the most available around.

I must say FFDshow has by large failed me, with a very choppy playback back when I was using the 400MHz Pentium II CPU. Back then I tried any and every possible combination of settings, to no avail, so I scrapped it and decided to never touch it again.

The only problem I have currently, is DVD playback. Despite a 700MHz Pentium III CPU, 256MB PC133 RAM and 128MB GeForce4 Ti4200 video, the video is choppy. I've seen a 600MHz P III with same amount of RAM and a lousy 64MB GeForce2 video play DVDs with no problem whatsoever, so it's quite frustrating. Granted, the other machine was running XP so maybe the codecs were more compatible since they were newer. The DVD-RW unit is the same for both machines: Samsung SH-S182 (mine is version "D" - no Lightscribe - while the other is "M") and the player is also the same (GOMplayer).

[Offler]

iy the media player classic. i dont know the gom player, but the MPC is just the simpliest solution for me. No glitter on it at all.

the chopiness can be reason of your bios settings. if you wish try the MMX version of FFDshow. i just cant recall the number of mmx build that works with win9x... your machine has to be able run videos with ffdshow without trouble, and if am i right your cpu has MMX...

Current search for software:
- something that can play Digital CD Audio, except Windows Media Player9. Really no other software worked for me. at all the WMP9 is needed more even for WMV files which are choppy when WMP9 is not present.