[Drugwash]

MMX is built into CPUs since P I; I have a couple of 200MHz MMX and actually that's been my primary CPU until a couple years ago (on another mobo). I've tried the MMX version of ffdshow at the time, with no luck. Not gonna touch it again.

Dunno what I could modify in the BIOS to make video run smoother; I believe everything's just as it should, but if you have any specific settings I should look into, I'll try and post the results.

Regarding digital audio, do you mean DTS by chance? If so, an older version of PowerDVD (v4, I think) was able to play DTS correctly in Win9x. It's not freeware though.

[sp193]

Features that cannot be added without heavily rewriting the windows 9x kernel(Meaning that it isn't really feastible):
- support for hyperthreading (p4 with HT)
- support for multithreading (dual core and higher)
-large ram (partially fixed by commercial product) <- No, the problem wasn't fixed like that. You can use >2GB by editing something about your vcache, without using a commercial product, but your milliage may vary. I can't remember the solution clearly, so could someone please point him in the right direction here?

hi cpu speeds (what about test with low speed dualcore? has anybody tried this and measured core performance?) <- You CAN run win98 on a fast CPU(32-bit or 64-bit), but it would only use 1 core on any system(regardless it is a dual core or not)

files larger than 4gb (NTFS can be applied but window stil cannot write more than 4gb) <- Can't remember clearly, but I thought that there was a unofficial patch for this somewhere on this forum for kernel32.dll?

Oh, since USB3.0 is already finalized, what do all of you think are the odds of a driver for Win9x appearing?

This post has been edited by sp193: 24 December 2008 - 06:39 AM

[dencorso]

sp193, on Dec 24 2008, 10:37 AM, said:

[snip]
-large ram (partially fixed by commercial product) <- No, the problem wasn't fixed like that. You can use >2GB by editing something about your vcache, without using a commercial product, but your milliage may vary. I can't remember the solution clearly, so could someone please point him in the right direction here? [snip]

Read Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with more than 1 GiB RAM

Merry X-mas to you and all our fellow members here at MSFN!

[Offler]

Digital television:

At all solved for my machine with great sucess, but with some things that will probably never be solved.

What you will need:
Digital TV tuner (DVB - T in my case) with driver compatible with Win98SE (for me Pinnacle 300i)
Kernel EX
ProgDVB Version 4.85.3 (located at http://www.progdvb.c...d_progdvb.html)
Any MPEG-2 decoder (in my case it is PowerDVD Mpeg2 decoder able to use my ATI x850 card for video decompression)

Features:
Hardware accelerated Digital Tv viewing

Bugs:
Software is russian so it can produce some trouble for central european localizations.
If the signal is lost the program can crash.

using of VMR-9 is possible in windows 98 but its a bit buggy - image is not correctly alligned.

Setbacks:
it is hard to find Win98se compatible hardware. for example Pinnacle 310 which was released one year later has different one chip and may not be compatible with windows driver.

i didnt found any support for radio software for this piece of hardware (its hybrid tuner, so it can tune in digi TV, analog TV and analog radio). a bit shame

Windows 98 is no longer supported by the author of ProgDVB.

Mpeg4 is not supported by that version.

[Offler]

Codecs and Media tools:

Media Player Classic:
The one i can mostly reccomend. Has some internal filters, usable to play audio and video files, DVDs and can connect to Video Devices such as TV tuner, VIVO or Digital camera. Also can play videos using Overlay mixer, Video Mixing renderer 9 and Haali renderer. Shader effect...

Windows Media player 9
Few months ago i was solving problem with WMV files - they were always choppy when using any player. The only way how to fix it was to install WMP9... Also this is only player able to play Digital Audio CD input through SPDIF which is connected directly from CD/DVD drive directly to SoundCard. The support of this feature is bit buggy but it is the best way how to play CDs. I dont recommend this software, but from my point of view it may cause trouble to work without it.

ATV2000 (latest)
Best software for Analog TV tuner viewing. Bit hard to control it but it has better image quality as many other software. Widely localized. Allows realtime capturing and encoding software and for some cards hardware MPEG.

ProgDVB 4.85.3
Best software for Digital TV tuner. Look at previous post for details. Allows recording in MPEG2 Stream format. When you fix the codecs it is very usable without any bad errors.

Power DVD 6
It is commonly bundled with DVD drives and graphic cards and in some cases with a legal CD-Key. Player itself is not interesting, but it contains a lot of usable codecs which are one of the best for Mpeg2 decoding. CLVSD.AX can decode mpeg using hardware acceleration which makec CPU load lower. Version 6 works correcly witn ProgDVB and MPC.

AC3 Filter 1.63a (latest)
The newest version of this sound decoder also contain very usable Equalizer which can really improve sound quality from DVDs, Digital television or other sound sources. This build is localized in many languages. Not so User friendly, but offers many possibilities in setting good sound quality. (ac3, dts, mpeg, pcm, ... and others)

Note: When using AC3 filter with equalizer in MPC and 5.1 sound, if video is choppy set in MPC "Default sound device". I had some trouble when it was set to "Direct sound device:SoundBlaster LIVE". Correct setting for me was "Soundblaster LIVE" althougt it seemed same for many other videos it is not.

Direct VobSub 2.23
Not the newest. Newer versions caused trouble with YUY2 colorspace while playing Xvid videos. I have to check if there are other versions. If you try to play video in VMR9 with subtitles YUY2 and YU12 formats are impossible to set, default colorspace is always RGB32. That setting is quite CPU consuming, but it may be connected with the video which was used to test. Newer versions were able to use YUV2, but the image was crippled and "Mod32 fix" didnt worked.

Xvid - Koepis Build (Latest)
Officially not supporting Win9x but it works great. Still under development. I recommend it for all Xvid and DivX videos.

FFDShow
Support for windows 9x was dropped. have to find last stable release for them. Usage: good for decompressing of formats you dont use commonly.

H264 VFW
Quite good h264 decoder, have to find its details

Virtual DUB
freeware. good working. i have to find some details about it.

this page will be edited within day or two. i want to add here all links and re-test some things. I dont reccomend to use any of Codec packs available on web. Most of them are not correctly set.

Beware of Nero - might screw up all codec settings.

This post has been edited by Offler: 02 September 2009 - 02:26 AM

[patchworks]

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 09:52 AM, said:

Codecs and Media tools:

Media Player Classic:
The one i can mostly reccomend. Has some internal filters, usable to play audio and video files, DVDs and can connect to Video Devices such as TV tuner, VIVO or Digital camera. Also can play videos using Overlay mixer, Video Mixing renderer 9 and Haali renderer. Shader effect...

Windows Media player 9
Few months ago i was solving problem with WMV files - they were always choppy when using any player. The only way how to fix it was to install WMP9... Also this is only player able to play Digital Audio CD input through SPDIF which is connected directly from CD/DVD drive directly to SoundCard. The support of this feature is bit buggy but it is the best way how to play CDs. I dont recommend this software, but from my point of view it may cause trouble to work without it.

ATV2000 (latest)
Best software for Analog TV tuner viewing. Bit hard to control it but it has better image quality as many other software. Widely localized. Allows realtime capturing and encoding software and for some cards hardware MPEG.

ProgDVB 4.85.3
Best software for Digital TV tuner. Look at previous post for details. Allows recording in MPEG2 Stream format. When you fix the codecs it is very usable without any bad errors.

Power DVD 6
It is commonly bundled with DVD drives and graphic cards and in some cases with a legal CD-Key. Player itself is not interesting, but it contains a lot of usable codecs which are one of the best for Mpeg2 decoding. CLVSD.AX can decode mpeg using hardware acceleration which makec CPU load lower. Version 6 works correcly witn ProgDVB and MPC.

AC3 Filter 1.63a (latest)
The newest version of this sound decoder also contain very usable Equalizer which can really improve sound quality from DVDs, Digital television or other sound sources. This build is localized in many languages. Not so User friendly, but offers many possibilities in setting good sound quality. (ac3, dts, mpeg, pcm, ... and others)

Note: When using AC3 filter with equalizer in MPC and 5.1 sound, if video is choppy set in MPC "Default sound device". I had some trouble when it was set to "Direct sound device:SoundBlaster LIVE". Correct setting for me was "Soundblaster LIVE" althougt it seemed same for many other videos it is not.

Direct VobSub 2.23
Not the newest. Newer versions caused trouble with YUY2 colorspace while playing Xvid videos. I have to check if there are other versions. If you try to play video in VMR9 with subtitles YUY2 and YU12 formats are impossible to set, default colorspace is always RGB32. That setting is quite CPU consuming, but it may be connected with the video which was used to test. Newer versions were able to use YUV2, but the image was crippled and "Mod32 fix" didnt worked.

Xvid - Koepis Build (Latest)
Officially not supporting Win9x but it works great. Still under development. I recommend it for all Xvid and DivX videos.

FFDShow
Support for windows 9x was dropped. have to find last stable release for them. Usage: good for decompressing of formats you dont use commonly.

H264 VFW
Quite good h264 decoder, have to find its details

Virtual DUB
freeware. good working. i have to find some details about it.

this page will be edited within day or two. i want to add here all links and re-test some things. I dont reccomend to use any of Codec packs available on web. Most of them are not correctly set.

Beware of Nero - might screw up all codec settings.

...if you need to kill your Windows 9X/ME performances.

If not, choose VideoLAN instead.

This post has been edited by patchworks: 02 September 2009 - 02:57 AM

[Offler]

Well i disagree with you.

Also Mpeg2 decompression with cyberlink is very fast and i seems to be almost cpu independent when hardware acceleration is enabled.

I prefer to use decoders which were used to encode the file. For better quality. FFDShow does the same, but i know that image quality might be worse than with proper codec.

Also do VLC play digital tv?

edit: it does.. will see... I had some trouble with it lately. (no win9x support at that time)

This post has been edited by Offler: 02 September 2009 - 03:08 AM

[patchworks]

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 11:03 AM, said:

Also Mpeg2 decompression with cyberlink is very fast and i seems to be almost cpu independent when hardware acceleration is enabled.

True, VLC don't have mutch hardware optimizations integrated, but is still better 'cause don't install anything that overhead the system.

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 11:03 AM, said:

I prefer to use decoders which were used to encode the file. For better quality.

You don't obtain better quality using the same codec but with a better one !

And note that FFDShow is FFMpeg based too...

[Offler]

VLC 0.8.6 is the latest release with support for this operating system.

Please note that these versions of Windows are not officially supported. No VideoLAN developer uses any of these systems, which makes them hard to support. VLC should mostly work with them, but some incompatibilities might appear. You might need to download The Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems. The two MSLU files need to be put in the C:\Windows\System\ folder.

Warning: The following package is not up-to-date with the latest official version of the software. When using an out-of-date version, you may encounter important bugs or security holes.



I am quite disappointed... I tried it some months ago. All i received was crash screen.

FFDShow is in my system only for solving of compatibility issues. Surely it is not a good decompressor. I tried it with Progdvb for Mpeg2 decoding of digital TV. IT IS TERRIBLE.

FFDShow is mainly a reason why i maintain special Mpeg2, Xvid and sound codec for quality purposes such as dvds... I got one old CRT monitor by IBM. Its image is crystal clear

[patclash]

Hi ,

you don't use KernelEX v4.0 ?
see : http://www.msfn.org/board/kernelex-4-0-fin...tml#entry872324
(my post #207)

and I can say the last version VLC 1.0.1 work better than the prévious 1.00 with KernelEX v4.0 final 2

[Offler]

I do. this sounds promising

[patchworks]

Hey, guyz, I opened a 3ad about VLC+KernelEx @ VideoLAN Forums:

http://forum.videola...hp?f=14&t=64425

Feedbacking is useful !

This post has been edited by patchworks: 03 September 2009 - 05:13 AM

[Offler]

so...

The VLC works.

Only bug ocurred when i opened DVD - VLC crashed.

This player do the same trick as FFDShow. Compatibility from every point of view. Surely it has small CPU overhead.

I was quite disappointed at some things. It does not detect my audio card correctly as 5.1, and the settings doesnt seem work correctly - rear speakers are mute... No deincerlacing for DVDs is just terrible

There is also support for Analog video devices, but it is more usable for cameras. Tv tuners seems to be hardly tuned Digital video source (DVB-T) is mentioned here, but the tuning interface is quite complicated. I was unable to set it correctly for now.

At all i can recommend it for people who dont want to play around with tons of codecs , from another point of view a cannot recommend it for people who search supreme sound and video quality. VLC offers more quality than average, but not the best quality.

[Offler]

Next Step:

DVD/CD burning software

Nero is complete failure from all point of view. Since then i decided to choose more simple software. I found Imgburn so i think it will be quite useful.

Before i choose this software i just want ask about your suggestion. Also there is a limit because of FAT32 file system for 4gb files so because of this i am looking for software which will be able to burn even 8gb double layered DVDs, but mostly without creating an image, just with copying files somewhere.

[M()zart]

Offler, on Sep 3 2009, 04:56 PM, said:

At all i can recommend it for people who dont want to play around with tons of codecs , from another point of view a cannot recommend it for people who search supreme sound and video quality. VLC offers more quality than average, but not the best quality.

Well, I recommend to keep it as an alternative media player to everyone. VLC does not provide comfortable interface or best quality, but it surely the best one when you need to view some non-standard format or broken video file. It saved me a lot of times, when no other player can view the file, and couple of times when no other player can view DVD under my Windows 98. Once I had very damaged avi file, all players displayed just a few minutes of it, and only VLC сould play it, showing an empty picture in the damaged places. There were broken fragments more than a minute long, but I could watch the movie almost completely.

VLC 1.0.1 better understands non-standard files and has better Look&Feel, but does not work without KernelEx 4.0 Final 2.

As for CD/DVD burning, currently I use SmallCDWriter because of its size. There are many CD/DVD/BD recording programms working on Win98. I'm currently going to try UUDS, it has more features and fits in 1,5 MB (with applying UPX), but it may be less stable.

This post has been edited by M()zart: 30 September 2009 - 04:41 AM

[Offler]

Good point at BD... Anybody tried Blu-Ray on win98?


edit:

Miranda

Its win9x builds contains some bugs, so i tried Pidgin based on GTK+. Since KernelEX supports GTK+ i expected no errors but after running of it i get error:

error loading pidgin.dll
Error: 31 a device attached to the system is not functioning.

seems like wrong path???

This post has been edited by Offler: 30 September 2009 - 11:43 AM

[Offler]

Current state:

Hardware

The strongest PC with Win98SE will use P4 or AMD 1650, but it will be quite hard to find usable system board. I dont know how new intel chipsets support this system and i have no reports.

Intel chipset 945 is still being produced and installed on new systems, alongside with Pentium4 and older graphics can be used for "new" machine on windows 9x. Alternate disk adapter will be mandatory, since most new boards have SATA. For me the SCSI is still the most compatible way how to boot on any board with any OS.

The most advanced system based on Windows 9x should look like this:
(please note that i am not familiar with AMD and its chipsets)

Pentium 4 3ghz
4 gigabytes of DDR2 (rloews patch mandatory)
Intel Chipset 945 or older, better with AGP
Ati X850 or older, Nvidia 6xx0, maybe 7xx0 or older

This performance should be enough for programs or games from year 2007 or 2008, but the compatibility even with KernelEx might be questionable. Also i am not sure when may occur errors caused by too high cpu frequency, or how can win9x handle PCI-E.

So much for Hardware, lets search for software

To these days i was able to find and use all tools i needed to my work and hobbies, some of them work because projects available at this page. Most crucial for me as common user was the compatibility with formats i want to use and work with. Lets mention some software which has been sucessfully tested and later used here:

Opera 10 - I know it had issues on some machines, but it is good to have new browser
Media Player Classic - Contains internal decoders, but works great with all external codecs. Supports DX9 renderer and shaders. DVD player
Open office - currently using version 2.3
ATV2000/ProgDVB - TV viewing. They are not flawless but they dont make much trouble. Most SW available is only worse.
BurnIMG - tool for dvd burning. slim with 2,5 mb. It just cannot burn CD audio from waves...
Virtual dub - easy to use video editing tool
Total Commander - the one and only
Miranda 0.8.8 - Has its bugs, but works for me in win9x

Missing software:
- some freeware sound editor
- freeware image editor
- Audio CD player Sw able to use SPDIF

Features which will be out of system possibilities:
- playing some HD video formats

So if you have an older machine which is not intended only for playing but also for multimedia win9x should be enough for it. Still a PC on which you can browse web, record sound and work with or just entertain. Immolator can be used as machine with lots of multimedia, it is able to process most documents, audio and video formats. Issues caused by lower system peformance than the average are not problem of Win9x. Hardware compatibility is now the biggest trouble which makes impossible to make more hardware upgrades. All machines with windows 9x and some hardware performance can be used this way without limitations.

System Stability:
Nothing to report. No system crash occured for few months.

[Marius '95]

Offler, on Oct 21 2009, 12:47 PM, said:

Missing software:
- some freeware sound editor
- freeware image editor
- Audio CD player Sw able to use SPDIF

Try IrfanView - freeware image viewer (and editor)
You don't need software support for SPDIF. Connect digital-out (TAD) from CD drive to digital-in on sound card, activate digital passthrough in sound card control panel and use any player that doesn't use digital audio extraction. I recommend Media Player (the old one, \Windows\mplayer.exe).

[Offler]

I am trying to use SPDIF... just my possesion

I know Irfanview. have to test it, but i just dont like its ugly red icon . I started with photos in my job using ACDSee and Photoshop 5.5. Now i have one old license key for 7.0 from copy which is no longer being used in my former job so i can use it legally, but when comes to Immolator project I dont know adequate freeware replacement for both. ACDSee was quite fast when i was using it some years ago, but now it contains tons of useless things. I just prefer to press enter in Totalcmd to view the image in fullscreen, properly aligned and to see it in time less than one second... Photoshop is bit bigger problem. I cannot find nothing so sophisticated.

Also i found sound editing software called Audacity. Works great. It seems they plan to drop win9x support so i will contact them and ask a few questions. This freeware met all my requirements.

[Offler]

First page has been updated, some links will be added soon.