Which is better?

[wizardofwindows]

win me or 98se hmmm? i like them both Me has dos 8 and detects more drivers but 98se seems to have the fan base and theres current programs like sp2.1 98seto me etc and its so cool 2 customize .

[Technoguy]

well 98se rocks but these s*** companies have started making most of apps Xp based so 1 day or other we'll need 2 shift

[georgethetee]

MDGx, do I understand you to say the Gate A20 BIOS option can lock memory? In 98SE? Please explain, I have always had this option ON and dont think it's caused problems, but then again...

[Eck]

georgethetee,

Actually on is the default. Himem.sys needs to access it to read some stuff, but on newer computers many hog the thing and Himem.sys can't access it.

MDGx was talking about my findings on my own newest machine, the Asus A7V880, that if the on board SATA boot rom is activated (needed if booting from the SATA HD) then himem.sys will report "Cannot access Line A20." Windows 98SE will still run perfectly fine but Ms-Dos Mode and dos boot discs are crippled. No emm386 can be loaded so no memory management for my dos gaming! And, with this board even with a regular ATA HD the motherboard hogs the IRQ's so using the SBLive's dos mode drivers is impossible.

That's alright. I now have a speedy Asus A7V333 Revision 2.0 board with an AthlonXP 3000+(Barton) that has normal dos memory management available. So I just use my XP Home on the A7V880, and 98SE on A7V333. But, dosgames will crash where they wouldn't on slower processors. So even though Dos Mode is available I am finding myself using the latest Dosbox with the latest CVS build to play most of my dos games anyway. I still like 98 better. All of my games were designed before XP was a dream. And, everything just feels zippier and peppier!

[azagahl]

Does your board let you have full Ms-Dos Mode use? I mean, with good real, extended and expanded memory available (if you set it for it)?

Yes, I can load HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE with a complete EMS page memory, load dozens of TSR's, and then boot into Windows 98 SE. The motherboard I'm using is MSI K8T Neo Fis2R (MS-6702). Almost all my DOS TSR's are loaded high and I have like 100 K of UMB's.

I load a lot of TSR's - NANSI, smartdrv, Zeno video accelerator, some fix??.com that adds support for fonts missing from most video cards, SBLive drivers, CD-ROM drivers, RAM disk, doskey, etc.. Also I use LSPPP ethernet drivers and various apps support ftping / browsing from within DOS.

Even with all ROM shadowing turned off, I think my BIOS (or maybe it's my video card) eats up some memory at E000-E080 or so. It's really annoying and results in splitting a memory region but it's manageable I guess.

"unable to control line A20"

Never seen this message. Sorry

Also I'm not using SATA. The idea of newer technology scared me and I could just put the money into bigger capacity anyway. ATA 100 seems fast enough for me.

It is known that UMBPCI can't work on most AMD/VIA based mobos because ISA DMA cache area [located in UMA] is not available in native MS-DOS.

You're right it doesn't work and crashes like crazy even though the creator claims my chipset is supported. The extra utilities for working around the DMA problem don't help. It sounds like UMBPCI isn't able to exploit lower UMB's anyway which is unfortunate . And I believe access to memory mapped UMB's through EMM386 can be faster.

My setup also doesn't work with FreeDOS UDMA drivers. They fail randomly and can lead to hard disk corruption. I talked with the author about this but no solution was found..

Overall I'm happy. I think VIA is cheaper than intel and the VIA IDE Miniport drivers allow > 137 GB disks under 98 SE.

Edited June 21, 2005 by azagahl

[MDGx]

EXXX-FXXX areas are occupied even if u turn off ROM shadowing because u probably have some other hardware device(s) that need to use those UMA regions.

Examples: RAID, SCSI controllers, video controllers like NVidia ATI, etc.

Also, unfortunately, ROM shadowing cannot be turned off on some mobos.

About AMD/VIA approach to mobo chipsets design:

they "inspired"/licensed from original Intel 80X86 design, but because according to the Intel license they can't copy all chipset/CPU functions, they had to come up with their own workarounds, which makes their chipsets incompatible with simple low level DOS stuff, like UMA/conventional/extended/expanded memory management.

That's why it is extremely hard or even impossible for someone who programs memory devices like UMBPCI.SYS to account/cover for all chipset designs out there.

SiS, VIA, FIC, AMD all make their own mobo chipsets, and each have different ways of implementing low level [DOS mode] memory routines.

And because they presume everybody today is using Windows XP, they don't care to implement all DOS mode functions properly, because they also assume nobody is playing native DOS games anymore.

I'm also happy playing some of my old DOS games once in a while on my P3 CPU + 440BX chipset, using native MS-DOS 7.10 [a.k.a. Windows 98 SE].

Have u seen my memory specs page:

http://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm

And I gotta tell u, Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold ISA rocks in every DOS game I've thrown at it. B)

[azagahl]

You use RECALL Mdgx? Do you have a bug where clicking on the Close button on a DOS Prompt window causes it not to close, but to emit a high pitched shriek instead? Because I had that bug... I ended up going with DOSKEY instead.

[wizardofwindows]

you should buy a can of microsoft raid i think best buy sells it lol.

[Udine]

In my opinion 98SE is FAR betta den Millennium...it was a complete waste of time bringin out ME...

And as for runnin a 233MHz, 98SE da PERFECT OS for it...

[MDGx]

You use RECALL Mdgx? Do you have a bug where clicking on the Close button on a DOS Prompt window causes it not to close, but to emit a high pitched shriek instead? Because I had that bug... I ended up going with DOSKEY instead.

Yeap, I've seen that error a few times, and my fix was to type EXIT and hit Enter in the DOS box right after it starts beeping, so I can close it.

I've also tried these DOSKEY replacements:

* DOSKEY.COM v1.8 16-bit DOS keyboard enhancer and command line editor and

history TSR improved Microsoft DOSKEY.COM replacement for MS-DOS 5/6 and

Windows 9x/ME, highly customizable:

http://members.aol.com/paulhoule/doskey.htm

Direct download [6 KB, freeware]:

http://members.aol.com/paulhoule/doskey18.zip

Uses 3.9 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded with LOADHIGH in AUTOEXEC.BAT (upper

memory manager required in CONFIG.SYS).

* CMDEDIT v3.21 16-bit DOS keyboard enhancer and command line, application,

directory, macro editor and history TSR improved Microsoft DOSKEY.COM

replacement for MS-DOS 5/6 and Windows 9x/ME, supports LFNs, loads itself high

if UMA available, highly customizable:

http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/cmdedit/

Direct download [163 KB, freeware, right-click to save!]:

http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/cmdedit/cmded321.zip

Uses 9 KB of upper DOS RAM if loaded from AUTOEXEC.BAT (upper memory manager

required in CONFIG.SYS).

both posted here:

http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm

but I ended up using RECALL.COM cuz I like it better for carrying command list history throughout native DOS + all Windows sessions [no matter how many times I exist Windows back to native DOS and then reload the UI], and for its small memory footprint.

[Pantharen]

I hear a lot of people b***h and moan about windows ME. BUT I bet 1/2 of you never used ME, because you heard that it was crap.

Windows 98,

cons: limited in useable ram, BSOD is a common occurance, highly unstable, not terribly USB friendly, DOS based.

pros: highly tweakable, still supported by M$.

Windows ME,

Cons: uses resources like they're free, occasionally bsod's.

pros: easy to configure, easy to configure registry to fix M$ screw ups, More user friendly than Win 98, Not 100% dos based.

[MDGx]

95 + 98, same as ME [all part of the 9x series] are based on DOS the same way.

None of them can load without the good ol' 16-bit DOS layer.

Try to remove IFSHLP.SYS from ME, see if the UI loads. I'll save u the trouble, it won't.

They all use the DOS memory scheme [conventional, upper, high + extended] the same way.

The only improvement ME came up with was the new [at the time] WDM/WHQL driver model taken from 2000 [*.SYS drivers instead of *.VXD], and later on adopted into XP + 2003. Longhorn will use an even newer drive model.

Moreso, try to delete IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM +/- MSDOS.SYS, 9x can't even boot.

1 of the few changes they made to ME in order to mimic the loading style of NTx, was the inclusion of HIMEM.SYS as part of IO.SYS. Yes, u can delete HIMEM.SYS from ME, but that's called faking it, because the HIMEM model is identical with 98 FE + 98 SE.

Just because MS disabled [read "hid really well"] the native MS-DOS mode, that doesn't make it so.

Just apply 1 of the available real DOS mode patches:

http://www.mdgx.com/dos.htm#ME

to the ME system files, and you'll have full DOS mode back.

The usability of RAM is restricted by the 32-bit X86 CPU, which can address a maximum of 4 GB of memory [virtual address space] and up to 128 GB [physical memory space], divided in 4 MB [4096 KB] blocks.

64-bit CPUs can address up to 16 TB of RAM [virtual] and respectively 128 TB [physical].

Further restrictions exist because of the ancient MS memory model implementation [in Windows they call it VMM = Virtual Memory Manager], which in 9x series can address only up to 2 GB [theoretical limit], but in reality this is only 1 GB or in rare cases 1.5 GB [practical limit]. This is because 2 GB out of 4 are reserved for the OS itself, kernel, core, memory management + disk swapping [file paging], and only ~ 2 GB are available to programs, minus ~ 1/2 GB reserved for HD + video hardware.

User resources are an entirely different matter.

These are globally called "system resources", and consist of two 64 KB blocks of memory Windows allocates to programs/processes/TSRs for tracking purposes. 1 of these blocks makes up the user resources and the other [as u probably guessed] makes up the GDI [Graphics Device Interface] resources.

Neither of these have anything to do with real memory, a.k.a. RAM.

Resources are only place holders [pointers] for programs [dialogs, icons, bitmaps, cursors, menus etc] + hardware [keyboard, mouse, printer, VGA card etc].

If you wish to know more on these subjects, MSKB, MSDN + MS TechNet offer plenty.

I've been using all MS OSes + environments [that's what the 3.x series are actually] starting with DOS 5.0, and played around with ME for almost 2 years until I went back to 98 SE. And I have to say ME is overall one of the most troublesome MS OSes.

ME should have been released for what really is, just a patch to 98 SE.

Just because u [and I and a few others] didn't have many BSODs, that doesn't make ME a reliable OS. Take for example the hordes of users who felt like throwing their computers out the window just because ME blew up on them. It all depends on the hardware and driver compatibility.

If you care to classify, the best MS desktop OS to date is XP Pro in both 32 and 64-bit versions, and the best MS server OS is 2003.

But in the server world, many people trust the NIX/BSD models better.

In the end, it's all a matter of opinion.